Introduction to Progress

For most of human history, life was very difficult. People lacked basic medicines and died relatively young. They had no painkillers, and people with ailments spent much of their lives in agonizing pain. Entire families lived in bug-infested dwellings that offered neither comfort nor privacy. They worked in the fields from sunrise to sunset, yet hunger and famines were commonplace. Transportation was primitive, and most people never traveled beyond their native villages or nearest towns. Ignorance and illiteracy were rife. Even kings and queens of yesteryear lacked such basic conveniences as clean water, anti-biotics, hygienic waste disposal, not to mention comfortable travel and speedy access to information. The “good old days” were, by and large, very bad.

Evidence of Progress

However, evidence shows us progress. Average global life expectancy at birth hovered around 30 years from the Stone Age to 1900. Even in the richest countries on Earth, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, life expectancy at the start of the 20th century was merely 46 years and 49 years, respectively. Incomes also were quite stagnant. In year one of the Common Era, the average annual gross domestic product (GDP) per person ranged between $886 and $1,275. As late as 1820, it was only $1,128 (all figures are in 2011 US dollars).

That same year, some 80 percent of the world’s population lived in absolute poverty, defined as subsisting on less than $1.90 per person per day (2011 U.S. dollars). Also in 1820, only 12 percent of humanity is estimated to have been literate. Hunger was widespread—even in advanced countries. For example, in 1820, when most labor was still manual, the average supply of calories per person per day was below 2,000 in France. To put that figure in perspective, the US Department of Health and Human Services recommends that active men consume at least 2,800 calories per day.

Humanity has made enormous progress—especially over the past two centuries. For example, the average life expectancy in the world was 72 years in 2022. In 2022, the average global GDP per person was $16,677—almost 15 times more than two centuries ago (measured in 2011 U.S. dollars). In 2018, only 8.6 percent of humans lived on less than $1.90 per day (in 2011 dollars). (Living on less than $1.90, adjusted for purchasing power parity, is considered insufficient for meeting basic human needs, such as food, shelter, and health care.) The average daily supply of calories per person rose to 2,959 in 2019, while 87 percent of the world’s population was literate in 2022.

It is not only income, life expectancy, nutrition, and education that are improving. Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University, has noted a sharp decline in physical violence. As Pinker wrote,

Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate in medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were unexceptionable features of life for millennia, then were suddenly abolished. Wars between developed countries have vanished, and even in the developing world, wars kill a fraction of the numbers they did a few decades ago. Rape, hate crimes, deadly riots, child abuse—all substantially down.

Remarkably, the chance of a person dying in a natural catastrophe—earthquake, flood, drought, storm, wildfire, landslide, or epidemic—has declined by nearly 99 percent since the 1920s and 1930s. People today are much more likely to survive these disasters because of increased wealth and technological progress.

Other positive trends that Ronald Bailey from Reason magazine and I identified in our 2020 book, Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting, include the falling maternal and infant mortality, the rise in global happiness, declining global income inequality, the rise in primary, secondary, and tertiary school enrollments, the falling share of the world’s population living in slums, the political and economic empowerment of women, the uneven but pronounced rise in IQ scores, the decriminalization of same-sex relationships, the continued rise in vaccinations against contagious diseases, the decline of contagious diseases (such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis), falling cancer death rates, declines in the use of capital punishment, declines in working hours that leave more time for leisure, falling rates of child labor and work-place accidents, increasing access to electricity, improving access to sanitation and clean drinking water, and internet-driven access to information.

It is much easier to compile a list of global trends that are worsening than a list of global trends that are improving, for the former is much shorter than the latter. That said, a truthful account of human progress must acknowledge trends that are not heading in the right direction. There is no contradiction between arguing that human progress is real and recognizing that some problems persist while others may be worsening. As Pinker noted,

Progress is not magic. Progress is not perfection. Progress is not a miracle. It doesn’t mean that everyone is maximally happy. It doesn’t mean that everything gets better for everyone everywhere all the time and always. And that would be a miracle. That’s not progress. The question is however bad things are now, were they worse in the past?

