Low Unemployment - Topics

The primary macroeconomic policy goals are economic growth, low unemployment, and low inflation. The main tools to achieve these goals are monetary policy and fiscal policy.

Unemployment refers to non-institutionalized civilian adults who do not have a paid job, but are looking for one. It is most commonly measured by the unemployment rate, which is the percentage of the labor force that is unemployed. Contrary to popular perceptions, the unemployment rate is NOT the percentage of the population without a paid job. Unemployment is measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) which conducts a monthly telephone survey of approximately 50,000 randomly selected adults. This Current Population Survey is used to estimated the number of Americans who are:
(1) employed - adults who spent the majority of the previous week working at a paid job.
(2) unemployed - adults who did not spend the majority of the previous week working at a paid job, but who looked one.
(3) not in the labor force - adults who did not spend the majority of the previous week working at a paid job and who did not look for one.

The labor force is comprised of the employed and the unemployed.

Click on the hyperlinks below to take you to a portion of the blog devoted to that topic:

Low Unemployment - Learning Objectives
The Importance of Low Unemployment
The Measurement of Unemployment
Historical Unemployment Data
Limitations of Unemployment Data
Using Supply & Demand Analysis to Explain Unemployment
Types of Unemployment and their Remedies
Frictional Unemployment
Structural Unemployment
Cyclical (Keynesian) Unemployment
Why the Macroeconomic Policy Goal is LOW Unemployment
Summary of Strategies for Reducing Unemployment
Important Definitions Related to the Macroeconomic Policy Goal of Low Unemployment

GDP data: C + I + G + X - M

Gross domestic product is the total value of final goods and services produces in the economy in a given time period (usually a year).

Gross Domestic Product = Consumption + Investment + Government Purchases + Exports - Imports

GDP = C + I + G + X - M

The Economic Report of the President provides U.S GDP data since 1959.

Table B-1 (Gross domestic product) provides nominal GDP data. They are not adjusted for inflation.
Table B-2 (Real gross domestic product) provides GDP data adjusted for inflation.

In both tables, consumption (C) and investment (I) data appear on the first page of the Excel spreadsheet. The data for government purchases (G), exports (X), and imports (M) are provided on page 2 of each spreadsheet.

Economic Growth - A Mind Map

Click on the image above to enlarge the mind map of economic growth from dineshbakshi.com.

Historial Economic Growth Data

...
Real Gross Domestic Product = Billions of chained (2005) dollars
(Output is valued in all years using the level of prices in 2005.)

...
Annual Rate of Economic Growth = Percent change in real gross domestic product from preceding period
...

U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH SINCE 1962
YEAR	Real Gross Domestic Product	Annual Rate of Economic Growth
1962	3,072.4	6.1%
1963	3,206.7	4.4%
1964	3,392.3	5.8%
1965	3,610.1	6.4%
1966	3,845.3	6.5%
1967	3,942.5	2.5%
1968	4,133.4	4.8%
1969	4,261.8	3.1%
1970	4,269.9	0.2%
1971	4,413.3	3.4%
1972	4,647.7	5.3%
1973	4,917.0	5.8%
1974	4,889.9	-0.6%
1975	4,879.5	-0.2%
1976	5,141.3	5.4%
1977	5,377.7	4.6%
1978	5,677.6	5.6%
1979	5,855.0	3.1%
1980	5,839.0	-0.3%
1981	5,987.2	2.5%
1982	5,870.9	-1.9%
1983	6,136.2	4.5%
1984	6,577.1	7.2%
1985	6,849.3	4.1%
1986	7,086.5	3.5%
1987	7,313.3	3.2%
1988	7,613.9	4.1%
1989	7,885.9	3.6%
1990	8,033.9	1.9%
1991	8,015.1	-0.2%
1992	8,287.1	3.4%
1993	8,523.4	2.9%
1994	8,870.7	4.1%
1995	9,093.7	2.5%
1996	9,433.9	3.7%
1997	9,854.3	4.5%
1998	10,283.5	4.4%
1999	10,779.8	4.8%
2000	11,226.0	4.1%
2001	11,347.2	1.1%
2002	11,553.0	1.8%
2003	11,840.7	2.5%
2004	12,263.8	3.6%
2005	12,638.4	3.1%
2006	12,976.2	2.7%
2007	13,228.9	1.9%
2008	13,228.8	0.0%
2009	12,880.6	-2.6%
2010	13,248.7	2.9%
2011	...	...

