The long and short of progress; Taller Europeans have a message for small-minded North Americans
The Toronto Star
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Page: AA06
Section: Opinion
Byline: Linda McQuaig
Source: Toronto Star
agenda 2008
social policy
The seventh in a series of essays about key issues in the year aheadMany adjectives come to mind when thinking of how to describe Americans. But "short" probably isn't one of them.
We're used to the notion of the United States as the world's dominant power - a land of untold resources, wealth and consumption. And one reflection of this abundance is the fact that for most of the past 21/2 centuries, Americans have been literally the tallest people on the planet. Feeding off the abundant wild game and rich agriculture of their vast new land, colonial Americans measured a full three inches taller than Europeans.
Not so any more. Compared to Europeans, Americans have effectively shrunk. Indeed, among all advanced industrial nations, Americans are now at the bottom end of the height scale.
And, no, it's not the influx of short Hispanics. The height pattern is the same for Americans even when the sample is limited to non-Hispanic, native-born Americans.
It seems to be a reflection of something more basic. According to an influential paper in Social Science Quarterly last June by economic historians John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale, "height is indicative of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment."
The relative shrinking of Americans on the world scene is perhaps then an indicator of something Americans are doing badly - not in Iraq, but right at home. And that something should be of more than passing interest to Canadians as we continue, consciously and unconsciously, to shape our economic and social systems with the U.S. in mind.
Actually, Canada has traditionally been a blend of the U.S. and European approaches. But in the last couple of decades, as we have focused increasingly on cutting taxes and have adopted the attitude that individuals must make it on their own in society, we've veered more closely to the U.S. model.
We tend to view the low-tax, low-spending U.S. model as simply the norm in the era of globalization. But in fact it is only the U.S. norm.
Europeans, particularly northern Europeans, have traditionally done things differently - imposing much higher taxes and delivering much more generous social programs that provide a striking array of benefits to every member of society. Contrary to our impressions here in the West that globalization has fundamentally redesigned the world, the Europeans have stuck with their high- tax, high-spending model in the globalized era.
Which is why the "shrinking" of Americans relative to Europeans is so intriguing.
Almost three inches taller than Americans, the Dutch are now the tallest people in the world. Dutch males average six foot one - seven inches taller on average than they were just over a century ago. Crowded around the towering Dutch at the top end of the height scale are other northern Europeans - Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Belgians and Germans.
Height is a rather potent symbol. But it also appears to be a useful measure of the well-being of a nation's citizens, particularly its young people, since height is determined early in life. Komlos and Lauderdale note that a wide range of factors determine height: "(T)he political economy of the health-care system, education, transfers to the poor, and government policy toward equality (hence taxation policy) all matter."
They go on to suggest that "perhaps the western and northern European welfare states, with their universal socioeconomic safety nets, are able to provide a higher biological standard of living to their children and youth than the more free-market-oriented U.S. economy."
Height is in fact just one of many measures of well-being where the Americans increasingly find themselves at the bottom of the heap among industrial nations.
Equally telling is the Innocenti Report Card, a broad measure of physical and material child well-being in 21 OECD countries, prepared by a UN-affiliated Italian research institute. Once again, the Netherlands tops the list, in a cluster with Sweden, Denmark and Finland. One has to go all the way down to the Number 20 spot to find the United States. (It narrowly edged out last-place Britain, which with the Thatcher revolution in the 1980s, joined the U.S. in adopting the low-tax model.) Canada, in keeping with its blended approach to the U.S. and European models, comes in at a middling Number 12.
The strikingly strong performance of the northern Europeans and the dismal performance of the U.S. (and Britain) when it comes to child well-being would presumably set off alarm bells in any nation with aspirations for its future.
Yet we remain strangely oblivious here in Canada, continuing our obsession with low taxes and our acceptance of minimal social programs, even as the Europeans show us what appears to be a far better way to equip our children for the future.
One of the key differences for European children - in addition to excellent public health care and even free public dental care in some Nordic countries - is universal access to amply-funded child-care programs, which are typically housed in attractive buildings and staffed with teachers trained to encourage creative thinking and interest in the arts.
By contrast, we in North America have embraced an "individualistic" approach, leaving it up to individual families to take care of the needs of their own children. This has left millions of children in poorly funded private daycare facilities or fending for themselves after school.
