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Introduction to Modern Economic Growth
There are a number of reasons for questioning this second, and more widely-held
view, of geographic determinism as well. Most of the technological differences emphasized by these authors refer to agriculture. But as we have seen in Chapter 1 and
will encounter again below, the origins of differential economic growth across countries goes back to the age of industrialization. Modern economic growth came with
industry, and it is the countries that have failed to industrialize that are poor today.
Low agricultural productivity, if anything, should create a comparative advantage
in industry, and thus encourage those countries with the “unfavorable geography”
to start investing in industry before others. One might argue that reaching a certain
level of agricultural productivity is a prerequisite for industrialization. While this is
plausible (at least possible), we will see below that many of the societies that have
failed to industrialize had already achieved a certain level of agricultural productivity, and in fact were often ahead of those who later industrialized very rapidly. Thus
a simple link between unfavorable agricultural conditions and the failure to take off
seems to be absent.3
The third variant of the geography hypothesis, which has become particularly
popular over the past decade, links poverty in many areas of the world to their
“disease burden,” emphasizing that: “The burden of infectious disease is ... higher
in the tropics than in the temperate zones” (Sachs, 2000, p. 32). Bloom and Sachs
(1998) and Gallup and Sachs (2001, p. 91) claim that the prevalence of malaria
alone reduces the annual growth rate of sub-Saharan African economies by as much
as 2.6 percent a year. Such a magnitude implies that had malaria been eradicated in
1950, income per capita in sub-Saharan Africa would be double of what it is today.
If we add to this the effect of other diseases, we would obtain even larger effects
(perhaps implausibly large effects). The World Health Organization also subscribes
to this view and in its recent report writes:
“...in today’s world, poor health has particularly pernicious effects on
economic development in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and pockets
of high disease and intense poverty elsewhere...” (p. 24) and
3Ex post, one can in fact tell the opposite story: perhaps poor nations of today had agriculturally superior land, and this created a comparative advantage against industry and they failed
to benefit from the increasing returns to scale in manufacturing.

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