Picture 2

The rate of economic growth accelerated dramatically around the year 1800 with the takeoff of the Industrial Revolution. Prior to that moment which corresponds to the historical period covered in the first volume of this book, much of the world lived under the conditions described by the English writer Thomas Malthus, whose 1798 'Essay on the Principle of Population' painted a gloomy picture in which population growth would outstrip economic resources in the long run. Picture 2 shows an estimate of per capita income over an eight-hundred-year period in England, which the Industrial Revolution started. The jockey-stick shape of the curve, and the sudden transition to a much higher rate of growth, reflects the fact that the later period saw continual year-on-year increases in productivity that vastly outstripped th rate of population growth. While we might speculate that this blessed interval of rapid growth may someday still be overwhelmed by population increase and by absolute limit to available resources, we are nonetheless fortunately still living in a post-Malthusian world. ~ Page 43