This fundamental force for divergence, which I discussed briefly in the Introduction, functions as follows. Consider a world of low growth, on the order of, say, 0.5–1 percent a year, which was the case everywhere before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The rate of return on capital, which is generally on the order of 4 or 5 percent a year, is therefore much higher than the growth rate. Concretely, this means that wealth accumulated in the past is recapitalized much more quickly than the economy grows, even when there is no income from labor.
