welcome everyone this is development economics they were continuing our
discussion of geography and development
focusing in particular on the influence of disease
so that's crap so something quite remarkable
gdp per capita increases with distance from the equator
and this is not just the northern hemisphere effect that happens in the
southern hemisphere as well
but clearly you can see
here it is the united states in the northern hemisphere is very rich
this japan also the northern hemisphere is rich just canada italy france and so
forth is all
rich countries
in the northern hemisphere
over here however in the southern hemisphere
we also see as distance from the equator increases
possibly gtv per capita this is australia new zealand
is argentina
which is not a terribly rich country
nevertheless it's much richer
than countries which are closer to the equator
now down here you can even tell what these countries are
because there's so many of them
but that's precisely the point
you see an awful lot of
their report countries
close to the equator
naturally there are are exceptions
this is uh... singaporeans excellent institutions and manages to avoid
the rule
the exception
here's a hong kong
this is uh... i quit oriel new guinea
which has lousy institutions
but is nevertheless quite uh... rich per capita although the inequality is
extreme
because it has all lot of
you can see the same relationship on this graph it simply add circles
which are proportional to total gdp
so you have a lot of very rich countries appear
and of very poor countries are down here
notice by the way that
you know even going from the equator to a country like argentina
we're talking about going from
thousand dollars or so per capita gdp
ten thousand dollars
so there are big differences even within this of small
range over here
so why is this one is gdp per capita increase with distance from the equator
here we see the same day uh... by in a map form and once again
outside the tropic of cancer in the northern hemisphere we see a lot of rich
countries
and outside the topic of kappa corn in the southern hemisphere
we see richer countries
by the way one wonders if there'd been more mass down here another continent
down here
that we might not have seen
more rich for southern countries
you also see in the middle of the equatorial regions great poverty
well why is this
let's take a look at the malaria index
what you see immediately is that the military-industrial almost perfectly
inverse
to the gdp per capita
now this index it's not the number of people who get malaria
which is also depends upon gdp per capita
instead this is an index
of where malaria breeds
where the temperature and the water conditions are such as to make the
mosquitoes
transmit the malaria really very prevalent and
which would you like where malaria likes to be
and where malaria likes to be is in the equatorial regions
particularly in africa but also in
asia and in south america
now malaria is a terrible disease
effects three hundred to five hundred million people
every year
and every year those three hundred to five hundred million people
their out for a week
completely incapacitated
and then for a week or two weeks after that they're highly fatigue
and million of them
will die
often young children
for the young children who survived
nor is this the end of the story because
once you've had malaria
even if you survive a inmate prominently stunt your growth
and lower your i'd q
so we begin to see here
howard disease
might have influence development
and it's not just
malaria
here's a list as is the uses which are more common in the tropics
malaria we just mentioned yellow fever
should gas disease
sleeping sickness
river blindness nail fever
parasitic worms like around work
hook warm and wept for
these worms
uh... over a quarter of the world's population is infected
with at least one of these words
about one point four billion people
have around the world
and about a
billion apko quorum in another billion or so
have report sometimes we have more than
one
these worms the infecting intestinal system
the drain people's energy
be reduced their ability to get nutrients they take the determines
for the people you can't people consume
they suck them up
the stunt growth
he reduce people's iq
and make it harder for them to develop make it easier to get other diseases
pretty horrible diseases
that's a picture of round worm
pretty terrible stuff
it's not just the direct effect of disease which matters
in development we can have both virtuous and vicious cycles
here's an example of a virtual cycle
good health
these two product emiti
prior to the tea leaves the high judy p per-capita and high gtv per capita feeds
into good health
through investments and medicine to investments and public infrastructure
and just in better health in general means you're able to withstand the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
which otherwise would kill you
we have good health you can withstand the man
enough so that off
good health also means that you can expect to live for a long time and that
leads to savings into investment
and savings and investment again lead to high gdp per capita
which reinforces good health
that's a virtual cycle let's take a look at one of the dishes cycles
here when we start off with disease with malaria and yellow fever and worms and
felt so forth
that leads to mobility and mortality which of course lowers gdp directly
and also means low savings
it means stunted people specially when they've been
uh... hit by these diseases as young children it means low iq
is again leads a low gdp per capita
low gdp per capita
means you don't have the money to invest in sewage plants
to invest in clean water to invest in dedham ins
in vaccines
and all the things which can improve health
so here we have an example of a
vicious cycle
disease leads to poverty and poverty means it's very hard to get out of the
disease
there many channels by the way
in which this can work
so especially when you have a lot of children dying
women then tend to have more children to make up for the fact some of them are
dying
and when they have a lot of kids and a lot of the murdering
it frankly doesn't make sense
to invest allot any one of those children you're going to be worried what
a lot of your children are dying
that if you invest a lot in their education in your human capital
and they're going to die and leave you with nothing
so mortality leads to high fertility which leaves a lot of schooling
g again leads that load gdp per capita
and means you don't have the investments to reduce disease
as an example of a really vicious cycle
percent of the tropics are worse for human diseases not surprisingly old it
turns out they're worse for diseases that attack animals
and crops
now we often think of the tropics as being lashed
and indeed the arbiter also chaotic
there's also a lot of death going on
in the in the tropics
so it's much harder in the tropics too
create single crops because they're invaded by these diseases and buy these
parasites
fected turns out
frost
some frost is actually very good for our culture
and very good for gdp
what frost does is it gives
the crops which you want to produce a gives them some breathing room
it kills off the parasites
it kills off those worms it kills off those diseases
and even though
when you have proxy getting shorter growing season
it turns out to the absence of diseases
overall means that you get higher price tivity
so holding labor and capital constant
rush to get more agricultural product to be
indy
uh... outside of the tropics than you do within the tropics and in particular in
regions where there's a little bit of frosting on a lot
a little bit a frost you can actually get
much higher price to be
bear in mind that
going back to our jared diamond talk
that even today
wheat corn and rice
for a huge bulk of our caloric intake
and we grows better
in the more
northern climates
sodas corn and even rice though depends upon the variety
some varieties of rice actually also do a better in the northern climates
so
is geography destiny
it is not
the geography does matter
i like to think about in the following way
the guy in the right
that's tyrone mugs evokes
he was five put three
he played ten seasons in the nba
and yes he could dirac
so is it impossible for a player a pfeifer three to make it in the nba
no it is not
do we see a lot but for players
in the nba
we do not
months he was able to overcome his inherent disadvantages
and play an incredibly high
i could think of manzi as the singapore
of the nba
manzi was hitting way about his height class
in exactly the same way that singapore
is hitting above its gdp per capita class
the other guy in the picture by the way that's michael jordan
who is actually a little bit shorter than the average nba player
institutions clearly matter
all of the other things we've been talking about matter
uh... in particular communism released on squirrels
so if you take a look at some of our earlier our figures you'll see
china and russia
are way below their gdp per capita which you would expect
given they're really quite favorable geography given the really quite table
climate and location and so forth
so communism stunts
corruption stunts
for a lot of countries who were doing worse than they could
thing about this way geography as potential
but you need good institutions
to live up to your potential
there's also another twist
and that is geography can actually influence institutions
can shape some of those institutions
who will be talking more about that
next time