The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil WarHow America's high standard of living came to be and why future growth is under threat In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end? Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth challenges the view that economic growth will continue unabated, and demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated. Robert Gordon contends that the nation's productivity growth will be further held back by the headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government, and that we must find new solutions. A critical voice in the most pressing debates of our time, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is at once a tribute to a century of radical change and a harbinger of tougher times to come. |
Contents
18701940THE GREAT INVENTIONS CREATE | 25 |
What They Ate and Wore and Where They Bought It | 62 |
From Dark and Isolated | 94 |
Inventions | 129 |
Information | 172 |
Illness | 206 |
Working Conditions on the Job and at Home | 247 |
Consumer | 288 |
Antibiotics CT Scans and the Evolution of Health | 461 |
Work Youth and Retirement at Home and on the Job | 498 |
Entracte Toward an Understanding of Slower Growth | 522 |
Can the Future Match the Great | 566 |
LongRun | 605 |
Americas Growth Achievement and the Path Ahead | 641 |
Acknowledgments | 659 |
Notes | 673 |
Entracte The Midcentury Shift from Revolution to Evolution | 319 |
See the USA in Your Chevrolet or from a Plane Flying | 374 |
Milton Berle to the iPhone | 409 |
Computers and the Internet from the Mainframe | 441 |
723 | |
Credits | 747 |