Summary of Angus Deaton's The Great Escape

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Health is the first thing I consider when it comes to wellbeing. The girl born in the United States today can expect to live more than 80 years, and this estimate is conservative because it ignores any future reductions in mortality.
#2 Health is not just about being alive and living a long time, but about living in good health. Good health has many dimensions and is difficult to measure than the simple fact of whether or not someone is alive, but there is evidence of improvement over time as well as of differences between rich and poor countries.
#3 There are some rich countries that do not have the highest life expectancies, and they may even be poor in terms of their incomes. People are not at all content with their lives in these countries, and they are well aware of their good fortune.
#4 The world is a large map that shows life expectancy and GDP per capita around the world. The horizontal axis shows GDP per capita of each country while the vertical axis shows life expectancy at birth for men and women taken together.

Sujets

• Economic Development
• Economic growth
• Economics
• Development
• Business

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 12 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822506404
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Angus Deaton's The Great Escape
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Health is the first thing I consider when it comes to wellbeing. The girl born in the United States today can expect to live more than 80 years, and this estimate is conservative because it ignores any future reductions in mortality.

#2

Health is not just about being alive and living a long time, but about living in good health. Good health has many dimensions and is difficult to measure than the simple fact of whether or not someone is alive, but there is evidence of improvement over time as well as of differences between rich and poor countries.

#3

There are some rich countries that do not have the highest life expectancies, and they may even be poor in terms of their incomes. People are not at all content with their lives in these countries, and they are well aware of their good fortune.

#4

The world is a large map that shows life expectancy and GDP per capita around the world. The horizontal axis shows GDP per capita of each country while the vertical axis shows life expectancy at birth for men and women taken together.

#5

The graph shows that life expectancy and incomes are positively related, and that people who suffer deprivation in terms of material living standards also suffer from deprivation in terms of health.

#6

There is a relationship between income and life expectancy, but it is not as simple as high income causing better health. In fact, there are many factors that affect how long we live, and it is not always the case that higher incomes lead to longer lives.

#7

The stories of the countries off the curve are as important as those that are on it. Some have been affected by wars, while others are suffering from the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has taken back all or most of the gains in life expectancy achieved since World War II.

#8

There are many countries that do better than expected considering their incomes. The poorest countries manage to have low infant and child mortality rates, while the richest, such as Japan, have low mortality among the middle-aged and elderly.

#9

The curve linking life expectancy and income has not stayed still. In 1960, countries were shaded to distinguish them from countries in 2010. The areas of the circles are proportional to population, but within each year separately, so population change cannot be determined by comparing the size of the circle for a given country in 1960 with the size of the circle for that country in 2010.

#10

The effects of the Great Leap Forward were catastrophic. Life expectancy in China dropped to below 30 in 1960, and did not recover until after Mao had stopped killing people.

#11

The HIV/AIDS epidemic has raised mortality and dramatically decreased life expectancy in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The position of South Africa provides a graphic illustration. In 1960, South Africa was in a similar position due to the extreme inequality between its white and black populations.

#12

The upward movement of the curve linking life expectancy and income is a result of improvements in scientific and medical knowledge, not income. While countries did indeed move up the curve, that is not all that happened. Even with no change in income, life expectancy improved over time.

#13

There is nothing in logic that guarantees an automatic link between growth and reductions in global poverty. It is possible that the poorest countries in the world are not growing at all, or that, where there is growth, it has only benefited the already well-to-do within each country.

#14

The data in Figure 4 and Figure 5 are identical, but they are presented in a different manner. Figure 4 shows a negative relation between growth and income, while Figure 5 shows a positive relation between growth and population. If we care about people rather than countries, the positive picture in Figure 5 is the correct one.

#15

The story of global poverty is also affected by what has been happening in China and India. The World Bank regularly calculates the total number of people in the world who live in households whose daily income is less than a dollar a person. The number of dollar-a-day poor people has fallen by three-quarters of a billion between 1981 and 2008.

#16

There has been great progress in recent decades in terms of health and money, but many people still do not see their lives in terms of these measures. They are more prized by development experts and academic commentators than by the people who are experiencing them.

#17

The life evaluation question is difficult to answer, and people can adapt so as to be satisfied with what they have. The average answer does not vary much between countries, but the figures in the Introduction show that this is not what happens. The life evaluation score for Denmark is 7. 97, followed by the other Nordic countries.

#18

The effects of economic growth on a country’s life evaluation are difficult to see, as countries do not lie exactly on the line linking life evaluation and income. If a country were to maintain a constant rate of growth of 2 percent a year for half a century, its per capita national income would be 2. 7 times larger at the end of the period.

#19

There are countries that do well and countries that do poorly when it comes to life evaluation. Some countries, such as the Scandinavian countries and Latin American countries, do well despite being very rich.

#20

Life evaluation measures are often described as measures of happiness, but there is no mention of happiness in the question. Happiness is a positive experience that makes life better, but it is a poor measure of overall wellbeing because it does not take into account other aspects of experience.

#21

The happiness map shows that the United States is third from the top in terms of happiness, behind only Ireland and New Zealand. However, other measures of emotional experience show that most people are happy.

#22

The pursuit of wealth has been legitimized and seen as a legitimate route to happiness since the eighteenth century. However, Smith was skeptical about the personal benefits of wealth, as he believed that it would only bring anxiety, fear, and sorrow.

#23

Health is not a single quantity, but it is easy to measure and important: the fact of being alive or dead. Life expectancy is a simple measure of life and death that is valuable for thinking about the health of groups of people.