Jim Lobe

Following the dubious example of their US counterparts, a growing global consumer class is increasingly devouring the wor-ld’s natural resources yet appears unlikely to be growing healthier or happier, says Worldwatch Institute’s annual ‘State of the World’ report released recently.

US consumption styles have not only spread to other industrialised nations, according to the study. They have also succeeded in penetrating much of the developing world. In China alone, 240 million people have joined the ranks of the “consumer class’’, accounting for about five per cent of the estimated 1.7 billion people worldwide who have adopted the US lifestyles. By contrast, some 2.8 billion people live on less than two US dollars a day, while 1.1 billion of them lack access to safe drinking water.

It defines membership in the consumer society as people with annual incomes greater than 7,000 dollars of purchasing power parity or roughly equivalent to the official poverty line in the European Union (EU).

Consumption of physical goods is important, Worldwatch stresses, particularly in providing jobs and income to families and societies. That income is vital to securing people basic needs for food, clean water and sanitation, among other services. But consumption also has serious downsides, especially for the natural resources that also contribute to sustaining human life.

Indeed, one of the more remarkable findings of the new report suggests that consumption might not be increasing general levels of personal happiness or social health. Not only do the poor eating habits that result from the growth in fast-food consumption contribute to obesity and its accompanying ailments, but, insofar as the US is concerned, the sharp rise in consumption over the past 30 years has been accompanied by increases in poverty, teenage suicide, lack of health-insurance coverage and a steadily growing gap between rich and poor.

About one-third of US citizens today say they are ‘’very happy’’; the same share as in 1957, when average incomes were one-half what they are now, the report says. Private household spending on non-essentials and services has increased fourfold since 1960 and now tops $20 trillion annually, it adds. Of this, 60 per cent is spent by people living in North America and Western Europe.

By contrast, the roughly 33 per cent of the world’s people living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa account for only 3.2 of total spending. Consumption is rising most quickly in the developing world, as globalisation has introduced millions of people to consumer goods, while providing the technology and capital to produce and distribute them.

Indeed China, with roughly four times the US population, will soon overtake the US in the size of its consumer class. The US now counts about 243 million people in the consumer class. The countries of Western Europe, where 89 per cent of the people fall into this class, account for almost 350 million consumers. But on a per capita basis, the United States is far ahead of the rest of the world, and shows few signs of slowing down, adds the report.

This country has more private vehicles on the road than people licensed to drive them; indeed, about one-quarter of the world’s cars are found on US roads. New houses in the US were 38 per cent bigger in 2000 than in 1975, despite fewer people in each average household. The average US citizen currently consumes five times more energy than the average global citizen. US consumers spend about 30 billion dollars a year on toys, and US children now receive on average some 69 toys a year. The number of clothing items bought by US consumers increased 73 per cent between 1996 and 2001, with the average consumer buying 48 new pieces of apparel a year.

Moreover, consumption levels have not translated into more leisure and less work. On the contrary, the need to work longer hours to afford “greater” consumer lifestyles has meant that US workers, on average, put in 350 more hours on the job than their European counterparts.

IPS