Source: Economic Report of the President
Tables B-2 and B-4.

GDP: durable goods, nondurable goods, services, and structures.

Gross domestic product (GDP) can be divided into four categories: durable goods, nondurable goods, services, and structures.

Table B-8 (Gross domestic product by major type of product) of the Economic Report of the President provides annual data from 1959.

Limitations of Using GDP as a Measure of Quality of Life

Gross domestic product and its related concepts (such as real GDP, per capita GDP, and per capita real GDP) are incomplete measures of a country’s standard of living. There are many productive activities that are not included in GDP because it only measures output produced and sold in legal markets. It does not include productive activity that does not have a market transaction.

Although GDP and its related concepts are useful in measuring a country’s output, income, and standard of living, they are not perfect measures of quality of life. Quality of life refers to the amount of fulfillment people have in life. There are also many aspects of the quality of life that are not considered in the calculation of output, such as leisure, the environment, and the quality of people’s health.

Criticisms of GDP data as measurements of quality of life include:

1. GDP only measures the output produced and sold in legal markets.
It does not include productive activity that does not have a market transaction.

Some Economic Activity Does Not Occur in Legal Markets and thus is Not Included in GDP
Activities INCLUDED In Gross Domestic Product (GDP)	Activities NOT INCLUDED In Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
Hiring a lawn service to mow your yard.	Mowing the lawn yourself.
Taking your children to a day-care center.	Caring for your children yourself.
Hiring a plumber to fix a water leak at your house.	Fixing the water leak yourself.
Prostitution in some counties of Nevada (where it is legal).	Prostitution in most of the rest of the U.S. (where it is illegal).

2. GDP does not consider how output contributes to the quality of people’s lives.
It simply measures how much output a country produces. For example, people who live in urban areas spend a portion of their incomes on products to help them cope with urban problems. For example, urban residents buy more alarm systems for their homes and cars, self-defense classes, and stress medication. Some economists refer to these products as "bads" rather than "goods".

Suppose you live in a rural area. If you move into the city, you can change to a job that pays you $1000 more per year. Suppose urban life causes you to spend $1000 per year on things you did not need living in a rural environment. Even though your income is larger, has moving to the city improved the quality of your life?

3. GDP does not measure the quality of the environment.
A country might be able to increase its output (and GDP) if it eases pollution regulations. Yet, having higher per capita real GDP might not mean people have a better quality of life if the air, water, and other resources are more polluted.

4. GDP does not consider how leisure contributes to the quality of life.
A country could increase its output (and GDP) if its people worked 12 hours per day, seven days per week. However, having more products might not mean people are better off if they have no leisure time to enjoy it.

Virtually all data have limitations. Even though GDP data are not perfect measures of the quality of life in a country, they are still useful in measuring the standard of living.

Economic Growth - Topics

Real Gross Domestic Product (Real GDP)

Real Gross Domestic Product

Although GDP is the most common measure of a country’s output, it may not be the best measure. Real GDP measures the value of the total final output of a country's economy without the influence of inflation. Inflation is a general increase in the prices in an economy. Real GDP measures the output of a country’s final goods and services in constant dollars (i.e., using prices in a single base year to measure output in different years). (For example, it might measure output in 2003, 2004, and 2005 using prices from 2000.) When calculating real GDP, the base year is the year from which prices are used to calculate the value of output.

Nominal GDP in year x = prices in year x outputs in year x
Real GDP in year x = prices in the base year outputs in year x

A Simple Example of an Economy with One Product

To illustrate the difference between nominal GDP and real GDP, consider a simple economy that only produces one product, widgets. Suppose this economy produces 100 widgets in 2003 and the price of widgets in 2003 is $1. Thus, the economy’s nominal GDP in 2003 is $100. Suppose the economy produces 100 widgets in 2004, but the price of widgets in 2004 is $2. Nominal GDP in 2004 is $200. If one uses nominal GDP to measure output, one might think this economy produced more output in 2004 than 2003 (since nominal GDP in 2004 is larger than nominal GDP in 2003). Yet output in this economy was the same in 2003 and 2004. The reason nominal GDP is larger in 2004 than in 2003 is because the price of widgets increased. Real GDP attempts to measure the real change in output without the influence of inflation. In this simple example, let 2003 be the base year. Thus real GDP in 2003 is calculated by multiplying the quantity of output in 2003 by the price of widgets in 2003 (since 2003 is the base year).

