Enlightenment Now

46. Reviewed in Brand 2009, chaps. 2 and 3, and Radelet 2015, p. 59. For a similar account from today’s China, see Chang 2009.

  47. Slums to suburbs: Brand 2009; Perlman 1976.

  48. Improvement in working conditions: Radelet 2015.

  49. Benefits of science and technology: Brand 2009; Deaton 2013; Kenny 2011; Radelet 2015; Ridley 2010.

  50. Mobile phones and commerce: Radelet 2015.

  51. Jensen 2007.

  52. Estimate from the International Telecommunications Union, cited in Pentland 2007.

  53. Against foreign aid: Deaton 2013; Easterly 2006.

  54. In favor of (some kinds of) foreign aid: Collier 2007; Kenny 2011; Radelet 2015; Singer 2010; S. Radelet, “Angus Deaton, His Nobel Prize, and Foreign Aid,” Future Development blog, Brookings Institution, Oct. 20, 2015, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/future-development/posts/2015/10/20-angus-deaton-nobel-prize-foreign-aid-radelet.

  55. Rising Preston Curve: Roser 2016n.

  56. Life expectancy figures are from www.gapminder.org.

  57. Correlation between GDP and measures of well-being: van Zanden et al. 2014, p. 252; Kenny 2011, pp. 96–97; Land, Michalos, & Sirgy 2012; Prados de la Escosura 2015; see also chapters 11, 12, and 14–18.

  58. Correlations between GDP and peace, stability, and liberal values: Brunnschweiler & Lujala 2015; Hegre et al. 2011; Prados de la Escosura 2015; van Zanden et al. 2014; Welzel 2013; see also chapters 12 and 14–18.

  59. Correlations between GDP and happiness: Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs 2016; Stevenson & Wolfers 2008a; Veenhoven 2010; see also chapter 18. Correlation with IQ gains: Pietschnig & Voracek 2015; see also chapter 16.

  60. Composite measures of national well-being: Land, Michalos, & Sirgy 2012; Prados de la Escosura 2015; van Zanden et al. 2014; Veenhoven 2010; Porter, Stern, & Green 2016; see also chapter 16.

  61. GDP as cause of peace, stability, and liberal values: Brunnschweiler & Lujala 2015; Hegre et al. 2011; Prados de la Escosura 2015; van Zanden et al. 2014; Welzel 2013; see also chapters 11, 14, and 15.

  CHAPTER 9: INEQUALITY

  1. Plotted by the now-defunct New York Times Chronicle tool, http://nytlabs.com/projects/chronicle.html, retrieved Sept. 19, 2016.

  2. “Bernie Quotes for a Better World,” http://www.betterworld.net/quotes/bernie8.htm.

  3. Inequality in the Anglosphere vs. the rest of the developed world: Roser 2016k.

  4. Gini data taken from Roser 2016k, originally from OECD 2016; note that exact values vary depending on the source. The World Bank’s Povcal, for example, estimates a less extreme change, from .38 in 1986 to .41 in 2013 (World Bank 2016d). Income share data from the World Wealth and Income Database, http://www.wid.world/. For a comprehensive dataset, see The Chartbook of Economic Inequality, Atkinson et al. 2017.

  5. The trouble with inequality: Frankfurt 2015. Other inequality skeptics: Mankiw 2013; McCloskey 2014; Parfit 1997; Sowell 2015; Starmans, Sheskin, & Bloom 2017; Watson 2015; Winship 2013; S. Winship, “Inequality Is a Distraction. The Real Issue Is Growth,” Washington Post, Aug. 16, 2016.

  6. Frankfurt 2015, p. 7.

  7. According to the World Bank 2016c, global GDP per capita grew in every year from 1961 to 2015 except 2009.

  8. Piketty 2013, p. 261. Problems with Piketty: Kane 2016; McCloskey 2014; Summers 2014a.

  9. Nozick on income distributions: Nozick 1974. His example was the basketball great Wilt Chamberlain.

  10. J. B. Stewart, “In the Chamber of Secrets: J. K. Rowling’s Net Worth,” New York Times, Nov. 24, 2017.

  11. Social comparison theory comes from Leon Festinger; the theory of reference groups comes from Robert Merton and from Samuel Stouffer. See Kelley & Evans 2016 for a review and citations.

  12. Amartya Sen (1987) makes a similar argument.

  13. Wealth and happiness: Stevenson & Wolfers 2008a; Veenhoven 2010; see also chapter 18.

  14. Wilkinson & Pickett 2009.

  15. Problems with The Spirit Level: Saunders 2010; Snowdon 2010, 2016; Winship 2013.

  16. Inequality and subjective well-being: Kelley & Evans 2016. See chapter 18 for an explanation of how happiness is measured.

