The United Nations has just released a new report on international development, titled “Development for Everyone”. It focuses on equality, distinguishing between absolute inequality and relative inequality. It points out that in terms of the Gini coefficient, a statistical measure used to gauge a country’s income inequality, one kind of inequality is rising while the other is falling:
“Rising incomes around the world have been accompanied by widening inequality … Although income inequality … has narrowed across the world as a whole because the incomes of developing and developed regions have been converging. Relative global inequality has declined steadily over the past few decades … This happened despite an increasing trend towards inequality within countries.
By contrast, absolute inequality, measured by the absolute Gini coefficient, has increased dramatically. [For example, in] 2000 one person in a country earns $1 a day and another person $10 a day. With economic growth, in 2016 the first person earns $8 a day, and the second person $80 a day. The relative difference between the two remains the same (the second person has 10 times more than the first person), but the absolute difference has gone up from $7 to $72.”
(Source: United Nations, 2016 Human Development Report: Development for Everyone)
Even though the difference between absolute and relative inequality is increasing, the key thing to take away is that the tremendous growth in developing countries has decreased relative inequality between states and diminished poverty. And, arguably, reducing deprivation and raising living standards are more important than lessening income inequality.
So why the focus on money? In many other vital areas inequality is declining across the globe. Here are five charts which pin-point where.
Life expectancy is one of the best measures of the overall standard of living. Even for Africa, the poorest continent, the life expectancy gap with North America has narrowed. North American life expectancies were about 29 years longer than Africans’ in 1960, but only 18 years longer in 2015. This progress occurred despite the catastrophic AIDS epidemic that slowed Africa’s life expectancy significantly. Asia and South America have gone even farther towards closing the life expectancy gap with North America, narrowing it to roughly 6 and 5 years, respectively.
Life expectancy gains are partly due to falling rates of infant mortality—another area in which poor countries are catching up with rich ones. In 1960, 144 out of 1,000 African children died before their first birthday, compared to 26 out of 1,000 North American children. In other words, 118 more African children than North American children died as infants out of every 1,000. By 2015, that number had shrunk to 43.
Better nourishment is also to thank for longer lives. In 1991, close to 30 per cent of Africa’s population was undernourished, compared with “5 per cent or less” of North America’s population. By 2015, fewer than 20 per cent of Africans were undernourished. The absolute inequality between the poorer areas of the globe and the richer ones shrank considerably, even as undernourishment became rarer worldwide.
The education gap between rich and poor countries has diminished as well. In 1950, Americans spent nearly seven more years learning than Chinese students on average, and nearly eight more years leaning than Indians. By 2015, average years of schooling in the United States exceeded the Chinese average by only five years and the Indian average by about six years.
Internet use tells a similar story. China, in particular, has rapidly narrowed the gap. In 2000, a little under 2 per cent of Chinese used the internet, compared to 43 per cent of Americans. That means a gap of 41 per cent. By 2015, that gap had shrunk to 24 per cent.
As these charts show, poor countries are actually making faster progress than rich ones in many areas. In some cases, this is simply because richer countries have “reached the finish line” it’s impractical to school children past a certain number of years, for example, or levels of malnutrition might already be at zero.
In other cases, the rapid adoption of technologies and growth-friendly policies from a standing start is giving poorer countries a boost that enables them to progress at breakneck speed. Even bearing this in mind, why do some places develop more quickly than others? What explains the incredible pace of change in China, for example? The UN report nails it with this sentence:
In China and India, opening up the economy to the world accelerated growth, which in turn helped address human development challenges — reducing poverty, improving health outcomes and extending access to basic social services.
So rather than rush to complain about the increase in absolute inequality, we should stop and consider how globalisation and free exchange, though unpopular among those who think they only benefit the rich, are to thank for shrinking relative inequality and plummeting poverty across the world.
Developing Regions Are Far More Schooled than 20 Years Ago
“In 2000, adults in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa had, on average, fewer than five years of schooling. That’s not enough to complete primary education.
