The crossover

In this course, the crossover means one specific event visible in two independent datasets. In 1960 the average Filipino was richer than the average South Korean, by between 1.5 times in real terms and 1.7 times in current dollars. The two lines cross in 1970. By 2024 Korea is about 9.1 times richer per person.

The term is course usage rather than an economic term of art, and it does a narrow job. It names the fact that the country now used as the measure of Philippine failure was the poorer of the two in living memory, and it names it in a form that survives an argument about method. The World Bank series and the Maddison series were built by different people, in different units, for different purposes, and they disagree about almost every individual value. They agree about the year.

What the crossover does not do is predict anything. Nothing in it entitles anyone to say the Philippines will follow, and this course does not say it. It also declines to support a claim that circulates locally with a photograph attached, that the country led Korea and Singapore until after Marcos, since the crossing happened four years into his presidency and two years before martial law.

Source: Course-coined, from the two datasets tabulated in section 1.1 of the Hope cases research map, which calls the two-dataset agreement “the single most useful fact in the entire course.” The datasets are the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, GDP per capita in current US dollars, indicator NY.GDP.PCAP.CD, free at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=KR-PH , and the Maddison Project Database 2023 of Bolt and van Zanden, Groningen Growth and Development Centre, free at https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-2023 . Neither source uses the word crossover; the framing is this course’s.

First used in: 4.1 · In 1960 the Filipino was the richer one