  17. Starmans, Sheskin, & Bloom 2017.

  18. Ethnic minorities perceived as cheaters: Sowell 1980, 1994, 1996, 2015.

  19. Skepticism on inequality causing economic and political dysfunction: Mankiw 2013; McCloskey 2014; Winship 2013; S. Winship, “Inequality Is a Distraction. The Real Issue Is Growth,” Washington Post, Aug. 16, 2016.

  20. Influence-peddling versus inequality: Watson 2015.

  21. Sharing meat, keeping plant foods: Cosmides & Tooby 1992.

  22. Inequality and awareness of inequality are universal: Brown 1991.

  23. Hunter-gatherer inequality: Smith et al. 2010. The average excludes questionable forms of “wealth” such as reproductive success, grip strength, weight, and sharing partners.

  24. Kuznets 1955.

  25. Deaton 2013, p. 89.

  26. Some, but not all, of the increase in between-country inequality from 1820 to 1970 can be attributed to the larger number of countries in the world; Branko Milanović, personal communication, April 16, 2017.

  27. War as leveler: Graham 2016; Piketty 2013; Scheidel 2017.

  28. Scheidel 2017, p. 444.

  29. History of social spending: Lindert 2004; van Bavel & Rijpma 2016.

  30. Egalitarian Revolution: Moatsos et al. 2014, p. 207.

  31. Social spending as a proportion of GDP: OECD 2014.

  32. Change in mission of government (particularly in Europe): Sheehan 2008.

  33. In particular, in environmental protection (chapter 10), gains in safety (chapter 12), the abolition of capital punishment (chapter 14), the rise of emancipative values (chapter 15), and overall human development (chapter 16).

  34. Social spending by employers: OECD 2014.

  35. Reported by Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.), P. Rucker, “Sen. DeMint of S.C. Is Voice of Opposition to Health-Care Reform,” Washington Post, July 28, 2009.

  36. Wagner’s Law: Wilkinson 2016b.

  37. Social spending in developing countries: OECD 2014.

  38. Prados de la Escosura 2015.

  39. No libertarian paradises: M. Lind, “The Question Libertarians Just Can’t Answer,” Salon, June 4, 2013; Friedman 1997. See also chapter 21, note 40.

  40. Willingness to have a welfare state: Alesina, Glaeser, & Sacerdote 2001; Peterson 2015.

  41. Explanations for the post-1980s inequality rise: Autor 2014; Deaton 2013; Goldin & Katz 2010; Graham 2016; Milanović 2016; Moatsos et al. 2014; Piketty 2013; Scheidel 2017.

  42. Taller elephant with lower trunk tip: Milanović 2016, fig. 1.3. More analysis of the elephant: Corlett 2016.

  43. Anonymous versus nonanonymous data: Corlett 2016; Lakner & Milanović 2015.

  44. Quasi-nonanonymous elephant curve: Lakner & Milanović 2015.

  45. Coontz 1992/2016, pp. 30–31.

  46. Rose 2016; Horwitz 2015 made a similar discovery.

  47. Individuals moving into the top 1 or 10 percent: Hirschl & Rank 2015. Horwitz 2015 obtained similar results. See also Sowell 2015; Watson 2015.

  48. Optimism Gap: Whitman 1998. Economic Optimism Gap: Bernanke 2016; Meyer & Sullivan 2011.

  49. Roser 2016k.

  50. Why the United States doesn’t have a European welfare state: Alesina, Glaeser, & Sacerdote 2001; Peterson 2015.

  51. Rise in disposable income in lower quintiles: Burtless 2014.

  52. Income rise from 2014 to 2015: Proctor, Semega, & Kollar 2016. Continuation in 2016: E. Levitz, “The Working Poor Got Richer in 2016,” New York, March 9, 2017.

  53. C. Jencks, “The War on Poverty: Was It Lost?” New York Review of Books, April 2, 20
15. Similar analyses: Furman 2014; Meyer & Sullivan 2011, 2012, 2016, 2017; Sacerdote 2017.

  54. 2015 and 2016 drops in the poverty rate: Proctor, Semega, & Kollar 2016; Semega, Fontenot, & Kollar 2017.

  55. Henry et al. 2015.

  56. Underestimating economic progress: Feldstein 2017.

  57. Furman 2005.

  58. Access to utilities among the poor: Greenwood, Seshadri, & Yorukoglu 2005. Ownership of appliances among the poor: US Census Bureau, “Extended Measures of Well-Being: Living Conditions in the United States, 2011,” table 1, http://www.census.gov/hhes/well-being/publications/extended-11.html. See also figure 17-3.

