Then-just a couple of hundred years ago-people started getting richer. Almost everyone lived on the modern equivalent of $400 to $600 a year, just above the subsistence level…. There were wars, political intrigue, the invention of agriculture-but none of that stuff had much effect on the quality of people's lives. For the next 99,800 years or so, nothing happened. Modern humans first emerged about 100,000 years ago.
He uses a passage from Steven Landsberg, the University of Rochester (NY) economist to remind of the substantial and historically recent improvement in the standard of living. Professor Gordon dedicates about 80 percent of the text to this issue, while using the last 20 percent for his prognostications. The principal value of The Rise and Fall of American Growth, lies in its comprehensive history of the standard of living. This review will summarize the basic thesis of the nearly 800 page book, and refers to Gordon's comments on urbanization and transport, which are of particular interest to readers.
Harris Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois. I took the opportunity of the 28 hours of sunlight on a round trip from Detroit to Shanghai to read it, which was a productive and delightful way to make the time go faster. Standard of Living Since the Civil War is a magisterial volume that will benefit any serious student of economics, demographics or history. Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S.
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