The figure plots total world population and production from the year 1000 up to the present. I [Lucas] used a logarithmic scale rather than natural units, so that a constant rate of growth would imply a straight line. One can see from the figure that the growth rates of both population and production are increasing over time. The difference between the two curves is about constant up until 1800, reflecting the assumption that production per person was roughly constant prior to that date. Then in the 19th century, growth in both series accelerates dramatically, and production growth accelerates more. By 1900 the two curves cross [The crossing point is due to the scale-dependence a little bit arbitrary], at which time world income per capita was $1,000 per year. The growth and indeed the acceleration of both population and production continue to the present.

It was taken from a cool essay by nobel laureate Robert Lucas titeled The Industrial Revolution - Past and Future.

In case you are busy: Nothing new under the sun of Econoland but read at least his final statement:

Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution. In this very minute, a child is being born to an American family and another child, equally valued by God, is being born to a family in India. The resources of all kinds that will be at the disposal of this new American will be on the order of 15 times the resources available to his Indian brother. This seems to us a terrible wrong, justifying direct corrective action, and perhaps some actions of this kind can and should be taken. But of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of resources from rich to poor. The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is nothing compared to the apparently limitless potential of increasing production.

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