Real GDP in 2003 = $1 100 = $100

Real GDP in 2004 is calculated by multiplying the quantity of output in 2004 by the price of widgets in 2003 (since 2003 is the base year).

Real GDP in 2004 = $1 100 = $100

Since real GDP in 2003 and 2004 is the same, it indicates real output did not change. Thus changes in real GDP are a better measure of changes in real output than changes in nominal GDP.
Per capita real GDP measures the real value of a country’s output per person. It is calculated by dividing real GDP by the country’s population.
Many economists think the single best measure of a country's standard of living is per capita real GDP because it measures the income of an average person in a country without the influence of inflation.

Economic Growth - Topics

Gross National Product (GNP)

Gross National Product

Another measure of a country’s output is gross national product. Gross national product (GNP) is the total value of all final goods and services produced in a given period (usually a year) by businesses owned by citizens of a country.

Gross means total. Product means output. Both GDP and GNP measure the total output produced by a country. GDP measures the final output produced in a country, regardless of ownership of the businesses. Thus, the key to GDP is location, not ownership. The key to GNP is ownership, not location. For example, if a Japanese company operates in the United States, the value of its output in the U.S. is included in U.S. GDP and Japanese GNP. Yet, the output of a Japanese company’s operations in the U.S. would not be included in U.S. GNP or Japan’s GDP.

The U.S. Commerce Department used GNP to measure U.S. output from 1900 to 1991. Since then, GDP has been used. Most countries in the world use GDP to measure their output. A few countries in the world still use GNP, however.

Economic Growth - Topics

The Composition of U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Source: The U.S. Economy: You Are Here

The Composition of GDP

A Closer Look at the Measurement of Economic Growth

The Composition of GDP

Gross domestic product can be broken down into several categories based on the type of goods and services produced. For example, the output of the country can be divided into durable goods, non-durable goods, services, and structures.

GDP = durable goods + non-durable goods + services + structures

Durable goods are products that are used over a long period of time. Refrigerators, washing machines, and cars are examples of durable goods. Non-durable goods are products that are consumed over a short period of time. Food and clothing are examples of non-durable goods. Services are products that typically do not create a tangible commodity. Banking services, haircuts, and entertainment are examples of services. Structures are buildings. Over half of U.S. GDP is services.

Durable goods orders are sometimes used as an indicator of the health of the U.S. economy.

Gross domestic product also can be broken down into several categories based on the purchaser of the newly produced goods and services. This alternative way to divide GDP involves separating it into consumption spending, investment spending, government purchases, exports, and imports.

Source: The U.S. Economy: You Are Here

An equation that illustrates this relationship is:

GDP = C + I + G + X - M
where:
C = consumption spending
I = investment spending
G = government purchases
X = exports
M = imports

Consumption is the purchase of final goods and services by households. Investment is the purchase of capital equipment, inventories, and structures. Most of this is done by businesses. The purchase of a home by a household, however, is also considered to be investment.
Government purchases are payments made in exchange for currently produced goods and services. This includes salaries of current government workers, vehicles purchased for government use, and supplies for government offices. Government purchases do not include transfer payments. A transfer payment is a government payment not made in exchange for a good or service. Social Security benefits, retirement checks paid to former government employees, and welfare benefits are examples of transfer payments. Exports are goods and services sold by domestic producers to foreign purchasers. For example, a jet fighter manufactured in the U.S. and purchased by the government of Egypt is an exported good. Imports are goods and services sold by foreign producers to domestic purchasers. The domestic purchasers might by households, businesses, or the government. For example, a Mercedes-Benz automobile manufactured in Germany and sold to an American consumer is an imported good.

The difference between exports and imports (X – M) is referred to as net exports (NE). Thus an alternative way to write the equation for gross domestic product is:

GDP = C + I + G + NE

Economic Growth - Topics

Sources of Economic Growth

Sources of Economic Growth

One way for an economy to produce more output is to obtain more resources. Even with the same resources, however, it is possible for an economy to produce more output if workers become more productive. Productivity is the quantity of goods and services produced from a typical hour of a worker’s labor. Improvements in productivity allow an economy to produce more output and thus earn more income. This increased income represents an improved standard of living. Thus an increased standard of living usually depends on increasing a country’s productivity. Thus, improved productivity is the key to economic growth.

