The Hockey Stick of Human Prosperity

The Hockey Stick of Human Prosperity

The video describes the dramatic rise in human prosperity over the last two or three centuries. For most of history, living standards changed little: people remained poor, vulnerable to hunger and disease, and lived in difficult conditions. From around the 18th century onward, prosperity rose rapidly—a pattern called the “hockey stick” of human prosperity.

The narrator illustrates this change through everyday measures of well-being:

• Longer lives: Before the Industrial Revolution, life expectancy was about 30 years. Today, the narrator says, it is about 80 in the United States.
• Lower child mortality: In the past, roughly one in four children died before age five. In developed countries today, the figure is closer to one in 200.
• Improved health and nutrition: People are taller on average than they were a few centuries ago, and a disease that once affected people has since been eradicated.
• Better housing and sanitation: Modern homes commonly have solid floors, roofs, clean water, electricity, and toilets. Earlier generations often lived in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.
• Greater access to goods: Even many people with limited means in modern America can use appliances and buy inexpensive goods that were unavailable to most people in the past.

How Production and Consumption Changed

A key change behind modern life is how people produce and consume:

1. Earlier households made much of what they used. People commonly grew their own food, made clothing, and built their homes.
2. Modern production is specialized. Most people now perform one kind of work rather than making most of the things they consume.
3. Consumption depends on many people and places. The narrator traces a cup of coffee through beans grown in Guatemala, a coffeemaker from Switzerland, a ship built in Korea, insurance from London, and a French captain.
4. Specialization and trade connect producers and consumers. Each person may produce relatively little directly, yet can consume a wide range of products made through the work of many others.

The Origins of Economics

The video connects the question of where prosperity comes from to the origins of economics. Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, sought to explain why riches that had once been largely reserved for nobility were beginning to reach ordinary people.

The video introduces trade as one part of the explanation and says the following lessons will explore its role in prosperity.

Speaker

• Don Boudreaux — narrator and presenter