The average person in the world has access to more commodities at a lower price than in 1980. The Simon Abundance Index (SAI) tracks the “per-person abundance of 50 basic commodities…The index began in 1980 with a base value of 100. In 2025, the SAI stood at 636.4, indicating that resources have become 536.4 percent more abundant over the past 45 years. All 50 commodities in the dataset were more abundant in 2025 than they were in 1980.” That’s the observation of Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley:
This year’s interactive version of Figure 1 adds a capability not available in prior editions: country-level exploration. Readers can select any of the 42 countries accounting for 85.9 percent of global gross domestic product and 66.3 percent of the world’s population, and see how much resource abundance has increased for that country’s citizens relative to 1980. They can also view the ranking of 42 countries by cumulative resource abundance between 1980 and 2025 and compare them. Results show that no country’s citizens in this dataset experienced less resource abundance in 2025 than in 1980….
Over 45 years, the index climbed from a base value of 100 to 636.4, a more than sixfold increase. The line does not climb smoothly. The SAI declined in the early 2000s, as a rapidly growing global economy led to elevated demand for resources. It fell again during the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted production and supply chains around the world, and following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, which spiked energy prices. In both cases, the index recovered. By 2024, it had reclaimed its pre-pandemic trajectory [and approached a new peak]
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Between 1980 and 2025, time prices for the 50 basic commodities fell by an average of 70.9 percent. That figure has a concrete meaning. What required an hour of work in 1980 now requires approximately 18 minutes. Put differently, the same hour of work that bought a single unit of a typical commodity in 1980 buys 3.44 units in 2025, a 244 percent increase in personal resource abundance. The personal abundance of resources increased at a compound annual growth rate of 2.78 percent, thus doubling every 25 years.
Gasoline has become more affordable since 1950 even as the world’s population has more than tripled and the number of cars has grown 30-fold.
Drug overdose deaths are declining. Europe has more forest now than in pre-industrial times a few hundred years ago.
Global average life expectancy and income are at an all-time high. Life expectancy is expected to rise by 5 years by 2050.
Forced labor has declined worldwide.
Rabies cases have fallen by 12,000 in India. Leprosy has been eliminated in Chile.
Student enrollment has risen 30% worldwide since 2000.
