The Simon Abundance Index: Global Resource Abundance Has Increased Over 6 Times Faster Than Global Population Since 1980

      The late economist Julian Simon, famous for winning a debate about resource abundance with the late doomsday biologist Paul Ehrlich, also developed an abundance index, with the reference point set at 1980, meaning the percent change in abundance is referenced to and compared to the value for 1980. Gale Pooley and Marian Tupy of HumanProgress.org wrote an interesting article about the Simon Abundance Index, which I am summarizing and reviewing here. The Simon Abundance Index (SAI) measures the relationship between resource abundance and population.

“In 2025, the SAI stood at 636.4, indicating that resources have become 536.4 percent more abundant over the past 45 years. All 50 commodities in the dataset were more abundant in 2025 than they were in 1980. The global abundance of resources increased at a compound annual growth rate of 4.20 percent, thus doubling every 17 years.”   

“Julian Simon was a University of Maryland economist and Cato Institute senior fellow who pioneered research and analysis of the relationship between population growth and resource abundance. If resources were truly finite, as many people believe, an increase in population would be expected to lead to scarcity and higher prices. However, as Simon discovered through exhaustive research spanning decades, the opposite was true. As the global population increased, resources tended to become more abundant.”

     One can see the drop in abundance during COVID and the 2022 Ukraine war initiation, as well as the drop during the 2008 economic downturn. 

     They note that Simon realized it is knowledge that transforms atoms into resources and that atoms have no economic value without knowledge. As an E&P geologist working in the oil & gas sector, I know that the same idea is a feature of resources and reserves studies. We have resources in place, technologically recoverable reserves, and economically recoverable reserves. The latter two change over time. As technology gets better, technologically recoverable reserves will increase when new technologies are adopted. More resources will be produced, and more are producible when the product is selling for a high price. That increases economically recoverable reserves. Technology also improves costs, so it also increases economic recoverability. Thus, even though there is a finite supply of many things, we can find ways to get higher percentages out or find better concentration through exploration. In the case of oil & gas, especially oil, we know that the bulk of it stays in the ground. Thus, finding ways to increase the recovery percentage through things like secondary recovery through flooding with water, CO, or chemical surfactants, has the potential to increase technological and economic reserves. The same is true of minerals, as new methods of exploration are high-grading areas and finding new sources. New extraction methods and getting minerals from sources like geothermal and sedimentary brines, industrial waste, and coal waste can increase tech and economic reserves. That is the basis of Simon’s exposition of abundance. The index measures change in abundance from a reference point (1980 = 100).

     The index also tracks individual commodity changes since 1980. The data show that in all 42 countries tracked in the index, abundance increased severalfold since 1980. That means there is far more to draw on now than there was then. The index uses time prices for commodities. A time price indicates how many hours or days one must work to earn enough money to buy something.

“If you work less time this year than last year to afford the same good, your standard of living has risen. Time prices are elegant, intuitive, and universal. They can be used to compare the cost of bread in France in 1900 with the cost of bread in France in 2000, or the cost of milk in China with that in the United States in 2025. Because time prices always divide nominal prices by nominal hourly wages, they do not require any adjustment for inflation.”

Between 1980 and 2025, time prices for the 50 basic commodities fell by an average of 70.9 %, as shown below.

“What required an hour of work in 1980 now requires approximately 18 minutes. Put differently, the same hour of work that bought a single unit of a typical commodity in 1980 buys 3.44 units in 2025, a 244 percent increase in personal resource abundance. The personal abundance of resources increased at a compound annual growth rate of 2.78 percent, thus doubling every 25 years.”

     The authors show that year-over-year, time prices can rise or fall for various reasons, and so many commodities do get less abundant in some years compared to the previous year. However, there is a very clear long-term trend toward increasing abundance as time prices normally rebound by dropping back down.

“Short-term setbacks are real, but they do not by themselves define the long-run trajectory. The proper way to read the index is not to expect uninterrupted annual improvement in every commodity. It is to recognize that volatility is normal, adjustment is constant, and the long-run tendency remains toward greater abundance.”

“Simon did not argue that resource prices move in a smooth downward line. He argued that, over time, human beings respond to scarcity signals. Higher prices encourage conservation, substitution, innovation, new production, and better organization. In that sense, temporary scarcity is not the end of the story. It is often the beginning of adjustment, discovery, and the sharing of new knowledge.”

     As noted in the explanation below, this is good economic news since the world is becoming wealthier as the per capita abundance of these commodities continues to grow. The index itself and its trend show that we are indeed doing more with less and that the economic doomsayers are not being vindicated.

“Human beings are not a drain on the resources of this planet. They are the mechanism by which atoms become resources, by which constraints are discovered and dissolved, and by which each generation inherits a world more abundantly supplied than the one before it.”

     Appendix C in the article explains why time is better than money for measuring resource abundance. Lower prices signal abundance and higher prices signal scarcity. Time prices indicate how much labor time it takes per product. The appendix lists seven reasons why time prices are better than monetary prices for measuring resource abundance. These are given below and show clearly that the time prices are indeed better.

     The authors, Pooley and Tupy, are authors of the 2022 book ‘Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet.’

     The article notes that the Simon Abundance Index was updated this year with interactive graphs, which can be explored in the article. One can bring up the global SAI and compare it to the SAIs of the 42 individual countries.

 

  

References:

 

The Simon Abundance Index 2026: Earth was 536.4 percent more abundant in 2025 than it was in 1980. For every one percent increase in population, global resource abundance increased by 6.31 percent. Gale L. Pooley and Marian L. Tupy, Human Progress.Org. April 21, 2026. The Simon Abundance Index 2026 - Human Progress