Global Distributions of Capital and Labor Incomes: Capitalization of the Global Middle Class

This article studies global distributions of capital and labor income among individuals in 2000 and 2016. By constructing a novel database covering approximately the 80% of the global output and the 60% of the world population, two major findings stand out. First, the world underwent a spectacular process of capitalization. The share of world individuals with positive capital income rose from 20% to 32%. Second, the global middle class benefited the most, in relative terms, from such capitalization process. In China, the average growth rate of capital income was 20 times higher than in western economies. The global composition of capital and labor income is, therefore, more equal today than it was twenty years ago, and the world is moving towards a global multiple-sources-of-income society. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper Series)

We know how many people the earth can support

A quarter century after Joel Cohen asked the essential question “How Many People can the Earth Support?”, this article offers an answer, based on new science and geographical analysis, and asserts that we have long ago exceeded our planet’s long term ecological carrying capacity that optimistically can only support 3 billion modern industrialized humans. While agreeing that strategies based on reducing consumption are sorely needed to live within our planet’s carrying capacity, the impending explosion of the global middle class promises to render consumption-only strategies inadequate, in the face of runaway population growth and the accumulation of massive ecological debt. Noting recent studies that project global population to begin to decrease in 2064 after peaking at 9.7B, it is asked why we don’t act now to accelerate this already inevitable trend with enhanced investment in women’s empowerment, education, and access to family planning technologies. This paper calls for a goal of achieving 1.5 total fertility rate (TFR) by 2030 to bend the global population curve, begin relieving the ecological burden humanity has foisted on our planet, and to decrease human population as we approach 2100 to something closer to the long term ecological carrying capacity of our planet.