Increases in productivity fall into three categories:

1. Investment in physical capital – “Build more machines.”
2. Investment in human capital (education and skills) – “Make workers more productive.”
3. Investment in technology – “Build more productive machines.”


Investment in physical capital

Physical capital is anything man-made that makes labor more productive. Fiscal policies to increase investment in physical capital include direct government spending on infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges, hospitals) and tax incentives to encourage private businesses to invest (e.g., new factories or machinery). Monetary policies that achieve low interest rates also encourage businesses to invest more in physical capital by decreasing its opportunity cost.


Investment in human capital

Human capital is the education, training, and skills people acquire that makes them more productive. Fiscal policies to increase investment in human capital include direct government spending on education and job training or tax incentives to encourage education and skills training. Monetary polices that keep interest rates low may also make it easier for people to acquire more education by lowering the cost of loans to pay tuition and other expenses.


Investment in technology

Technological innovations usually create increases in productivity. For example, scientists have developed agricultural crops that are more disease-resistant and have thus increased the yields from our farmland. Fiscal policies that promote investment in technology include direct government spending on research and development [e.g., National Science Foundation (NSF) grants] and tax incentives to encourage private businesses to invest in discovering new technologies. Monetary policies that keep interest rates low also encourage businesses to invest in technology by decreasing the cost of borrowing money.

Economic Growth - Topics

GDP per capita

Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (also called per capita GDP) is a country's GDP divided by its population. It provides an estimate of the average annual income of a person living in that country. If one is interested in estimating a nation's standard-of-living, GDP per capita is generally preferable to GDP.

Gross domestic product measures the total output produced in a country. It does not consider the country’s population, however. China has the second largest national GDP (behind the United States). Because China’s population is so large, however, the GDP data do not accurately represent the average value of the goods and services available to each person. Most economists suggest a better measurement of standard-of-living is per capita GDP.

Per capita GDP measures the nominal value of a country’s output per person. It is calculated by dividing nominal GDP by the country’s population. It is a measure of the income of an average person in the country.
U.S. GDP in 2003 was $11.003 trillion. The U.S. Census Bureau’s estimate of the U.S. population on July 1, 2003 is 290,809,777. Thus, an estimate of per capita GDP in the United States in 2003 is $37,836.

per capita GDP = nominal GDP / population
= $11.003 trillion /290,809,777 = $37,836 per person

Test your understanding of the difference between GDP and per capita GDP

Per capita GDP is more useful than GDP when comparing the standard of living in various countries. To illustrate this, consider two economies. Country A has a nominal GDP of $1 billion. Country B has a nominal GDP of $100 million. Which country has the higher standard of living?

The answer depends on each country’s population:

If country A has a population of 1 billion people, then its per capital GDP is $1 per person.

per capita GDP = nominal GDP / population
= $1 billion / 1 billion people = $1 per person

If country B has a population of 1,000 people, then its per capita GDP is $100,000 per person.

per capita GDP = nominal GDP / population
= $100 million / 1,000 people = $100,000 per person


GDP per capita

The following table ranks the countries of the world by per capita GDP using the data available from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in May 2009. Notice that China’s ranking by per capita GDP (133rd) is significantly lower than its ranking by GDP (2nd).

Economic Growth - Topics

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel provides insight into the vast differences in the standard-of-living around the globe by photographing what a typical family eats over the course of a week.

National Public Radio (NPR) featured the book in an audio story on November 9, 2005 (Click to listen.).

CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM.

Chad: 2008 GDP per capita = $1,600.


Mongolia: 2008 GDP per capita = $3,200.


Egypt: 2008 GDP per capita = $5,400.


Bhutan: 2008 GDP per capita = $5,600.


China: 2008 GDP per capita = $6,000.


Ecuador: 2008 GDP per capita = $7,500.


Mexico: 2008 GDP per capita = $14,200.


Poland: 2008 GDP per capita = $17,300.



Italy: 2008 GDP per capita = $31,000.

Japan: 2008 GDP per capita = $34,200.


Germany: 2008 GDP per capita = 34,800.


Great Britain: 2008 GDP per capita = $36,600.


