Introduction: Economic Growth and Development in Historical Perspective

Abstract

Suppose you had been born a hundred, or a thousand or even thousands of years ago—what would your life have been like? Of course, at any point in history, how people live depends on a large number of circumstances—where they were born, what social group they belonged to, whether they were more or less at risk of getting sick or disabled, and many other matters of genetics, culture and pure chance. And there are many dimensions that make up a life, such as the cultural and religious outlook you might have had in a former time, the effects of the natural environment, whether you lived in a time of war or peace, and how well you got along with your family and community. Since this is a book about economics, however, we will look at a narrower but still very complex question, how well off would you have been in economic terms, based on society-wide averages?