Max Sawicky wrote:
>It boils down to this, if you're serious:
>Is it really the case that there is a lack of summary
>measures that indicate a widespread lack of development
>in the periphery over the past 50 years?
Following your strictures not to question GDP as a measure of
development, I guess it comes down to a matter of relative vs.
absolute.
-------------------------
If you don't like GDP, give me something else that
speaks to the issue. Give me hemorrhoids per capita
between 1940 and 1999. Whatever. If you can't, you
shouldn't say capitalism sustains itself on escalating
misery in the Third World. You could, at the risk of
being called names, say it subsists on uneven rates
of increase. Or on the exhaustion of non-renewable
resources that will lead to a fundamental crisis in
the middle of the next century.
mbs
There's no question that real per capita incomes -
bracketing for now all distributional and qualitiative considerations
- have risen in almost all peripheral areas - even Africa, according
to Maddison's numbers, a continent that is in dire dire shape. But by
relative measures, global polarization is wider now than in the 19th
century. Here are some summary stats - at purchasing power parity -
based on Maddison's estimates:
GDP PER CAPITA, PERCENT OF U.S.
southern eastern Latin Asia ex-
Europe Europe America Japan Africa
1820 64.5% 58.3% 55.5% 42.1% 35.0%
1870 45.2% 41.9% 32.6% 23.3% 19.5%
1913 33.0% 29.3% 28.6% 13.3% 10.8%
1929 31.2% 22.8% 27.9% 11.4% 9.6%
1950 21.2% 27.2% 27.3% 6.7% 8.3%
1973 36.3% 34.6% 28.6% 6.9% 7.7%
1992 36.0% 20.4% 24.3% 11.0% 5.8%
So, "southern" Europe - by which Maddison means peripheral Europe
(Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey) have done reasonably
well since 1950, though they're still further behind in relative
terms than they were in the 19th century; Eastern Europe did ok
during its "socialist" period, but it too has fallen behind again;
Latin America was flat for most of the century, and has fallen behind
since the 1970s; and Africa is a disaster. The only region to close
the gap with the U.S. since the 1970s was Asia, and it had a spot of
trouble recently.
By the way, the years are the breakpoints of Maddison's periodization.
Doug