  59. Consumption inequality: Hassett & Mathur 2012; Horwitz 2015; Meyer & Sullivan 2012.

  60. Decline in happiness inequality: Stevenson & Wolfers 2008b.

  61. Declining Ginis for quality of life: Deaton 2013; Rijpma 2014, p. 264; Roser 2016a, 2016n; Roser & Ortiz-Ospina 2016a; Veenhoven 2010.

  62. Inequality and secular stagnation: Summers 2016.

  63. The economist Douglas Irwin (2016) notes that 45 million Americans live below the poverty line, 135,000 Americans are employed by the apparel industry, and the normal turnover of jobs results in about 1.7 million layoffs a month.

  64. Automation, jobs, and inequality: Brynjolfsson & McAfee 2016.

  65. Economic challenges and solutions: Dobbs et al. 2016; Summers & Balls 2015.

  66. S. Winship, “Inequality Is a Distraction. The Real Issue Is Growth,” Washington Post, Aug. 16, 2016.

  67. Governments vs. employers as social service providers: M. Lind, “Can You Have a Good Life If You Don’t Have a Good Job?” New York Times, Sept. 16, 2016.

  68. Universal basic income: Bregman 2017; S. Hammond, “When the Welfare State Met the Flat Tax,” Foreign Policy, June 16, 2016; R. Skidelsky, “Basic Income Revisited,” Project Syndicate, June 23, 2016; C. Murray, “A Guaranteed Income for Every American,” Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2016.

  69. Studies of the effects of basic income: Bregman 2017. High-tech volunteering: Diamandis & Kotler 2012. Effective altruism: MacAskill 2015.

  CHAPTER 10: THE ENVIRONMENT

  1. See Gore’s 1992 Earth in the Balance; Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), “Industrial Society and Its Future,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm; Francis 2015. Kaczynski read Gore’s book, and the similarities between it and his manifesto were pointed out in an undated Internet quiz by Ken Crossman: http://www.crm114.com/algore/quiz.html.

  2. Quoted in M. Ridley, “Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times,” Wired, Aug. 17, 2012. In The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich also compared humanity to cancer; see Bailey 2015, p. 5. For fantasies of a depopulated planet, see Alan Weisman’s 2007 bestseller The World Without Us.

  3. Ecomodernism: Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015; Ausubel 1996, 2007, 2015; Ausubel, Wernick, & Waggoner 2012; Brand 2009; DeFries 2014; Nordhaus & Shellenberger 2007. Earth Optimism: Balmford & Knowlton 2017; https://earthoptimism.si.edu/; http://www.oceanoptimism.org/about/.

  4. Extinctions and forest clearing by indigenous peoples: Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015; Brand 2009; Burney & Flannery 2005; White 2011.

  5. Wilderness preserves and decimation of indigenous peoples: Cronon 1995.

  6. From Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum (2005), quoted in Brand 2009, p. 19; see also Ruddiman et al. 2016.

  7. Brand 2009, p. 133.

  8. Gifts of industrialization: chapters 5–8; A. Epstein 2014; Norberg 2016; Radelet 2015; Ridley 2010.

  9. Environmental Kuznets curve: Ausubel 2015; Dinda 2004; Levinson 2008; Stern 2014. Note that the curve does not apply to all pollutants or all countries, and when it occurs it may be driven by policy rather than happening automatically.

  10. Inglehart & Welzel 2005; Welzel 2013, chap. 12.

  11. Demographic transitions: Ortiz-Ospina & Roser 2016d.

  12. Muslim population bust: Eberstadt & Shah 2011.

  13. M. Tupy, “Humans Innovate Their Way Out of Scarcity,” Reason, Jan. 12, 2016; see also Stuermer & Schwerhoff 2016.

  14. Europium Crisis: Deutsch 2011.

  15. “China’s Rare-Earths Bust,” Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2016.

  16. Why we don’t run out of resources: Nordhaus 1974; Romer & Nelson 1996; Simon 1981; Stuermer & Schwerhoff 2016.

  17. People don’t need resources: Deutsch 2011; Pinker 2002/2016, pp. 236–39; Ridley 2010; Romer & Nelson 1996.

  18. Probability and solutions to human problems: Deutsch 2011.

  19. The Stone Age quip is commonly attributed to Saudi oil minister Zaki Yamani in 1973; see “The End of the Oil Age,” The Economist, Oct. 23, 2003. Energy transitions: Ausubel 2007, p. 235.

  20. Farming pivots: DeFries 2014.

  21. Farming in the future: Brand 2009; Bryce 2014; Diamandis & Kotler 2012.

  22. Future water: Brand 2009; Diamandis & Kotler 2012.

  23. Environment is rebounding: Ausubel 1996, 2015; Ausubel, Wernick, & Waggoner 2012; Bailey 2015; Balmford 2012; Balmford & Knowlton 2017; Brand 2009; Ridley 2010.

