tHere is a Big WOrld BeyOnd tHe Wall, and WHile mucH OF
it still lags behind the U.S. and Europe in terms of economic
development and human rights, it’s a lot better now than it was
in 1969. The website Our World in Data has become the go-to
resource for measuring global progress. It’s showing improve-
ment across almost all measures of human progress. Here are a
handful of metrics, out of hundreds. In 1969, 449 people out of
every 100,000 died from an infectious disease. Now, it’s 140, a
drop of 69 percent. Over the decade of the ’60s, almost a million
people died in wars. Over the most recent decade, it was around
567,000. That’s twice as many people on earth and half as many
deaths. But the real progress has been on poverty and hunger.
In 1969, 36 percent of the world’s population lived in what the
United Nations terms “extreme poverty.” Now it’s 8 percent. On
average, 4,600 people starved to death each day during the ’60s.
Now, it’s one-fifth of that, despite a larger population.And here’s another way we’re bet-
ter off. In the ’60s, the most common
form of government on earth was
dictatorships. There were 119 autoc-
racies and only 36 democracies. To-
day, there are 99 democracies in the
world. Yay freedom!
Of course, averages deceive. The fact
that people, on average, are better off
isn’t very comforting to people in Syria,
Central America or the South Sudan.
Nor does this address the elephant in
the room, climate change, which is like-
ly to adversely affect developing nations
far more than developed ones, which
can just turn down the thermostat.The Bigger
World
Outside
America