Given the history of rising agricultural and manufacturing productivities, it was inevitable that most people in modern societies will end up doing something other than growing food and making things.

average life expectancy at birth. This statistical construct merely indicates the average number of years a newborn child is expected to live if mortality patterns prevailing at the time of its birth remain constant in the future, and it might be the best single-variable indicator of overall quality of life.

Average fertilities of 7 to 8 children per lifetime should be thus taken as representative maxima for entire populations,

late starters proceed faster than do the early adopters.

The demographic dividend is inherently time limited but its positive consequences can endure well beyond its end. As the large cohorts of working-age population age and retire, the dividend first recedes and then it disappears, but it can have a longer-term economic effect if the temporary gains were invested in infrastructures, education, health,

A conservative global estimate is that commuting by some 2.5 billion people spending 50 minutes a day adds up annually to nearly 60 million years of life, an enormous waste of human potential and generally a detestable experience that is commonly accompanied by stress and discomfort

In 1900 7.2% of the US non-farm labor force worked for government (federal, state, and local), by 1950 that share was 13.3%, and by 2016 it rose only marginally to 14.2%

In the common (albeit misleading) terminology, no industrial revolution could have taken place without the preceding agricultural revolution. This labor push factor was potentiated by the effect of the already noted Engel’s law: reduced share of spending on food can be used to buy more manufactured products. Second, new opportunities in industrial

energy per harvested crop mass are mostly between 1.5 and 4 GJ/t