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The 'Mauritius Miracle' provides free schools, college and health care
By Joseph E. Stiglitz |
March 22, 2011, Tuesday
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SUPPOSE someone were to describe a small country that provided free education through university for all of its citizens, transport for school children, and free health care - including heart surgery - for all. You might suspect that such a country is either phenomenally rich or on the fast track to fiscal crisis.
After all, rich countries in Europe have increasingly found that they cannot pay for university education, and are asking young people and their families to bear the costs.
For its part, the United States has never attempted to give free college for all, and it took a bitter battle just to ensure that America's poor get access to health care - a guarantee that the Republican Party is now working hard to repeal, claiming that the country cannot afford it.
But Mauritius, a small island nation off the east coast of Africa, is neither particularly rich nor on its way to budgetary ruin. Nonetheless, it has spent the last decades successfully building a diverse economy, a democratic political system, and a strong social safety net.
In a recent visit to this tropical archipelago of 1.3 million people, I had a chance to see some of the leaps Mauritius has taken - accomplishments that can seem bewildering in light of the debate in the US and elsewhere.
No trick
Consider home ownership: while American conservatives say that the government's attempt to extend home ownership to 70 percent of the US population was responsible for the financial meltdown, 87 percent of Mauritians own their own homes - without fueling a housing bubble.
Now comes the painful number: Mauritius's GDP has grown faster than 5 percent annually for almost 30 years.
Surely, this must be some "trick." Mauritius must be rich in diamonds, oil, or some other valuable commodity. But Mauritius has no exploitable natural resources. Indeed, so dismal were its prospects as it approached independence from Britain, which came in 1968, that the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Meade wrote in 1961: "It is going to be a great achievement if the country can find productive employment for its population without a serious reduction in the existing standard of living ... The outlook for peaceful development is weak."
As if to prove Meade wrong, the Mauritians have increased per capita income from less than US$400 around the time of independence to more than US$6,700 today.
During my visit, my interest was to understand better what had led to what some have called the Mauritius Miracle, and what others might learn from it. There are, in fact, many lessons, some of which should be borne in mind by politicians in the US and elsewhere as they fight their budget battles.
Social cohesion
First, the question is not whether we can afford to provide health care or education for all, or ensure widespread home ownership. If Mauritius can afford these things, America and Europe - which are several orders of magnitude richer - can, too. The question, rather, is how to organize society. Mauritians have chosen a path that leads to higher levels of social cohesion, welfare, and economic growth - and to a lower level of inequality.
Second, unlike many other small countries, Mauritius has decided that most military spending is a waste. The US need not go as far: just a fraction of the money that America spends on weapons that don't work against enemies that don't exist would go a long way toward creating a more humane society, including provision of health care and education to those who cannot afford them.
Third, Mauritius recognized that without natural resources, its people were its only asset.
Maybe that appreciation for its human resources is also what led Mauritius to realize that, particularly given the country's potential religious, ethnic, and political differences - which some tried to exploit in order to induce it to remain a British colony - education for all was crucial to social unity.
So was a strong commitment to democratic institutions and cooperation between workers, government, and employers - precisely the opposite of the kind of dissension and division being engendered by conservatives in the US today.
(To be continued tomorrow. The author is University Professor at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate in Economics. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011. www.project-syndicate.org.)
After all, rich countries in Europe have increasingly found that they cannot pay for university education, and are asking young people and their families to bear the costs.
For its part, the United States has never attempted to give free college for all, and it took a bitter battle just to ensure that America's poor get access to health care - a guarantee that the Republican Party is now working hard to repeal, claiming that the country cannot afford it.
But Mauritius, a small island nation off the east coast of Africa, is neither particularly rich nor on its way to budgetary ruin. Nonetheless, it has spent the last decades successfully building a diverse economy, a democratic political system, and a strong social safety net.
In a recent visit to this tropical archipelago of 1.3 million people, I had a chance to see some of the leaps Mauritius has taken - accomplishments that can seem bewildering in light of the debate in the US and elsewhere.
No trick
Consider home ownership: while American conservatives say that the government's attempt to extend home ownership to 70 percent of the US population was responsible for the financial meltdown, 87 percent of Mauritians own their own homes - without fueling a housing bubble.
Now comes the painful number: Mauritius's GDP has grown faster than 5 percent annually for almost 30 years.
Surely, this must be some "trick." Mauritius must be rich in diamonds, oil, or some other valuable commodity. But Mauritius has no exploitable natural resources. Indeed, so dismal were its prospects as it approached independence from Britain, which came in 1968, that the Nobel Prize-winning economist James Meade wrote in 1961: "It is going to be a great achievement if the country can find productive employment for its population without a serious reduction in the existing standard of living ... The outlook for peaceful development is weak."
As if to prove Meade wrong, the Mauritians have increased per capita income from less than US$400 around the time of independence to more than US$6,700 today.
During my visit, my interest was to understand better what had led to what some have called the Mauritius Miracle, and what others might learn from it. There are, in fact, many lessons, some of which should be borne in mind by politicians in the US and elsewhere as they fight their budget battles.
Social cohesion
First, the question is not whether we can afford to provide health care or education for all, or ensure widespread home ownership. If Mauritius can afford these things, America and Europe - which are several orders of magnitude richer - can, too. The question, rather, is how to organize society. Mauritians have chosen a path that leads to higher levels of social cohesion, welfare, and economic growth - and to a lower level of inequality.
Second, unlike many other small countries, Mauritius has decided that most military spending is a waste. The US need not go as far: just a fraction of the money that America spends on weapons that don't work against enemies that don't exist would go a long way toward creating a more humane society, including provision of health care and education to those who cannot afford them.
Third, Mauritius recognized that without natural resources, its people were its only asset.
Maybe that appreciation for its human resources is also what led Mauritius to realize that, particularly given the country's potential religious, ethnic, and political differences - which some tried to exploit in order to induce it to remain a British colony - education for all was crucial to social unity.
So was a strong commitment to democratic institutions and cooperation between workers, government, and employers - precisely the opposite of the kind of dissension and division being engendered by conservatives in the US today.
(To be continued tomorrow. The author is University Professor at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate in Economics. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011. www.project-syndicate.org.)
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