By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jan 9 2004 (IPS)

Following the dubious example of their U.S. counterparts, a growing global consumer class is increasingly devouring the world’s natural resources yet appears unlikely to be growing healthier or happier, says Worldwatch Institute’s annual ‘State of the World’ report released here Thursday.

U.S. 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 percent of the estimated 1.7 billion people worldwide who have adopted the diets, transportation systems and lifestyles pioneered by the United States and quickly taken up by other industrialised nations during the last century, adds the 245-page report.

By contrast, some 2.8 billion people live on less than two U.S. dollars a day, while 1.1 billion of them lack access to safe drinking water.

Some 122 million Indians are also living an essentially western lifestyle – more than the roughly 121 million Japanese, 76 million Germans, 61 million Russians, 58 million Brazilians and 53 million French people who also enjoy the fruits of consumer society, the report said.

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.

“Rising consumption has helped meet basic needs and create jobs,” said Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin. ”But as we enter a new century, this unprecedented consumer appetite is undermining the natural systems we all depend on, and making it even harder for the world’s poor to meet their basic needs,” he added in a statement.

“Higher levels of obesity and personal debt, chronic time shortages and a degraded environment are all signs that excessive consumption is diminishing the quality of life for many people,” according to Flavin.

“The challenge now is to mobilise governments, businesses and citizens to shift their focus away from unrestrained accumulation of goods and toward finding ways to ensure a better life for all.”

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 United States 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 U.S. 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-essential goods and services has increased fourfold since 1960 and now tops 20 trillion dollars annually, it adds. Of this, 60 percent is spent by people living in North America and Western Europe – who make up only 12 percent of the global population.

By contrast, the roughly 33 percent of the world’s people living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa account for only 3.2 percent 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.

“Nearly half of all global consumers now live in the developing world,” said Lisa Mastny, who co-directed the project that produced the latest ‘State of the World’.

“While the average Chinese or Indian consumes much less than the average North America or European, China and India alone now boast a combined consumer class larger than that in all of Western Europe.”

Indeed China, with roughly four times the U.S. population, will soon overtake the United States in the size of its consumer class.

The United States now counts about 243 million people – or around 85 percent of its total population – in the consumer class. The countries of Western Europe, where 89 percent 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 U.S. roads. New houses in the United States were 38 percent bigger in 2000 than in 1975, despite fewer people in each average household.

Such consumption patterns help explain why, with only 4.5 percent of the world’s population, the United States accounts for some 25 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming.

The average U.S. citizen currently consumes five times more energy than the average global citizen, 10 times more than the average Chinese, and 20 times more than the average Indian, according to the report.

U.S. consumers spend about 30 billion dollars a year on toys, and U.S. children now receive on average some 69 toys a year. The number of clothing items bought by U.S. consumers increased 73 percent between 1996 and 2001, with the average consumer buying 48 new pieces of apparel a year.

Annual consumption of soda – a staple at fast-food restaurants that have introduced ever-larger soda containers in the past decade – doubled to 185 litres between 1970 and 2001, and the United States has become the world’s largest consumer of shrimp and caviar.

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese.

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 U.S. workers, on average, put in 350 more hours on the job than their European counterparts.

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