9/19/2011 Class8

We are living longer and healthier
cancer diseases decrease ; people are smarter;health gap between men and women,blacks and whites are narrowing;nutrition is increasing and people are getting higher.
Diseases that haunt us today actually hit people earlier a century ago
People who suffer from diarrhea decrease and thus nutrition that people can healthily metabolize increase as well.

Conclusion: People are living better thanks to growth of economics.
Reasons:
(1)Population is growing.
(2)People's value change.
Example:If one's life expectancy is only 30 years old and has to worry about the safety of water,nothing else will matter to him,but if one lives longer and is richer,he will pay attention to cars,or some extreme sports.

When looking at the chart of change in countries' life expectancy and income from 1962 to 2008, the trend is : Income increase and life expectancy increase
Exception:Russia is the only modern industrial country that suffers a decline in life expectancy since Industrial Revolution.  African countries don't change much.

USA living standard in the past 100 years
1.Labor market
(1)working hours per week:   60(1900)  39(1950)  34(today)
(2)vacation:  6%(past)   90%(today)
(3)household labor: 12(past)  3(today)
(4)commutes: people spend less time
(5)retirement: no(past) living longer,working longer. more options,get more insurance and security(now)
(6)women: 18% pay work and low status(past)  earn more,have less pressure of unemployment than men(now)
2. Household: what we didn't have in the past,we now have them all
3.Health: Cancers hit us because we live longer
Infant death decrease dramatically  top10 killers is quite different from before
4.Human capital:ability of human to acquire skills that they aren't born with.
Education : People are more knowledgeable
5.Income:per capita $7000(past)  $45000(now)
middle-class in 1940 are poor in modern perspective

How to measure living-standard:How much a typical person has to exert to secure the thing that he wants.

Comparison between nowadays/old people's working hours to get a certain good
Trend:We now use fewer hours to get equivalent good.
Exception:Silver spoon
Reasons: We can use fewer money to get stuff that old people might use lifetime money to get,so we are infinitely richer than old workers. So if we really just want to use a spoon to scoop something, we can use the plastic one, which is free of charge in most of the market. But since silver is more scarce than before, if you really value a silver spoon, you have to pay more because the opportunity cost of silver increases.