More People, More Prosperity: The Simon Abundance Index: The Simon Abundance Index 2024 finds Earth’s resources 509% more plentiful than in 1980. (Marian L. Tupy, 22 Apr 2024, Quillette)
Between 1980 and 2023, the average time price of the 50 basic commodities fell by 70.4 percent. For the time required to earn the money to buy one unit of this commodity basket in 1980, you would get 3.38 units in 2023. In other words, your resource abundance increased by 238 percent. Moreover, during this 43-year period, the world’s population grew by 3.6 billion, from 4.4 billion to over 8 billion: an 80.2 percent increase. Given that personal resource abundance grew by 238 percent ((3.38 – 1) x 100) and the population grew by 80.2 percent, we can say that the population-level resource abundance rose by 509.4 percent ((3.38 x 1.802) x 100 – 100). Population-level resource abundance grew at a compound annual rate of 4.3 percent and every 1-percentage-point increase in population corresponded to a 6.35-percentage-point increase in population-level resource abundance (509.4 ÷ 80.2 = 6.35).