After years of pressure by activists, Ottawa finally brought in a bare-bones national child-care program in 2005. Yet that minimal program was cancelled by Stephen Harper's Conservative government, which replaced it with an even more meager child allowance paid to individual families, with no guarantee the money even be spent on children.
And even as the federal budget surplus ballooned to $16 billion this year, the Harper government steadfastly avoided enriching social programs, directing the surplus instead to tax cuts and military spending increases.
Our tight-fisted approach to meeting social needs takes its heaviest toll on the poor, but it has a huge impact on the middle class as well. The extensive benefits in the northern European countries include many that would make dramatic differences in the lives of just about all Canadians, including free university tuition, extensive in-home care of the elderly and the disabled, generous pensions, maternity and paternity leaves, job retraining and mandatory paid vacations (for all workers) of four, five or even six weeks.
Many Canadians might be inclined to dismiss these sorts of benefits as unaffordable luxuries - luxuries that would risk diminishing our economic performance in the highly competitive global economy. After all, the U.S., with its low-tax, low-spending model, is the powerhouse of the global economy.
But just as Americans aren't actually as tall as we think, they're not so clearly the towering economic giants we've made them out to be.
To be sure, the U.S. is one of the most competitive countries in the global economy, but it shares that elevated status with the Nordic nations, which, along with the U.S., consistently rank at the top end of the scale of competitive nations, as measured by the World Economic Forum in Geneva.
This suggests that both the U.S. and European models can work well economically, leaving it a matter of which model the electorate prefers.
But there are other important factors that may reduce the room for choice. The real imperative in the future may not be the demands of "globalization," but rather the demands of global warming.
Overall, Americans live in bigger homes, drive bigger cars and consume more.
Not surprisingly, then, Americans produce much larger carbon emissions - roughly 20 tons on average per person, compared to only nine in the Netherlands or just under six in Sweden. (And in this area, Canadians are much closer to Americans, producing almost 18 tons per person.)
But oddly there's little attention paid in Canada to the striking differences between the U.S. and European models.
Indeed, as the northern Europeans grow ever taller, more attentive to the environment and better at preparing their children for the future, we in Canada seem blindly attached to doing things as they're done south of the border - where climate change hasn't sufficiently registered as an issue, where people are getting relatively shorter, and where it's pretty much every kid for himself.
The Toronto Star
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Page: AA06
Section: Opinion
Byline: Linda McQuaig
Source: Toronto Star
agenda 2008
social policy
The seventh in a series of essays about key issues in the year aheadMany adjectives come to mind when thinking of how to describe Americans. But "short" probably isn't one of them.
We're used to the notion of the United States as the world's dominant power - a land of untold resources, wealth and consumption. And one reflection of this abundance is the fact that for most of the past 21/2 centuries, Americans have been literally the tallest people on the planet. Feeding off the abundant wild game and rich agriculture of their vast new land, colonial Americans measured a full three inches taller than Europeans.
Not so any more. Compared to Europeans, Americans have effectively shrunk. Indeed, among all advanced industrial nations, Americans are now at the bottom end of the height scale.
And, no, it's not the influx of short Hispanics. The height pattern is the same for Americans even when the sample is limited to non-Hispanic, native-born Americans.
It seems to be a reflection of something more basic. According to an influential paper in Social Science Quarterly last June by economic historians John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale, "height is indicative of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment."
The relative shrinking of Americans on the world scene is perhaps then an indicator of something Americans are doing badly - not in Iraq, but right at home. And that something should be of more than passing interest to Canadians as we continue, consciously and unconsciously, to shape our economic and social systems with the U.S. in mind.
Actually, Canada has traditionally been a blend of the U.S. and European approaches. But in the last couple of decades, as we have focused increasingly on cutting taxes and have adopted the attitude that individuals must make it on their own in society, we've veered more closely to the U.S. model.
We tend to view the low-tax, low-spending U.S. model as simply the norm in the era of globalization. But in fact it is only the U.S. norm.
Europeans, particularly northern Europeans, have traditionally done things differently - imposing much higher taxes and delivering much more generous social programs that provide a striking array of benefits to every member of society. Contrary to our impressions here in the West that globalization has fundamentally redesigned the world, the Europeans have stuck with their high- tax, high-spending model in the globalized era.
Which is why the "shrinking" of Americans relative to Europeans is so intriguing.
