“Ghana said it had made progress in curbing poverty amid an improvement in households’ conditions of nutrition and education, although inequality remained a persistent problem.

A multidimensional poverty index for the West African nation declined to 21.9% at the end of the third quarter of last year from 24.9% in the final quarter of 2024, Ghana Statistical Service said in a report on Wednesday…

The measure tracks worsening states of living, employment, health and education using 13 indicators.”

From Bloomberg.

“Rwanda has recorded a reduction in child undernutrition, with stunting declining from 33 per cent in 2020 to 27 per cent in 2025, according to the (2021-2025) Demographic and Health Survey (DHS).

The results of DHS 2025 were announced on Wednesday, December 17.”

From The New Times.

“We examine how consumers modify their food purchases after adopting appetite-suppressing GLP-1 receptor agonists, such as Ozempic and Wegovy. Using survey responses on medication adoption linked to transaction data from a representative U.S. household panel, we document the prevalence, motivations, and demographic patterns of GLP-1 adoption. Households with at least one GLP-1 user reduce grocery spending by 5.3% within six months of adoption, with higher-income households reducing spending by 8.2%. While most food categories see spending declines, the largest reductions are concentrated in calorie-dense, processed categories, including a 10.1% decline in savory snacks. In contrast, a small set of categories show directionally positive changes, with yogurt experiencing the only statistically significant increase. We also find an 8.0% decline in spending at fast-food chains, coffee shops, and limited-service restaurants. These food demand adjustments persist through the first year of medication use, though with some attenuation after six months.”

From Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

Summary: For centuries, people feared that population growth would outstrip food supply, leading to famine and collapse. Yet wheat tells a different story: production has soared, yields have multiplied, and the cost in human effort has plummeted. Despite wars, droughts, and disruptions, innovation and open markets have made wheat more abundant than ever.

The Reverend Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) got it backwards. In his 1798 Essay on Population he warned that “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.”

Malthus even added, with no small dose of condescension, that “a slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.”

When Malthus published his essay, the world’s population hovered around 1 billion. By 1960 it had reached 3 billion. Today it stands at roughly 8.2 billion. And yet, instead of mass starvation, food production has outpaced population growth. Consider wheat.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, since 1960 wheat production has surged by 250 percent, while the world’s population grew by only 171 percent. For every 1 percent increase in population, wheat production rose by 1.46 percent. Even more remarkable, this bounty came from just 9 percent more arable land. Wheat yields—the amount harvested per acre—have soared by 271 percent.

But what about the time price? Glad you asked. Since 1960, the time price of wheat has fallen by 85.7 percent.

Put differently, the time it took to earn the money to buy a single bushel of wheat now buys almost seven bushels.

Yes, there have been moments when wheat prices spiked—due to droughts, wars, and politics. Yet with fewer conflicts, relentless innovation, and open markets, wheat has only grown more abundant. If Reverend Malthus could see our world today, I suspect he’d be relieved—and perhaps even delighted—that human ingenuity proved him to be so spectacularly wrong.

Find more of Gale’s work at his Substack, Gale Winds.