There has never been a time in my life when the general view on the street was that "Things are getting better" But in so many ways they are.

POVERTY

In the last 200 years, the world has gone from 95% of its population living in extreme poverty (defined as living on $1.90/day in today's dollars, adjusted for inflation) to under 10%. There's an inflection point around the early industrial revolution (1850s-60s) where that share starts dropping more quickly, coinciding with a population increase. Since 1990, the drop has been even more drastic, with an average of more than 130,000 people PER DAY escaping extreme poverty. Today, despite a world population 7 times higher than 1820, there are 30% fewer individual people living in extreme poverty.

LITERACY

200 years ago, only 1 in 10 of the world's population aged 15+ was literate. Today, that number has dropped to under 15%, a number that is even more impressive considering that an outsized share of the illiterate are middle-aged or elderly adults brought up before the massive education & living standard gains of the last 25 years.

OurWorld in Data editor Max Roser, author of the report from which I pulled these charts, had this to say:

"If you think science, technology, political freedom are important to solve the world’s problems and you think that it helps to read and write to do this then look at the figures in absolute numbers. Today there are 5.4 billion people older than 15 years, of which 85% are literate – these are 4.6 billion people. In 1800, there were fewer than 100 million people with the same skill."

CHILD MORTALITY

A child born in 1800 had almost a 1 in 2 chance of dying before Age 5. Today, only 4% of children around the world will suffer the same fate. This is the primary reason for the massive explosion in population between 1950 and today, when the world population has more than tripled. Roser explains:

"What we have seen in country after country over the last 200 years is that once women realise that the chances of their children dying has declined substantially, they adapt and choose to have fewer children. Population growth then comes to an end. This transition from high mortality and fertility to low mortality and fertility is called the demographic transition. In those countries that industrialised first, it lasted at least from the mid 19th century to the mid 20th century – it took 95 years for fertility to decline from above 6 children to less than 3 children per woman in the UK. Countries that followed later sometimes achieved this transition much faster: South Korea went from more than 6 children per woman to less than 3 in just 18 years; Iran even achieved it in just 10 years... Population growth is a consequence of fertility and mortality not declining simultaneously. The fast population growth happened when fertility was still as high as it was in the unhealthy environment of the past, but mortality had already declined to the low levels of our time."

What are the causes of this dramatic drop? Modern medicine plays an important role, of course, but there are others. To quote Roser again:

"It would be wrong to believe that modern medicine was the only reason for improved health. Initially, rising prosperity and the changing nature of social life mattered more than medicine. It was improvements in housing and sanitation that improved our chances in the age-old war against infectious disease. Healthier diet – made possible through higher productivity in the agricultural sector and overseas trade – made us more resilient against disease. Surprisingly, improving nutrition and health also made us smarter and taller."

EDUCATION

As you might be aware, the world has already passed what has been termed "Peak Child" - the number of children in the world today is lower than it was yesterday, and higher than it will be tomorrow... and it is projected to keep dropping until substantially all global economies are developed and fertility reaches equilibrium somewhere near the replacement rate.

What does this mean? With the smaller number of children in schools, and an increasing share of the world's population participating in the productive economy, the world will have more resources and time to focus on education, and kids will be able to stay in school longer. By 2100, there will be almost nobody of adult age who hasn't completed secondary education and 7 billion minds that have. Given how important education is for improving economic stability, political freedom, and poverty, this is a VERY promising forecast.

IMPLICATIONS

In short, while we might be inclined to think the world is going to shit, the opposite is actually true. On the whole, life has never been better than it has today. While the world still has very big problems to solve (climate, terrorism, armed conflict, equal rights, etc.), it has nevertheless improved - consistently and unambiguously - in almost every measurable metric for the last 200 years.

What a time to be alive.

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The original post was made June 15, 2017. Eight and a half years ago.

https://imgur.com/gallery/lots-of-bad-news-dominating-airwaves-lately-did-you-know-worlds-actually-getting-lot-better-here-are-some-sweet-saucy-graphs-to-prove-wnAuc