The Great Escape Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus The Great Escape

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Zusammenfassung von The Great Escape

Name: The Great Escape
Rating: 3.9 (27 reviews)
Author: Angus Deaton

Angus Deaton

Health, Wealth and the Origin of Inequality

3.9 (27 Bewertungen)

17 Min.

Themen

Wealth Culture Anthropology

Inhaltsübersicht

The Great Escape
in 8 Kernaussagen verstehen

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Kernaussage 1 von 8

What’s in it for me? Get insight into global inequality and what we can do about it.

During the last years of the eighteenth century, when the life expectancy for men was about 35 years, over 400,000 people died in Europe from smallpox, a disease that, today, we don’t even have to worry about.

Needless to say, a lot has changed since then. Thanks to scientific discoveries, political ideas and new technology, life has vastly improved for much of the world’s population. But not for all of it. By and large, richer countries benefit and poorer ones suffer on.

So what can we do about this? That’s exactly what these blinks are all about.

You’ll also learn

why our earliest ancestors’ way of life might not have been so bad;
how the United States became an aristocracy; and
why foreign aid is a blunt instrument in the fight against poverty.

There’s never been a better time to be alive.

When listening to the news these days, one gets the impression things are just getting worse and worse. But the news never gives the whole story. In fact, rather than getting worse, our well-being has, on average, never been better than it is today.

Until about 250 years ago, most people throughout the world lived in poverty. And today, although a lot has happened since then, more than a billion people live in extreme poverty, suffering the same terrible living conditions as their forebears.

But overall well-being – which includes things like access to health services, higher pay, longer lifespans, happiness, opportunities for education and progress as well as general quality of life – has increased considerably.

For example, a white middle-class girl born in the Unites States today has a life expectancy of over 80 years (with a 50 percent chance of living to 100). She also has opportunities for education and better economic prospects than her parents.

Despite all this, however, there is still extreme inequality in well-being worldwide. Though people today earn more money and enjoy better living standards than ever before, there are still massive disparities between rich and poor countries.

The health standards in Sierra Leone, for instance, are actually worse than health standards were in the United States in 1910, when 25 percent of children died before the age of five. And over half of the population of the Democratic Republic of Congo lives on less than a dollar per day.

The good news is that these inequalities can lead to progress – if they’re used in the right way. For example, if the difference between, say, the rate of child mortality in rich and poor countries is well known, poor countries will likely try to adopt the innovations that allowed wealthier countries to increase life expectancy, and thus diminish these inequalities.

Our ancestors lived significantly shorter and unhealthier lives than we do today.

The first humans, members of hunter-gatherer communities, lived healthy, albeit short, lives. Members of these nomadic tribes lived until about the age of 40, and spent their days looking for food and shelter.

This might seem like a hard way of life, but that’s not entirely true. For instance, these tribes enjoyed a very balanced diet, and shared what they found with one another. Instead of getting stuck in dirty villages, they were able to move on before a lack of sanitation caused disease to spread, and their diet consisted of highly nutritious wild plants and meat that was probably healthier than what we consume today.

Social, political, economic and scientific changes have rapidly decreased mortality in the last 250 years.

In the last century alone, life expectancy in wealthy countries like the United Kingdom has increased by about 30 years! How did this happen? The biggest reason for this amazing increase in life expectancy is a decrease in child mortality.

Until very recently, life was short and child mortality was high. Yet with improvements in health care and disease prevention, many countries in the world have brought child mortality down to a rate of only 0.5 percent! If you consider that, a few centuries ago, almost a third of all children wouldn’t have made it to age five, these are massive improvements.

Child mortality is still high in poorer countries.

In the previous blink, you learned that there is a pretty easy way to manage the majority of diseases that have plagued humanity for thousands of years: proper sanitation. So why do children in poor countries continue to suffer from such high mortality rates?

The knowledge that improvements in sanitation or the use of cheap, yet effective vaccines can help prevent diseases and infections is accessible all over the world. And yet, in many countries, this knowledge isn't actually put to use. But why?

In richer countries, caring for the elderly is a huge problem.

As a result of our technological innovation and scientific breakthroughs, life expectancy in wealthier countries has risen to unprecedented heights. However, this growth is beginning to level out. We’ve made amazing progress in extending the lives of children, but we seem to have hit a wall when it comes to ways of lengthening the lives of the elderly.

Indeed, diseases such as cancer remain the leading cause of death among the elderly. The biggest existential threats that an elderly person in a rich country faces are cardiovascular disease, cancer and pneumonia.

The very nature of inequality has changed over time.

When thinking about inequality, we often only consider the disparity of wealth between the rich and poor within our own society. Today, however, we have to start thinking globally.

It’s certainly true that inequality can be seen in all countries. But the greatest gaps are found between nations.

Globalization won’t lift poorer countries out of poverty.

Globalization has enabled us to buy more things, for less money, from more areas of the world than ever before. Not only has globalization made consumer life easier; it’s also had a wonderful impact on poverty.

Globalization makes it possible for innovations to reach all corners of the globe. Global telecommunications infrastructure, for example, makes information and scientific innovations easily accessible via the internet. Today, it’s easier to travel, transact and communicate globally than ever before, all thanks to global technological innovation.

Giving aid to poor countries can actually make things worse.

Charity is all about giving to those in need. And that’s a good thing, right? Well, that depends on what you give, and how you give it.

Rich countries often suffer from the aid illusion. Indeed, development aid in the form of cash injections from a rich country to a poor one happens everywhere in the world. In fact, in 2011 alone, governments around the world provided over $133.5 billion in development aid, and charities and NGOs raised another $30 billion. This should have been enough money to finally end poverty once and for all!

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Worum geht es in The Great Escape?

The Great Escape (2013) clearly explains that humanity is doing better than ever before. But not everyone has benefited from the technological and political developments that have made our prosperity possible. By examining both historical and modern inequality, this book offers solid advice on how to close the gap.

Bestes Zitat aus The Great Escape

The great failure of poverty reduction has been in sub-Saharan Africa.

—Angus Deaton

Wer The Great Escape lesen sollte

Anyone interested in global inequality
Anyone interested in economics and health

Über den Autor

Angus Deaton, a professor at both Princeton University and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is also the author of The Analysis of Household Surveys and Economics and Consumer Behaviour.

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