As a consequence of declining mortality, the population of Western Europe grew at an unprecedented rate between 1650 and the early twentieth century, despite large-scale emigration to the rest of the world. Some might imagine that such rapidly increasing population growth would have led to extreme scarcities of natural resources, thereby precipitating another decline in standards of living. On the contrary, standards of living (reflected in particular in average life spans) continued to improve rapidly. How can we explain this paradox of rising living standards in an era of growing population and finite natural resources?

Increasing population created more and more possibilities for increased economic efficiency, deriving from specialization, division of labor, and the other advantages of association (cf. pp. 4.5:22-33).
As the numbers of scientists and technological specialists increased, innovations in technology led to continuing advances in productivity. To a large extent, such discoveries enable improvements in the general quality of life, despite a constant or declining per-capita natural resource base.