However, it is still legitimate to ask whether people who work longer hours even at very high levels of income are doing the right thing. Most people would agree that, at a low level of income, an increase in income is likely to improve your quality of life, even if it means longer working hours. At this level, even if you have to work longer in your factory, higher income is likely to bring a higher overall quality of life, by improving your health (through better food, heating, hygiene and healthcare) and by reducing the physical demands of household work (through more household appliances, piped water, gas and electricity – see Thing 4). However, above a certain level of income, the relative value of material consumption vis-à-visleisure time is diminished, so earning a higher income at the cost of working longer hours may reduce the quality of your life.
More importantly, the fact that the citizens of a country work longer than others in comparable countries does not necessarily mean that they likeworking longer hours. They may be compelled to work long hours, even if they actually want to take longer holidays. As I pointed out above, how long a person works is affected not only by his own preference regarding work – leisure balance but also by things such as welfare provision, protection of worker rights and union power. Individuals have to take these things as given, but nations have a choice over them. They can rewrite the labour laws, beef up the welfare state and effect other policy changes to make it less necessary for individuals to work long hours.
Much of the support for the American model has been based on the ‘fact’ that the US has the highest living standard in the world. While there is no question that the US has one of the highest living standards in the world, its alleged superiority looks much weaker once we have a broader conception of living standards than what the average income of a country will buy. Higher inequality in the US means that its average income is less indicative of the living standards of its citizens than in other countries. This is reflected in indicators such as health and crime, where the US performs much worse than comparable countries. The higher purchasing power of US citizens (compared to the citizens of other rich countries) is owed in large part to the poverty and insecurity of many of their fellow citizens, especially in service industries. The Americans also work considerably longer than their counterparts in competitor nations. Per hour worked, US income is lower than that of several European countries, even in purchasing power terms. It is debatable that that can be described as having a higher living standard.
There is no simple way to compare living standards across countries. Per capita income, especially in purchasing power terms, is arguably the most reliable indicator. However, by focusing just on how many goods and services our income can buy, we miss out a lot of other things that constitute elements of the ‘good life’, such as the amount of quality leisure time, job security, freedom from crime, access to healthcare, social welfare provisions, and so on. While different individuals and countries will definitely have different views on how to weigh these indicators against each other and against income figures, non-income dimensions should not be ignored, if we are to build societies where people genuinely ‘live well’.
Thing 11
Africa is not destined for underdevelopment
Africa is destined for underdevelopment. It has a poor climate, which leads to serious tropical disease problems. It has lousy geography, with many of its countries landlocked and surrounded by countries whose small markets offer limited export opportunities and whose violent conflicts spill into neighbouring countries. It has too many natural resources, which make its people lazy, corrupt and conflict-prone. African nations are ethnically divided, which renders them difficult to manage and more likely to experience violent conflicts. They have poor-quality institutions that do not protect investors well. Their culture is bad – people do not work hard, they do not save and they cannot cooperate with each other. All these structural handicaps explain why, unlike other regions of the world, the continent has failed to grow even after it has implemented significant market liberalization since the 1980s. There is no other way forward for Africa than being propped up by foreign aid.
Africa has notalways been stagnant. In the 1960s and 70s, when all the supposed structural impediments to growth were present and often more binding, it actually posted a decent growth performance. Moreover, all the structural handicaps that are supposed to hold back Africa have been present in most of today’s rich countries – poor climate (arctic and tropical), landlockedness, abundant natural resources, ethnic divisions, poor institutions and bad culture. These structural conditions seem to act as impediments to development in Africa only because its countries do not yet have the necessary technologies, institutions and organizational skills to deal with their adverse consequences. The real cause of African stagnation in the last three decades is free-market policies that the continent has been compelled to implement during the period. Unlike history or geography, policies can be changed. Africa is not destined for underdevelopment.
Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate in the 2008 US election, is reported to have thought that Africa was a country, rather than a continent. A lot of people wondered where she got that idea, but I think I know the answer. It was from the 1977 Disney animation The Rescuers.
The Rescuersis about a group of mice called the Rescue Aid Society going around the world, helping animals in trouble. In one scene, there is an international congress of the society, with mouse delegates from all sorts of countries in their traditional costumes and appropriate accents (if they happen to speak). There is the French mouse in his beret, the German mouse in her sombre blue dress and the Turkish mouse in his fez. And then there is the mouse in his fur hat and beard representing Latvia and the female mouse representing, well, Africa.
Perhaps Disney didn’t literally think that Africa was a country, but allocating one delegate each to a country with 2.2 million people and to a continent of more than 900 million people and nearly sixty countries (the exact number depends on whether you recognize entities such as Somaliland and Western Sahara as countries) tells you something about its view of Africa. Like Disney, many people see Africa as an amorphous mass of countries suffering from the same hot weather, tropical diseases, grinding poverty, civil war and corruption.
While we should be careful not to lump all African countries together, there is no denying that most African countries are very poor – especially if we confine our interest to Sub-Saharan Africa (or ‘black’ Africa), which is really what most people mean when they say Africa. According to the World Bank, the average per capita income of Sub-Saharan Africa was estimated to be $952 in 2007. This is somewhat higher than the $880 of South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), but lower than that of any other region of the world.
What is more, many people talk of Africa’s ‘growth tragedy’. Unlike South Asia, whose growth rates have picked up since the 1980s, Africa seems to be suffering from ‘a chronic failure of economic growth’.[1] Sub-Saharan Africa’s per capita income today is more or less the same as what it was in 1980. Even more worrying is the fact that this lack of growth seems to be due not mainly to poor policy choices (after all, like many other developing countries, countries in the region have implemented free-market reforms since the 1980s) but mainly to the handicaps handed down to them by nature and history and thus extremely difficult, if not impossible, to change.
1
P. Collier and J. Gunning, ‘Why has Africa grown slowly?’,