For example, in recent years, we have witnessed a sustained attack on political and economic freedoms, as well as freedoms of religion and free expression. Considering that human freedom is an integral part of human progress and the good life generally, these worrying developments are worth bearing in mind.

The Environmental Exception?

Many people are also concerned about the state of the environment. In particular, they worry about growing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which are, in large measure, a byproduct of economic development. These emissions and the resulting warming of the planet are already being mitigated through greater reliance on natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal power. As such, CO2 emissions in the United States have declined by 25 percent between 2000 and 2020. In the European Union, they fell by 27 percent over the same period.

That is not the only piece of good environmental news. In large part because of the additional CO2 in the atmosphere, the world is greening. The global tree canopy increased by 2.24 million square kilometers (865,000 square miles) between 1982 and 2016, a study in Nature magazine reported. That’s a land area larger than Alaska and Montana combined.

Humanity has also reduced its emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2), which damages fauna and flora and contributes to respiratory illness among humans. Globally, emissions fell by 48 percent between 1979 and 2022. In the United States, to give one example, the volume of SO2 emissions fell by a remarkable 94 percent between 1973 and 2022.

We are also getting better at saving freshwater. For example, US water productivity, or inflation-adjusted dollars of GDP per cubic meter of freshwater withdrawn, increased by 219 percent between 1980 and 2020. In China, it rose by an astonishing 2,606 percent over the same period. Positive trends in water use efficiency can also be observed in Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

Since the end of the last ice age, the British researcher Hannah Ritchie wrote, “humans have cleared one-third of the world’s forests and two-thirds of wild grasslands. . . . This expansion of agricultural land has now come to an end. After millennia, we have passed the peak, and in recent years global agricultural land use has declined.” Increased farm efficiency, in other words, means that we can now start returning land to nature.

According to the World Database on Protected Areas, 15 percent of the planet’s land surface was covered by protected areas in 2017. That’s an area almost double the size of the United States. Marine protected areas cover nearly 7 percent of the world’s oceans. That’s an area more than twice the size of South America. Part of the reason for rising marine conservancy is fish farming, which enables humans to consume increasing quantities of fish without decimating aquatic wildlife.

When it comes to resource use, the profit motive compels companies to decrease the use of resources per dollar of output. Why pay more for inputs if you don’t have to? When aluminum cans were introduced in 1959, for example, they weighed 85 grams. By 2011, they weighed 13 grams.

Furthermore, as Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Andrew McAfee found, US consumption of 66 of 72 resources tracked by the US Geological Survey peaked around the start of the new millennium and then started to fall. The absolute decline in resource use can also be observed in the United Kingdom. Time will tell how many other countries can do the same.

Progress Is Not Linear

As noted, progress is not uniform. Nor is it linear. Europe, for example, experienced an unprecedented period of peace and rapidly improving standards of living between the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Between 1820 and 1910, the average real GDP per person rose 136 percent in Western Europe. In Europe as a whole, life expectancy at birth rose from 35.6 years in 1820 to 46.8 years in 1913.

The period between the start of the 20th century and the outbreak of World War I saw the introduction of such life-changing technologies as the radio, the vacuum cleaner, air conditioning, the neon light, the airplane, sonar, the first plastics, the Ford Model T automobile, and cornflakes.

As a result of World War I, which raged between 1914 and 1918 and killed some 16 million people, the average real Western European GDP per person was 5 percent lower in 1920 than in 1910. Life expectancy in Great Britain, one of the war’s main participants, dropped from 53.2 years in 1914 to 47.3 years in 1918. Other horrors followed.