United States: 2008 GDP per capita = $47,000.


United States: 2008 GDP per capita = $47,000.


Kuwait: 2008 GDP per capita = $57,400.

The book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, is available from Amazon.com.

The Amazon.com review states:

It's an inspired idea--to better understand the human diet, explore what culturally diverse families eat for a week. That's what photographer Peter Menzel and author-journalist Faith D'Alusio, authors of the equally ambitious Material World, do in Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, a comparative photo-chronicle of their visits to 30 families in 24 countries for 600 meals in all. Their personal-is-political portraits feature pictures of each family with a week's worth of food purchases; weekly food-intake lists with costs noted; typical family recipes; and illuminating essays, such as "Diabesity," on the growing threat of obesity and diabetes. Among the families, we meet the Mellanders, a German household of five who enjoy cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, and beef roulades, and whose weekly food expenses amount to $500. We also encounter the Natomos of Mali, a family of one husband, his two wives, and their nine children, whose corn and millet-based diet costs $26.39 weekly.
We soon learn that diet is determined by largely uncontrollable forces like poverty, conflict and globalization, which can bring change with startling speed. Thus cultures can move--sometimes in a single jump--from traditional diets to the vexed plenty of global-food production. People have more to eat and, too often, eat more of nutritionally questionable food. Their health suffers.

Because the book makes many of its points through the eye, we see--and feel--more than we might otherwise. Issues that influence how the families are nourished (or not) are made more immediate. Quietly, the book reveals the intersection of nutrition and politics, of the particular and universal. It's a wonderful and worthy feat. --Arthur Boehm

The Publishers Weekly review adds:

For their enormously successful Material World, photojournalist Menzel and writer D'Aluisio traveled the world photographing average people's worldly possessions. In 2000, they began research for this book on the world's eating habits, visiting some 30 families in 24 countries. Each family was asked to purchase—at the authors' expense—a typical week's groceries, which were artfully arrayed—whether sacks of grain and potatoes and overripe bananas, or rows of packaged cereals, sodas and take-out pizzas—for a full-page family portrait. This is followed by a detailed listing of the goods, broken down by food groups and expenditures, then a more general discussion of how the food is raised and used, illustrated with a variety of photos and a family recipe. A sidebar of facts relevant to each country's eating habits (e.g., the cost of Big Macs, average cigarette use, obesity rates) invites armchair theorizing. While the photos are extraordinary—fine enough for a stand-alone volume—it's the questions these photos ask that make this volume so gripping. After considering the Darfur mother with five children living on $1.44 a week in a refugee camp in Chad, then the German family of four spending $494.19, and a host of families in between, we may think about food in a whole new light. This is a beautiful, quietly provocative volume.

Material World: A Global Family Portrait

Material World: A Global Family Portrait by Peter Menzel is available from Amazon.com.

It provides insights into the differences in economic growth around the world by photographing the material possessions of a typical family in various countries.

CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM.

A few of the families were highlighted on the PBS website:

Mali: The Natomo Family
It is not unusual in this West African country for men to have two wives, as 39-year-old Soumana Natomo does. More wives mean more progeny—and a greater chance you will be supported in old age. Soumana now has eight children, and his wives, Pama Kondo (28) and Fatouma Niangani Toure (26), will likely have more. How many of these children will survive, though, is uncertain: Mali's infant mortality rate ranks among the ten highest in the world. Some of the family's possessions are not included in this photo—another mortar and pestle for pounding grain, two wooden mattress platforms, 30 mango trees, and old radio batteries that the children use as toys. (Note: The Natomos appear on the adobe roof of their house in Kouakourou. An infant son is nestled in his mother's arms. One daughter is absent.)

Mali Stats
Population: 12 million
Population density: 9.1 people per sq. km.
Total fertility rate: 7.0 children per woman
Population doubling time: 23 years
Percentage urban/rural: 26% urban, 64% rural
Per capita energy use: 22 kg. oil equivalent
Infant mortality: 118.7 deaths per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 48 (male), 49 (female)
Adult illiteracy: 64% (male), 84% (female)
Internet users: 30,000

......................................................................

