The Guardian | 30.04.22 | SATURDAY | 65b e n i g n d e v e l o p m e n t : l e s s d a r k s a t a n i c m i l l s t h a n s u n l i t
uplands. But what about the hideous conditions, the
slums, children put to work in factories because their
little hands could reach into the moving parts to clear
away debris? Galor argues that industrialisation in fact
more or less eradicated child labour, and had the added
bonus of instigating universal education.
Because of the demands of subsistence living, child
labour had been an “intrinsic element of human societies
throughout history,” he writes. At the time of the
Industrial Revolution, however, it had reached a peak
that only further technological change could remedy.
It did that in two ways: fi rst , machines quickly became
better at doing the kind of basic work children had been
used for. Second , the need for a skilled workforce meant
that it was in employers’ – and parents’ – interests for
children to learn rather than work. Universal education
followed, spurred on by industrialists.
It’s a little harder to see another side eff ect of
industrialisation through rose-tinted glasses. A huge
increase in pollution made lives dirty and diffi cult at
the time, but has bequeathed an even deadlier legacy
to us and future generations: climate change. Can Galor
r e a l l y b e o p t i m i s t i c a b o u t t h a t t o o? “ S o m y v i e w i s a b i t
complex,” he says carefully. “What triggered climate
change is, yes, pollution created since the Industrial
Revolution. At the same time, that revolution created
two additional important trends. First, it started a
fertility decline that initially occurred in the western
world and gradually diff used around the globe. Even
India is now having fertility just at replacement level,
which is incredible. And then at the same time, we
know that this decline in fertility freed an enormous
amount of resources for investment in human capital.”
With that comes greater potential for technological
progress. “If the growth of population starts to decline,
this itself will reduce the current trend of carbon
emissions. And then the power of innovation causes
me to be confi dent that perhaps within two or three
decades, we will have revolutionary technologies that
w i l l r e v e r s e t h o s e e m i s s i o n s. N o w, w e c a n n o t e n v i s i o n
what these revolutionary technologies will be. But I do
believe, as we saw in the context of Covid, that such
technologies will emerge and will allow us to prevail.”
Not that he recommends simply watching and
hoping; he has policy prescriptions too. In the case of
the climate crisis, they come a bit out of left fi eld.
Climate policy should not stop at cutting carbon: it
should involve pushing hard for gender equality, access
to education and the availability of contraceptives, to
help drive forward the decline in fertility. Demographic
advocacy like this, he says, might be better received by
d e v e l o p i n g c o u n t r i e s t h a n a n i n s i s t e n c e o n r e g u l a t i n g
industry, since “they provide the benefi ts of economic
growth alongside environmental preservation”.
Growth is good, then, but no one needs reminding
that its benefi ts haven’t been felt equally. Explaining
the diff erent trajectories of countries since the 18th
century takes up as much room in The Journey of
Humanity as the mechanism of growth itself. The basic
idea is that those places that were a little bit further
behind in the run up to the Industrial Revolution soon
found themselves left in the dust. This is where th e
“initial conditions” really came into their own. So,
perhaps your land had been less suitable for growing
high-yield crops. Or maybe you lived in a part of the world
beset by livestock-bothering Tsetse fl ies. Politics and
institutions played their part too: in 1485, for example,
the Ottoman sultan banned movable type printing
using the Arabic script in order to protect religious
interests, ceding a head start to northern European
nations that took up the invention with alacrity.
As progress gathered pace, countries that started
out with an advantage pressed it ruthlessly, enslaving
and colonising others, and using the expropriated
resources to turbo-charge their own growth. Once
industrialisation started in earnest, the colonised were
essentially held in a state of arrested development,
farming to provide food and raw materials for their
i m p e r i a l m a s t e r s , w h o s e e c o n o m i e s w e r e f r e e d u p e v e n
further to specialise in advanced technologies.
There’s one remaining part of the jigsaw. To explain
it, Galor starts with a colourful analogy. He asks us to
imagine a land mass that has fi ve diff erent colours of
parrot on it: blue, yellow, black, green and red. A
hurricane hits, and some of the parrots are blown on
to a neighbouring island. It’s unlikely that every kind
of parrot would have been picked up by the winds;
perhaps only the green, blue and red ones, making this
breakaway population less diverse. In time, a few of
these parrots migrate to another island, and again they
represent only a subset of the population: just the blue
and red ones. This third population is even less diverse.
Galor argues that this is precisely what happened
when Homo sapiens left Africa, and the pattern was
r e p e a t e d w i t h e a c h o n w a r d m i g r a t i o n. A f r i c a i s t h e m o s t
diverse place on the planet, genomically and culturally,
and diversity has a knock-on eff ect on prosperity. It
accounts for about a quarter of the otherwise
unexplained variation between nations, Galor
calculates ; in contrast, diseases (the Tsetse fl y, m a l a r i a
etc ) account for one seventh, and political institutions
(democracies versus autocracies ) less than one tenth.
What is it about diversity that makes such a big impact?Social cohesiveness – low diversity, in other words –
can have its benefi ts, particularly in earlier phases of
development. But in the modern world , or the boiling
kettle phase , cultural fl uidity is the greatest driver of
innovation. “Like biological breeding, the mating of
ideas ... benefi ts from a broader pool of individuals,”
he writes. That mating of ideas gives rise to new policies,
new inventions and enhanced productivity, stoking
the engine of growth. Culturally fl uid societies are also
m o r e l i ke l y to b e a b l e to a d a p t to c h a n g i n g c o n d it io n s.
Galor believes, not uncontroversially, that there
might be a sweet spot between homogeneity and
fragmentation, where diversity and cross-pollination
thrive without undermining social cohesiveness.
Countries may sit outside of that spot in either direction:
they can be stultifyingly monocultural, or fractious
and prone to civil strife. In 2012, he was challenged by
a group of academics who warned that the suggestion
of an “ideal level of genetic variation” could be misused
to “justify indefensible practices such as ethnic
cleansing”. Galor responded that the criticism was
based on a “gross misinterpretation” of his conclusions.
And the policy prescriptions they generate are, on the
face of them, benign. “If Bolivia, which has one of the
least diverse populations, would foster cultural
diversity, its per capita income could increase as much
as fi vefold,” he writes. “If Ethiopia – one of the world’s
most diverse countries – were to adopt policies to
enhance social cohesion and tolerance of diff erence, it
could double its current income per capita.”
Rather than saying that genes equal destiny, Galor’s
message appears to be that whatever the circumstances
you have inherited, change is possible. It’s an analysis
of the human condition that leads not to a counsel of
despair, but a new set of tools he believes can help build
a better future. But is that all wishful thinking? I ask
whether his innately sunny disposition means we
should distrust his intuitions. “I think that I do have a
p o s i t i v e o u t l o o k i n m y p e r s o n a l l i f e. N a t u r a l l y t h a t m u s t
be projected on to the way that I view the world.”
“But when I’m projecting my optimism,” he adds,
“I’m projecting it based on my study of history.” Galor
contends that his work goes beyond intuition, even
beyond theory: “ This has all been explored empirically,
in a rigorous way.”
I t ’s t e m p t i n g , p a r t i c u l a r l y a t t h i s m o m e n t i n h i s t o r y,
to bask in a silver-haired sage’s confi dence in his facts
and fi gures. Maybe that in itself should cause our
sceptical antennae to twitch. For many, though, a dose
of fa it h i n hu ma n prog ress w i l l be ha rd to resist.
The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and
Inequalit y by Oded Galor i s publi shed by Bodle y Head.