The devastation of World War I undermined the Russian monarchy, leading to the rise of communism and the establishment of the USSR. Globally, some 100 million people died because of purges and socialist economic mismanagement in communist countries. Defeat in World War I and harsh reparation demands led to resentment in Germany. That contributed to the rise of National Socialism (Nazism), the outbreak of World War II, and the subsequent Holocaust. Some 73 million people died in World War II. After the war ended, communist dictatorships and free-market democracies fought in a variety of proxy conflicts as part of the Cold War, including the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Despite all that suffering, new technologies were introduced, and innovation has continued, including with microwave ovens, mobile phones, transistors, video recorders, credit cards, televisions, solar cells, optic fiber, microchips, lasers, calculators, fuel cells, the World Wide Web, and computers. Medical advances include penicillin, cortisone; pacemakers, artificial hearts, MRI scans; HIV protease inhibitors, and vaccines for hepatitis, smallpox, and polio.

Between 1900 and 2000, the real GDP of an average Western European rose by 590 percent. Regarding life expectancy, a typical Britton could expect to live 32.3 years longer in 2000 than in 1900.

The United States escaped the physical devastation of the two world wars but, like most of the world, suffered through the Great Depression and carried many of the burdens of the Cold War. Between 1929 and 1933, for example, the real average US GDP per person declined by 33 percent. It was not until 1940 that it returned to its pre-Depression levels. Between 1900 and 2000, however, the real average American GDP per person rose by 471 percent and life expectancy by 28 years.

Between 1900 and 2000, the real average Chinese GDP per person rose by 387 percent and Indian by 188 percent. In China, life expectancy rose from 32 years in 1930 to 72 years in 2000—an increase of 40 years. Indian life expectancy increased from 24 years in 1901 to 63 years in 2000—an increase of 39 years.

The story of sub-Saharan Africa is more complex, but still, on balance, positive. During the Colonial Period (1870–1960), the average real GDP per person rose by 23 percent. It increased by a further 27 percent between 1960 and 2000.

Whereas sub-Saharan Africa had underperformed relative to the rest of the world, the inhabitants of the region were better off at the end of the 20th century than they were at the beginning. Moreover, since the start of the new millennium, Africa has been making up for lost time, with the average real GDP per person rising by 71 percent between 2000 and 2022.

When it comes to life expectancy, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced much progress. However, increases in life expectancy vary, depending largely on the harm caused by the spread of AIDS. Life expectancy in hard-hit South Africa, for example, rose from 44 years in 1950 to an all-time high of 63 years in 1990. It dropped to 54 years in 2005, before rebounding to 62 years in 2021.

Progress Is Not Inevitable

When reflecting on the world today, it is important to keep human development in proper perspective. The present, for all its imperfections, is a vast improvement on the past. Understanding and appreciating the progress that humanity has made does not mean that we stop trying to make the future better than the present. As the University of Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin once wrote,

The children have obtained what their parents and grandparents longed for—greater freedom, greater material welfare, a juster society: but the old ills are forgotten, and the children face new problems, brought about by the very solutions of the old ones, and these, even if they can in turn be solved, generate new situations, and with them new requirements—and so on, forever—and unpredictably.

That said, we should avoid making two mistakes. First, we should correctly identify, preserve, and expand those policies and institutions that made human progress possible. If we misidentify the causes of human progress, we could put the well-being of future generations at risk. One way of avoiding serious policy mistakes in the future is to avoid concentrating power in a single pair of hands or the hands of a small elite. Instead, we should trust in the choices made by free-acting individuals. No doubt, some of those individual choices will turn out to be bad, but the aggregate wisdom of billions of free-acting individuals is more likely to be correct than incorrect.

Second, we should beware of utopian idealism. Utopians compare the present with, so to speak, the future perfect, not the past imperfect. Instead of seeing the present as a vast improvement on the past, they see the present as failing to live up to some sort of imagined utopia. Unfortunately, the world will never be a perfect place because the humans who inhabit it are themselves imperfect. Given the rise of populism, Islamism, and extreme environmentalism, we should always remember the evil unleashed upon the world by utopian demagogues, such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot.

Conclusion

As long as there are people who go hungry, die from preventable diseases, or are oppressed by authoritarian regimes, there will always be room for improvement. To that end, everyone has a role to play in helping those in need. By focusing on long-term trends and comparing living standards between two or more generations, however, it is possible to observe much improvement. That improvement is not linear or inevitable, but it is real.

Human Progress