But, as the chart shows, a lot of progress has been made since then. Adults older than 25 have gained more than two additional years of schooling, a 50% increase since 2000.
Latin American and East Asian countries have also made substantial gains, starting from a higher baseline.”
Children Not in School Declined Nearly 40 Percent since 2000
“The global number of children and adolescents who are not in school across primary and secondary education … has fallen from 390 million in 2000 to 244 million in 2023. That’s nearly a 40% reduction. The global population of children has grown during this time, making the decrease in out-of-school children even more significant.”
1,000 Bits of Good News You May Have Missed in 2023
A necessary balance to the torrent of negativity.
Malcolm Cochran —
Reading the news can leave you depressed and misinformed. It’s partisan, shallow, and, above all, hopelessly negative. As Steven Pinker from Harvard University quipped, “The news is a nonrandom sample of the worst events happening on the planet on a given day.”
So, why does Human Progress feature so many news items? And why did I compile them in this giant list? Here are a few reasons:
Statistics are vital to a proper understanding of the world, but many find anecdotes more compelling.
Many people acknowledge humanity’s progress compared to the past but remain unreasonably pessimistic about the present—not to mention the future. Positive news can help improve their state of mind.
We have agency to make the world better. It is appropriate to recognize and be grateful for those who do.
Below is a nonrandom sample (n = ~1000) of positive news we collected this year, separated by topic area. Please scroll, skim, and click. Or—to be even more enlightened—read this blog post and then look through our collection of long-term trends and datasets.
Overwhelming evidence shows that we are richer, healthier, better fed, better educated, and even more humane than ever before.
Marian L. Tupy —
Imagine, if you will, the following scenario. It is 1723, and you are invited to dinner in a bucolic New England countryside, unspoiled by the ravages of the Industrial Revolution. There, you encounter a family of English settlers who left the Old World to start a new life in North America. The father, muscles bulging after a vigorous day of work on the farm, sits at the head of the table, reading from the Bible. His beautiful wife, dressed in rustic finery, is putting finishing touches on a pot of hearty stew. The son, a strapping lad of 17, has just returned from an invigorating horse ride, while the daughter, aged 12, is playing with her dolls. Aside from the antiquated gender roles, what’s there not to like?
As an idealized depiction of pre-industrial life, the setting is easily recognizable to anyone familiar with Romantic writing or films such as Gone with the Wind or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. As a description of reality, however, it is rubbish; balderdash; nonsense and humbug. More likely than not, the father is in agonizing and chronic pain from decades of hard labor. His wife’s lungs, destroyed by years of indoor pollution, make her cough blood. Soon, she will be dead. The daughter, the family being too poor to afford a dowry, will spend her life as a spinster, shunned by her peers. And the son, having recently visited a prostitute, is suffering from a mysterious ailment that will make him blind in five years and kill him before he is 30.
For most of human history, life was very difficult for most people. They 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 common. Transportation was primitive, and most people never traveled beyond their native villages or nearest towns. Ignorance and illiteracy were rife. The “good old days” were, by and large, very bad for the great majority of humankind. Since then, humanity has made enormous progress—especially over the course of the last two centuries.
How much progress?
Life expectancy before the modern era, which is to say, the last 200 years or so, was between ages 25 and 30. Today, the global average is 73 years old. It is 78 in the United States and 85 in Hong Kong.
In the mid-18th century, 40 percent of children died before their 15th birthday in Sweden and 50 percent in Bavaria. That was not unusual. The average child mortality among hunter-gatherers was 49 percent. Today, global child mortality is 4 percent. It is 0.3 percent in the Nordic nations and Japan.
Most of the people who survived into adulthood lived on the equivalent of $2 per day—a permanent state of penury that lasted from the start of the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago until the 1800s. Today, the global average is $35—adjusted for inflation. Put differently, the average inhabitant of the world is 18 times better off.
With rising incomes came a massive reduction in absolute poverty, which fell from 90 percent in the early 19th century to 40 percent in 1980 to less than 10 percent today. As scholars from the Brookings Institution put it, “Poverty reduction of this magnitude is unparalleled in history.”
