growth: De Long view

[Brad De Long]

> From Martin Wolf's column in today's Financial Times:
>
>"In a heroic paper, Bradford De Long of the University of California
>at Berkeley has estimated the population, total income and real
>income per head of humanity over the past million years.*
>
>A thousand years ago, he says, the world's population was some 270m;
>in 1700, at the dawn of the industrial revolution, it was 600m; today
>it is 6.3bn. A thousand years ago, world gross product (in dollars
>with a constant 1990 purchasing power) was $35bn; by 1700, it was
>$100bn; today it is $41,000bn. And a thousand years ago, average
>world real income per head was $130; by 1700, it was $160; today, it
>is $6,500."
>
>De Long's paper is at
><http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TCEH/1998_Draft/World_GDP/Estimating_Worl
>d_GDP.html>.
>
>Doug

Note that that is an arithmetic average, not a geometric average...

Brad DeLong