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Wealth, health and the cycle of progress 25
1870–2002. Despite minor fluctuations in the components, there
has been a general improvement in overall human well-being in the
United States during the twentieth century. Each component
improved throughout the century except for literacy, which reached
saturation around 1970.
Have gaps in human well-being widened?
While human well-being has improved continually over the past
two centuries, it is often claimed that inequalities continue to widen
between the developed and developing nations. A typical observation
is the following from the United Nations Development
Program’s 1999 Human Development Report:
Nearly 30 years ago the Pearson Commission began its report
with the recognition that, “the widening gap between the developed
and developing countries has become the central problem of
our times.’ But over the past three decades the income gap between
the richest fifth and the poorest fifth has more than doubled. Narrowing
the gaps between rich and poor … should become explicit
global goals …” (UNDP, 1999).
As Figure 7 showed, there are wide – and, in many cases,
growing – disparities in income between the richer and poorer
countries. The gaps in per capita income between Western Europe
and the United States and other regions have ballooned since the
start of modern economic growth about two centuries ago, and
many people remain terribly poor (Maddison, 1998; 1999a).
However, the increasing gap in incomes between the richer and
poorer countries does not mean that income gaps between all
human beings in the world, regardless of where they live, is necessarily
widening (Economist, 2004). More importantly, it does not
follow that the well-being of the relatively poor groups is declining.
In 2001, according to the World Bank, 1.1 billion people, mainly
in the developing world, lived in “absolute poverty” (defined as subsisting
on less than one U.S. dollar per day based on 1993 purchasing
power parity) (Ravallion, 2004). Nevertheless, contrary to