Economic development c.1

For most of the world's history, the central economic prob lem of mankind has been survival. There have, of course, always been certain privileged classes or individuals-emperors, pharaohs, lords, and princes-who have lived in comfort and even great splendor. There have also been periods of general economic advance when improve ments in the arts and technology have brought some measure of relief to the lower orders of society. But improvement has been slow, reverses common; the Golden Age has been followed by the Dark Age; the feast by the famine. For the mass of mankind, long hours of toil and a meager return have been the basic facts of economic life.

In the modern world, however, an essentially new phenomenon has occurred. Beginning in Europe and spreading to the United States, Japan, Australasia, and a few other areas, there has taken place within the past two hundred years a marked acceleration in the rate of eco nomic growth. In the countries affected, national production began to increase not slowly and sporadically but rapidly and persistently. The speed of expansion was so great that even though these countries were experiencing the most rapid rates of population growth they had ever known, the levels of per-capita production increased by leaps and bounds. The kind of advance which might formerly have taken centuries or even millennia to accomplish was now being achieved in a matter of decades. Moreover, the benefits of this growth did not accrue just to the aristocracy. For the first time in history, the common man in many na tions was not one but several degrees removed from the level of sub sistence.

It is this phenomenon of vigorous and persistent economic growth that is central to the field of economic development. What are the factors that make for economic expansion? How do we account for the exceptionally rapid rates of growth recorded by certain countries during the past century or two? Equally important, why is it that during this same period certain other countries have shown not growth but stagnation or even decay?

These questions are far from academic. In recent decades there has been an intense upsurge of interest in the problems of economic development in every corner of the globe. In the United States, in the Soviet Union, and in other indus trial nations, growth rivalries have developed; also, there has been increasing concern over the environmental and ecological costs of growth. In the poorer countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, there is less concern about costs than benefits. They want to share the kind of rapid development that has so transformed the economies of the West. The attempt to achieve large-scale de velopment in the underdeveloped countries of the world represents one of the most significant social and economic tasks of the next half century.