‘The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality’ by Oded Galor
How did Europe soar ahead of more advanced civilisations such as China and the Ottoman Empire? Why have living standards exponentially increased in the past two hundred years after having plateaued for thousands? Is our growth incompatible with tackling the climate crises? What are the fundamental roots of human wealth, progress, and inequality?
At least one of these questions, albeit in different forms and languages, has inevitably popped up in our heads. They encompass some of the biggest mysteries of our current society, underpinning several economic policies today, and it is these very questions which drew me to Oded Galor’s The Journey of Humanity – a book which I think anyone who can read, should read.
The book is structured as follows.
Galor’s conviction is that to understand the causes of inequality in the wealth of nations, we must first identify the driving forces of development.
He starts out by laying his ‘grand mystery’ of the human journey: over the last two hundred years, we have seen a radical spike in per capita incomes across the globe, after millenniums of near stagnant growth. What could possibly explain the scarcely conceivable transformation in the quality of life for homo sapiens in such a short amount of time? One may immediately think the answer rests in the Industrial Revolution – one of the most dramatic technological leaps in history. Although this period is indeed part of Galor’s story, he claims that there are more underlying and important currents at play. After all, the revolution was no random occurrence.
The book takes you on a journey from the migration of our ancestors from Africa to the scattering of humanity between continents, to then the industrial revolution and the Demographic Transition. The story is fundamentally about the undercurrents: the mechanisms which churned humanity for years, and then rocketed it to once inconceivable heights.
But why have some parts of the world lifted off before others? Why does humanity contain inequality at this current scale? After Galor disentangles the roots of growth and development, he takes us right back to the exodus of Homo Sapiens from Africa to answer this. Institutional, cultural, and societal factors all aided in projecting nations towards growth, but Galor doesn’t rest here – he tries to uncover why inclusive institutions formed, growth-enhancing cultural traits spread, and why a future-oriented mindset was not universal. One of the most astounding discoveries he makes is the importance of diversity on economic growth. I’ll leave that to you to read and examine.
Finally, he links all this extraordinary history to the questions we now have for the future. Can we close the gap of inequality and prevent an environmental collapse? He certainly thinks so.
What I’ve enjoyed in reading his work, is his obsession with finding the root of everything. Economists in today’s age often stop when they reach institutions and productivity as they analyze development. But if we are to build sustainable policy, which fits nations and their people, we must understand how these institutions have formed in the first place, and why growth has tended to spur in certain regions and not others. If you get nothing else from the book, you will at least leave with understanding why there will never be a one-fit all solution to inequality and development.
A caveat: I urge you to remember that some of what Galor says can be regarded as debatable, or downright controversial. He openly admits that culture has affected growth, and that diversity, at certain levels and times, negatively impacts development. His analysis is deep, and his reasonings clear. But note, this science never has a totally right answer. There are always ‘howevers’ and ‘to an extents’. Although this should always be considered, it shouldn’t make his arguments mean nothing – for there is indeed incredible value and insight in them.
In terms of writing style and feel, occasionally the book might feel like a textbook, but, more often, it feels like a historical epic.
What now remains is how policy makers take these discoveries and transform them into effective plans to solve some of the biggest problems in humanity. Galor remains an optimist. Will you?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58511597-the-journey-of-humanity