Revolución Industrial: pasado y futuro

Nuevo ensayo de Robert Lucas.

Reading Figure 3 from left to right, we can see the emergence over the last two centuries of the inequality displayed in Figure 1. By 1850 there was something like a factor of two difference between the English-speaking countries and the poor countries of Africa and Asia. By 1900, a difference of perhaps a factor of six had emerged. At that time, the rest of Europe was still far behind England and America, and Japanese incomes were scarcely distinguishable from incomes in the rest of Asia. In the first half of the 20th century, the inequality present in 1900 was simply magnified. The English-speaking countries gained relative to northern Europe, which in turn gained on the rest of Europe and Asia. Notice, too, that per capita income in what I have called Group V, the African and Asian countries, remained constant at around $600 up to 1950. The entire colonial era was a period of stagnation in the living standards of masses of people. European imperialism brought advances in technology to much of the colonized world, and these advances led to increases in production that could, as in British India, be impressive. But the outcome of colonial economic growth was larger populations, not higher living standards.