6.0 Introduction

On average, humans need about 2,500 calories a day to survive, depending on height, weight, and gender. The economist Brad DeLong estimates that the average worker in the early 1600s earned wages that could afford him 2,500 food calories. This worker lived in Western Europe. Two hundred years later, that same worker could afford 3,000 food calories. However, between 1800 and 1875, in a time span of just 75 years, economic growth was so rapid that Western European workers could purchase 5,000 food calories daily. By 2012, a low-skilled worker in an affluent Western European/North American country could afford to purchase 2.4 million food calories daily.

What caused such a rapid rise in living standards between 1800 and 1875 and thereafter? Why can many countries, especially those in Western Europe, North America, and parts of East Asia, feed their populations more than adequately while others cannot? We will look at these and other questions as we examine long-run economic growth.