India: The Yadev Family
At age 25, Mashre Yadev is already mother to four children, the oldest of whom was born when she was 17. Each morning at their home in rural Uttar Pradesh, she draws water from a well so that her older children can wash before school. She cooks over a wood fire in a windowless, six-by-nine-foot kitchen, and such labor-intensive domestic work keeps her busy from dawn to dusk. Her husband Bachau, 32, works roughly 56 hours a week, when he can find work. In rough times, family members have gone more than two weeks with little food. Everything they own—including two beds, three bags of rice, a broken bicycle, and their most cherished belonging, a print of Hindu gods—appears in this photograph.

India Stats
Population: 1.0 billion
Population density: 318 people per sq. km.
Total fertility rate: 3.0 children per woman
Population doubling time: 36 years
Percentage urban/rural: 28% urban, 72% rural
Per capita energy use: 494 kg. oil equivalent
Infant mortality: 66 deaths per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 62 (male), 64 (female)
Adult illiteracy: 32% (male), 55% (female)
Internet users: 7 million

......................................................................

China: The Wu Family
The nine members of this extended family—father Wu Ba Jiu (59), mother Guo Yu Xian (57), their sons, daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren—live in a three-bedroom, 600-square-foot dwelling in rural Yunnan Province. While they have no telephone, they get news and images of a wider world through two radios and the family's most prized possession, a television. In the future, they hope to get one with a 30-inch screen as well as a VCR, a refrigerator, and drugs to combat diseases in the carp they raise in their ponds. Not included in the photo are their 100 mandarin trees, vegetable patch, and three pigs.

China Stats
Population: 1.3 billion
Population density: 627 people per sq. km.
Total fertility rate: 1.7 children per woman
Population doubling time: 67 years
Percentage urban/rural: 37% urban, 63% rural
Per capita energy use: 905 kg. oil equivalent
Infant mortality: 32 deaths per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 69 (male), 73 (female)
Adult illiteracy: 7.9% (male), 22.1% (female)
Internet users: 46 million

......................................................................

Japan: The Ukita Family
Like many Japanese women, 43-year-old Sayo Ukita had children relatively late in life. Her youngest daughter is now in kindergarten, not yet burdened by the pressures of exams and Saturday "cram school" that face her nine-year-old sister. Sayo is supremely well-organized, which helps her manage the busy schedules of her children and maintain order in their 1,421-square-foot Tokyo home stuffed with clothes, appliances, and an abundance of toys for both her daughters and dog. She and her husband Kazuo, 45, have all the electronic and gas-powered conveniences of modern life, but their most cherished possessions are a ring and heirloom pottery. The family's wish for the future: a larger house with more storage space.

Japan Stats
Population: 128 million
Population density: 336 people per sq. km.
Total fertility rate: 1.3 children per woman
Population doubling time: 289 years
Percentage urban/rural: 79% urban, 21% rural
Per capita energy use: 4,316 kg. oil equivalent
Infant mortality: 3 deaths per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 78 (male), 85 (female)
Adult illiteracy: 1% (male), 1% (female)
Internet users: 56 million

......................................................................

United States: The Skeen Family
Rick and Pattie Skeen's 1,600-square-foot house lies on a cul-de-sac in Pearland, Texas, a suburb of Houston. The fire hydrant in this photo is real, but not working—a souvenir from Rick's days as a firefighter. Rick, 36, now splices cables for a phone company. Pattie, 34, teaches school at a Christian academy. To get the picture, photographers hoisted the family up in a cherry picker. Yet the image still leaves out a refrigerator-freezer, camcorder, woodworking tools, computer, glass butterfly collection, trampoline, fishing equipment, and the rifles Rick uses for deer hunting, among other things. Though rich with possessions, nothing is as important to the Skeens as their Bible. For this devoutly Baptist family, like many families around the world, it is a spiritual—rather than material—life that matters most.

U.S. Stats
Population: 292 million
Population density: 29 people per sq. km.
Total fertility rate: 2.0 children per woman
Population doubling time: 116 years
Percentage urban/rural: 78% urban, 22% rural
Per capita energy use: 8,148 kg. oil equivalent
Infant mortality: 6.7 deaths per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 74 (male), 80 (female)
Adult illiteracy: 3% (male), 3% (female)
Internet users: 165 million

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The Importance of Economic Growth – from a photographic perspective

Two excellent books by Peter Menzel provide photographic evidence of the importance of economic growth.

Material World: A Global Family Portrait (1995)
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (2005)

Economic Growth - Topics