Knowing and Making

Despite Chris's warning , I went to Tim Worstall's book launch today. I even bought a copy which I will review on here when I have read it (on the bus tomorrow). But before that, I learned something nice from his answer to an audience question. Apparently, there's a clear relationship between GDP per head and population growth. We already know that people in poorer countries have more children, and the population of those countries grows faster. It seems that there's a measurable cut-off point: at $16,000 per head of GDP, fertility drops to around replacement rate (just over two children per mother) and the population stabilises. Which reminded me of another statistic I read recently: national happiness grows with GDP until a certain point, at which it levels off and people stop getting happier. That level? $17,000 per head *. Now perhaps there's something important in that $1,000 difference, but the two figures are within the margin of error for cross-coun...

Over the last forty years, the American General Coolness Survey has asked subjects the following question: "Taken all together, how do you think you shape up these days? Would you say that you are: very cool, pretty cool, or not too cool?" In a new paper published today I demonstrate some dramatic results: coolness inequality has diminished hugely in the four decades covered by the survey. Simultaneously, overall coolness has increased substantially. In 1968, 5% of people reported themselves to be "very cool". A further 10% were "pretty cool" and 60% "not too cool" (a substantial proportion of respondents did not answer this question). By the 1970s, coolness had increased but so had inequality. 40% were very cool, 28% pretty cool and 30% not too cool. In the late 80s and early 90s, however, overall coolness fell and society became more equal - with a majority reporting themselves "not too cool" again. By the time of the 2008 survey, coo...