  24. Roser 2016f, based on data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

  25. Roser 2016f, based on data from the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology.

  26. Environmental Performance Index, http://epi.yale.edu/country-rankings.

  27. Contaminated water and cooking smoke: United Nations Development Programme 2011.

  28. According to the UN Millennium Development Goals report, the percentage of people exposed to contaminated water fell from 24 percent in 1990 to 9 percent in 2015 (United Nations 2015a, p. 52). According to data cited in Roser 2016l, in 1980, 62 percent of the world’s population cooked with solid fuels; in 2010, just 41 percent did.

  29. Quoted in Norberg 2016.

  30. Third-worst stationary oil spill in history: Roser 2016r; US Department of the Interior, “Interior Department Releases Final Well Control Regulations to Ensure Safe and Responsible Offshore Oil and Gas Development,” April 14, 2016, https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-department-releases-final-well-control-regulations-ensure-safe-and.

  31. Increased tiger, condor, rhino, panda numbers: World Wildlife Foundation and Global Tiger Forum, cited in “Nature’s Comebacks,” Time, April 17, 2016. Conservation successes: Balmford 2012; Hoffmann et al. 2010; Suckling et al. 2016; United Nations 2015a, p. 57; R. McKie, “Saved: The Endangered Species Back from the Brink of Extinction,” The Guardian, April 8, 2017. Pimm on declining extinction rate: quoted in D. T. Max, “Green Is Good,” New Yorker, May 12, 2014.

  32. The paleontologist Douglas Erwin (2015) points out that mass extinctions wipe out inconspicuous but widespread mollusks, arthropods, and other invertebrates, not the charismatic birds and mammals that attract the attention of journalists. The biogeographer John Briggs (2015, 2016) notes that “most extinctions have occurred on oceanic islands or in restricted freshwater locations” after humans have introduced invasive species, because the native animals have nowhere to run; few have taken place on continents or in the oceans, and no ocean species has gone extinct in the past fifty years. Brand points out that the catastrophic predictions assume that all threatened species will go extinct and that this rate will continue for centuries or millennia; S. Brand, “Rethinking Extinction,” Aeon, April 21, 2015. See also Bailey 2015; Costello, May, & Stork 2013; Stork 2010; Thomas 2017; M. Ridley, “A History of Failed Predictions of Doom,” http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/apocalypse-not/.

  33. International agreements on the environment: http://www.enviropedia.org.uk/Acid_Rain/International_Agreements.php.

  34. Healing ozone hole: United Nations 2015a, p. 7.

  35. Note that the environmental Kuznets curve may be driven by such activism and legi
slation; see notes 9 and 40 in this chapter.

  36. Density is good: Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015; Brand 2009; Bryce 2013.

  37. Dematerialization of consumption: Sutherland 2016.

  38. Dying car culture: M. Fisher, “Cruising Toward Oblivion,” Washington Post, Sept. 2, 2015.

  39. Peak Stuff: Ausubel 2015; Office for National Statistics 2016. The equivalents in American units are 16.6 and 11.4 tons.

  40. See, for example, J. Salzman, “Why Rivers No Longer Burn,” Slate, Dec. 10, 2012; S. Cardoni, “Top 5 Pieces of Environmental Legislation,” ABC News, July 2, 2010, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/top-pieces-environmental-legislation/story?id=11067662; Young 2011. See also note 35 above.

  41. Recent reviews of climate change: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014; King et al. 2015; W. Nordhaus 2013; Plumer 2015; World Bank 2012a. See also J. Gillis, “Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change,” New York Times, Nov. 28, 2015; “The State of the Climate in 2016,” The Economist, Nov. 17, 2016.

  42. 4°C warming must not occur: World Bank 2012a.

  43. Effects of different emission scenarios: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014; King et al. 2015; W. Nordhaus 2013; Plumer 2015; World Bank 2012a. The projection for a 2°C rise is the RCP2.6 scenario shown in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014, fig. 6.7.

  44. Energy from fossil fuels: My calculation for 2015, from British Petroleum 2016, “Primary Energy: Consumption by Fuel,” p. 41, “Total World.”

  45. Scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change: NASA, “Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate Is Warming,” http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/; Skeptical Science, http://www.skepticalscience.com/; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014; Plumer 2015; W. Nordhaus 2013; W. Nordhaus, “Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong,” New York Review of Books, March 22, 2012. Among the skeptics who have been convinced are the libertarian science writers Michael Shermer, Matt Ridley, and Ronald Bailey.

  46. Consensus among climate scientists: Powell 2015; G. Stern, “Fifty Years After U.S. Climate Warning, Scientists Confront Communication Barriers,” Science, Nov. 27, 2015; see also the preceding note.

  47. Climate change denialism: Morton 2015; Oreskes & Conway 2010; Powell 2015.