Mankiw (p490) tries at a short ‘international comparison’, and shows that GDP per capita ‘tends’ to associate with a higher life expectancy. However, he uses India, while Sen (1998:47) - discussed below - argues that the substate of Kerala (30 million people - twice as many as Holland) is quite different. Table 17 gives the 1993 data of Mankiw and the 1994 data of Sen (read from the diagram). In short, the ‘tendency’ that Mankiw notes is much like the ‘storks and babies’ regression - if the data are right.
Mankiw p515 slips into a ‘summary statement’ that textbooks are inclined to provide but rather should avoid: “Richer countries have more automobiles, more telephones, more televisions, better nutrition, safer housing, better health care, and longer life expectancy.”
Table 17: GDP per capita and life expectancy
| US | India | Kerala | |
| GDP per capita | $24,680 | $1,240 | $500 |
| Life Expectancy | 76 | 61 | 73 |
Why, oh why, argue that a GDP measure can do more than it can do ? Why create the suggestion that governments employ sufficient numbers of economists, and that we don’t need loads more ?
Mankiw’s discussion would benefit from reading Hueting (1980) and P. Dasgupta & K.-G. Mäler (1999) on the environment. And on the causes for famines (p531) he could also benefit from a closer study of Sen’s work. Perhaps there could be another ‘principle of economics’ here.
I would think that a ‘principles’ book should contain explanations of ‘ex ante’ and ‘ex post’ and of ‘animal spirits’. Perhaps I am European and perhaps I value a historic sense, but I really don’t understand that Mankiw does not used the ‘ex’s, and only mentions ‘animal spirits’ on p722 without explanation. [119]
Similarly, I don’t understand why Mankiw adopts the word ‘natural rate’ and then explains that there is little ‘natural’ about ‘natural’. Is this not obviously a stupid and ridiculous way of teaching ? Let us please ditch the word, and use ‘system rate’ (or rather CWIRU as above). Note too that Mankiw’s ‘explanation’ on p566 that the system rate of unemployment “does not go away of its own” is awkward, since the economic system is heavily regulated, and events hardly ever are “of their own”. There are always people taking decisions.