Almost three inches taller than Americans, the Dutch are now the tallest people in the world. Dutch males average six foot one - seven inches taller on average than they were just over a century ago. Crowded around the towering Dutch at the top end of the height scale are other northern Europeans - Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Belgians and Germans.
Height is a rather potent symbol. But it also appears to be a useful measure of the well-being of a nation's citizens, particularly its young people, since height is determined early in life. Komlos and Lauderdale note that a wide range of factors determine height: "(T)he political economy of the health-care system, education, transfers to the poor, and government policy toward equality (hence taxation policy) all matter."
They go on to suggest that "perhaps the western and northern European welfare states, with their universal socioeconomic safety nets, are able to provide a higher biological standard of living to their children and youth than the more free-market-oriented U.S. economy."
Height is in fact just one of many measures of well-being where the Americans increasingly find themselves at the bottom of the heap among industrial nations.
Equally telling is the Innocenti Report Card, a broad measure of physical and material child well-being in 21 OECD countries, prepared by a UN-affiliated Italian research institute. Once again, the Netherlands tops the list, in a cluster with Sweden, Denmark and Finland. One has to go all the way down to the Number 20 spot to find the United States. (It narrowly edged out last-place Britain, which with the Thatcher revolution in the 1980s, joined the U.S. in adopting the low-tax model.) Canada, in keeping with its blended approach to the U.S. and European models, comes in at a middling Number 12.
The strikingly strong performance of the northern Europeans and the dismal performance of the U.S. (and Britain) when it comes to child well-being would presumably set off alarm bells in any nation with aspirations for its future.
Yet we remain strangely oblivious here in Canada, continuing our obsession with low taxes and our acceptance of minimal social programs, even as the Europeans show us what appears to be a far better way to equip our children for the future.
One of the key differences for European children - in addition to excellent public health care and even free public dental care in some Nordic countries - is universal access to amply-funded child-care programs, which are typically housed in attractive buildings and staffed with teachers trained to encourage creative thinking and interest in the arts.
By contrast, we in North America have embraced an "individualistic" approach, leaving it up to individual families to take care of the needs of their own children. This has left millions of children in poorly funded private daycare facilities or fending for themselves after school.
After years of pressure by activists, Ottawa finally brought in a bare-bones national child-care program in 2005. Yet that minimal program was cancelled by Stephen Harper's Conservative government, which replaced it with an even more meager child allowance paid to individual families, with no guarantee the money even be spent on children.
And even as the federal budget surplus ballooned to $16 billion this year, the Harper government steadfastly avoided enriching social programs, directing the surplus instead to tax cuts and military spending increases.
Our tight-fisted approach to meeting social needs takes its heaviest toll on the poor, but it has a huge impact on the middle class as well. The extensive benefits in the northern European countries include many that would make dramatic differences in the lives of just about all Canadians, including free university tuition, extensive in-home care of the elderly and the disabled, generous pensions, maternity and paternity leaves, job retraining and mandatory paid vacations (for all workers) of four, five or even six weeks.
Many Canadians might be inclined to dismiss these sorts of benefits as unaffordable luxuries - luxuries that would risk diminishing our economic performance in the highly competitive global economy. After all, the U.S., with its low-tax, low-spending model, is the powerhouse of the global economy.
But just as Americans aren't actually as tall as we think, they're not so clearly the towering economic giants we've made them out to be.
To be sure, the U.S. is one of the most competitive countries in the global economy, but it shares that elevated status with the Nordic nations, which, along with the U.S., consistently rank at the top end of the scale of competitive nations, as measured by the World Economic Forum in Geneva.
This suggests that both the U.S. and European models can work well economically, leaving it a matter of which model the electorate prefers.
But there are other important factors that may reduce the room for choice. The real imperative in the future may not be the demands of "globalization," but rather the demands of global warming.
Overall, Americans live in bigger homes, drive bigger cars and consume more.
Not surprisingly, then, Americans produce much larger carbon emissions - roughly 20 tons on average per person, compared to only nine in the Netherlands or just under six in Sweden. (And in this area, Canadians are much closer to Americans, producing almost 18 tons per person.)
But oddly there's little attention paid in Canada to the striking differences between the U.S. and European models.
Indeed, as the northern Europeans grow ever taller, more attentive to the environment and better at preparing their children for the future, we in Canada seem blindly attached to doing things as they're done south of the border - where climate change hasn't sufficiently registered as an issue, where people are getting relatively shorter, and where it's pretty much every kid for himself.
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