Along with absolute poverty came hunger. Famines were once common, and the average food consumption in France did not reach 2,000 calories per person per day until the 1820s. Today, the global average is approaching 3,000 calories, and obesity is an increasing problem—even in sub-Saharan Africa.
Almost 90 percent of people worldwide in 1820 were illiterate. Today, over 90 percent of humanity is literate. As late as 1870, the total length of schooling at all levels of education for people between the ages of 24 and 65 was 0.5 years. Today, it is nine years.
These are the basics, but don’t forget other conveniences of modern life, such as antibiotics. President Calvin Coolidge’s son died from an infected blister, which he developed while playing tennis at the White House in 1924. Four years later, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. Or think of air conditioning, the arrival of which increased productivity and, therefore, standards of living in the American South and ensured that New Yorkers didn’t have to sleep on outside staircases during the summer to keep cool.
So far, I have chiefly focused only on material improvements. Technological change, which drives material progress forward, is cumulative. But the unprecedented prosperity that most people enjoy today isn’t the most remarkable aspect of modern life. That must be the gradual improvement in our treatment of one another and of the natural world around us—a fact that’s even more remarkable given that human nature is largely unchanging.
Let’s start with the most obvious. Slavery can be traced back to Sumer, a Middle Eastern civilization that flourished between 4,500 BC and 1,900 BC. Over the succeeding 4,000 years, every civilization at one point or another practiced chattel slavery. Today, it is banned in every country on Earth.
In ancient Greece and many other cultures, women were the property of men. They were deliberately kept confined and ignorant. And while it is true that the status of women ranged widely throughout history, it was only in 1893 New Zealand that women obtained the right to vote. Today, the only place where women have no vote is the Papal Election at the Vatican.
A similar story can be told about gays and lesbians. It is a myth that the equality, which gays and lesbians enjoy in the West today, is merely a return to a happy ancient past. The Greeks tolerated (and highly regulated) sexual encounters among men, but lesbianism (women being the property of men) was unacceptable. The same was true about relationships between adult males. In the end, all men were expected to marry and produce children for the military.
Similarly, it is a mistake to create a dichotomy between males and the rest. Most men in history never had political power. The United States was the first country on Earth where most free men could vote in the early 1800s. Prior to that, men formed the backbone of oppressed peasantry, whose job was to feed the aristocrats and die in their wars.
Strange though it may sound, given the Russian barbarism in Ukraine and Hamas’s in Israel, data suggests that humans are more peaceful than they used to be. Five hundred years ago, great powers were at war 100 percent of the time. Every springtime, armies moved, invaded the neighbor’s territory, and fought until wintertime. War was the norm. Today, it is peace. In fact, this year marks 70 years since the last war between great powers. No comparable period of peace exists in the historical record.
Homicides are also down. At the time of Leonardo Da Vinci, some 73 out of every 100,000 Italians could expect to be murdered in their lifetimes. Today, it is less than one. Something similar has happened in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Scandinavia, and many other places on Earth.
Human sacrifice, cannibalism, eunuchs, harems, dueling, foot-binding, heretic and witch burning, public torture and executions, infanticide, freak shows and laughing at the insane, as Harvard University’s Steven Pinker has documented, are all gone or linger only in the worst of the planet’s backwaters.
Finally, we are also more mindful of nonhumans. Lowering cats into a fire to make them scream was a popular spectacle in 16th century Paris. Ditto bearbaiting, a blood sport in which a chained bear and one or more dogs were forced to fight. Speaking of dogs, some were used as foot warmers while others were bred to run on a wheel, called a turnspit or dog wheel, to turn the meat in the kitchen. Whaling was also common.
Overwhelming evidence from across the academic disciplines clearly shows that we are richer, live longer, are better fed, and are better educated. Most of all, evidence shows that we are more humane. My point, therefore, is a simple one: this is the best time to be alive.
