Source: Based on Dale W Jorgenson, “Accounting for Growth in the Information Age,” Handbook of Economic Growth, Phillipe Aghion and Steven Durlauf, eds Amsterdam: North Holland, 2005 Another way of looking at these data for the most recent period is to notice that the increase in the rate of economic growth between the 1989 to 1995 period and the 1995 to 2002 period of more than one percentage point per year is largely explained by better-quality capital and better technology The study by economist Dale Jorgenson on which the data shown in Table 2.1 "Sources of U.S Economic Growth, 1948–2002" are derived notes that these two main contributors to higher economic growth can be largely attributed to the development of information technology and its incorporation in the workplace Waiting for Growth One key to growth is, in effect, the willingness to wait, to postpone current consumption in order to enhance future productive capability When Stone Age people fashioned the first tools, they were spending time building capital rather than engaging in consumption They delayed current consumption to enhance their future consumption; the tools they made would make them more productive in the future Resources society could have used to produce consumer goods are being used to produce new capital goods and new knowledge for production instead—all to enhance future production An even more important source of growth in many nations has been increased human capital Increases in human capital often require the postponement of consumption If you are a college student, you are engaged in precisely this effort You are devoting Attributed to Libby Rittenberg and Timothy Tregarthen Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books/ Saylor.org 97