The World is Getting Quietly, Relentlessly Better is the title of a recent WSJ article by its chief economics commentator Greg Ip. “If you spent 2018 mainlining misery about global warming, inequality, toxic politics or other anxieties, I’m here to break your addiction with some good news: The world got better last year, and it is going to get even better this year,” writes Ip in his opening paragraph. “Poverty around the world is plummeting; half the world is now middle class; and illiteracy, disease and deadly violence are receding. These things don’t make headlines because they are gradual, relentless and unsurprising.”
Ip’s article is mostly based on data insights from Our World in Data, a comprehensive website that quantifies the evolution of our global living conditions over the past few centuries. Our World in Data (OWID) is an initiative of the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development, led by economist Max Roser at the University of Oxford.
OWID analyzes longitudinal data on how the world has been changing over decades and centuries, as well as explaining the causes and consequences of those changes in its accompanying articles. It makes extensive use of visual aids, including interactive graphs and maps, to present its analyses and insights. Its content is organized into 15 main sections: population, health, food, energy, environment, technology, growth & inequality, work & life, public sector, global connections, war & peace, politics, violence & rights, education, media and culture, - each of which further includes a number of subsections.
Let me summarize just a few of the key trends in the OWID website.
Population growth
OWID argues that the world’s population growth can be divided into three distinct periods. The first was a very long period of very slow annual growth rate, - well below 1%, - from prehistoric times until the early 1800s, when the human population was around one billion. Next came a period of high population growth, characterized by the rising standards of living and health care improvements of the industrial revolution. The world’s population reached 2 billion in the late 1920s, then rose to 4 billion in the mid 1970s, and 6 billion in 2000. Annual growth rate increased particularly fast in the 20th century, reaching a peak of around 2.1% in the 1960s before starting to systematically decline.
The third population period is now unfolding, characterized by much slower population growth rates. Global population is expected to peak toward the end of this century. Our current population is around 7.7 billion, with an annual growth rate of 1.1%. The median projections of the UN Population Division estimate that the population will reach 9.8 billion with a growth rate of 0.5% in 2050, and will peak around 2100 at roughly 11.2 billion with a growth rate of 0.1%. Other projections estimate that the population will likely peak at 9.4 billion around 2070 and then decline to around 9 billion in 2100. Some project that after reaching a peak of 9 billion, the world’s population will decline back to today’s level, - around 7 billion, - by 2100.
A few countries are already experiencing population declines. Japan’s population reached a peak of 128 million around 2010, and is projected to decline to 110 million in 2050, and 85 million in 2100. Germany’s population is projected to slowly decline from its current peak of 83 million to 79 million in 2050 and 71 million in 2100.
The US population is currently around 330 million, the world’s third most populous country after China and India. It’s projected to reach 390 million in 2050 and 450 million in 2100. The US growth rate is 0.71% including immigration, 0.43% without. China is the most populous country, with a current population of 1.42 billion. Its population is expected to peak at around 1.44 billion within the next decade, then decline to 1.36 billion by 2050 and 1 billion by 2100. India’s current population is just slightly below China’s at 1.37 billion; it’s expected to peak at around 1.7 billion by 2060, and decline to 1.5 billion by 2050.
Life expectancy
Until the early 1800s, life expectancy was between 30 and 40 years all around the world. By 1900, it had risen to between 45 and 50 years in the more industrialized countries, while remaining between 30 and 35 years everywhere else.
These disparities started to decrease in the second half of the 20th century. The world’s average life expectancy is now around 71.5. Japan has the world’s highest life expectancy at 83.7 years, followed by close to 30 countries with life expectancies of over 80 years. US life expectancy is now 78.6 years, having slightly declined over the past few years due to drug overdoses and suicides. China’s life expectancy is 76 years, and India’s is 68. Several countries in sub-Sahara Africa have life expectancies under 60 years.
Under-5 child mortality
A major reason for the higher life expectancies is the declining child mortality over the past 200 years. In 1800, over 43% of the world’s newborns, died before their 5th birthday. In 1900, global child mortality was still 36% - i.e., every third child died by age 5.
Child mortality started to rapidly decline in the 20th century, given improvements in health care and hygiene and lower poverty rates. Global child mortality fell to 18.2% in 1960, and to 4.3% in 2015, - one of the world’s most substantial achievements. In advanced economies, under-5 child mortality is under 1%; it’s 1.2% in China, 1.7% in Brazil, and 4.8% in India.
“In Sub-Saharan Africa, child mortality has been continuously falling for the last 50 years (1 in 4 children died in the early 60s – today it is less than 1 in 10),” writes Roser. “Over the last decade this improvement has been happening faster than ever before. Rising prosperity, rising education and the spread of health care around the globe are the major drivers of this progress.”
Extreme poverty
For most of recorded history humans lived on the brink of starvation. In the early 1800s, the vast majority of people lived in extreme poverty, with only a tiny elite enjoying a higher standard of living. Since then, poverty has been continuously falling, despite a 7-fold increase in population over the past two centuries.
Today, the World Bank defines the international extreme poverty threshold as living at the equivalent of less than $1.90 a day adjusted for a country’s purchasing power. As recently as 1981, 44% of the world’s population was considered to live in extreme poverty. Since then, this number has declined faster than ever before in world history, - to 30% in 2000, and below 11% in 2013. Extreme poverty has dramatically declined in most of the world - 15% in South Asia; 5.4% in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 3.6% in East Asia and the Pacific. However, the extreme poverty rate is still over 40% in sub-Sahara Africa.
Literacy and Education
In 1800, only 12% of the world’s population over 15 years was literate. Literacy rates grew slowly over the next 150 years, - to 21% in 1900, and 36% in 1950, - before rising rapidly in the second half of the 20th century with the expansion of education around the world. Global literacy was around 80% by 2000, and is over 85% today. Literacy is almost universal in advanced economies, over 95% in China, 92% in Brazil, near 80% in Kenya, 70% in India, and in the low 50s in Nigeria. All the rates are higher for younger (15-24) populations.
Educational attainment has also rapidly accelerated over the past 50 years. The number of years spent in school is a common measure of a population’s educational attainment. In 1960, the US had the highest mean years of schooling at around 9.5 years, with Germany at 7.5, the UK around 7 years and most of the rest of the world well below those figures. Today, according the the World Bank’s Human Development Index, the mean years of schooling around the world is 8.4 years, with Germany at 14.1 years; the US at 13.4; the UK at 12.9; China at 7.8; Brazil at 7.8; and India at 6.4. The mean years of schooling in the 36 OECD countries is 12 years, compared to 5.6 years in sub-Sahara African countries.
Lots of similarly positive statistics can be found in the Our Word in Data website.
“If the world is getting so much better, why does everyone seem so miserable?,” asks Greg Ip in his WSJ article. “Perhaps because in the U.S., life is improving more slowly than in poorer countries, and in some places it is getting worse. Yet for most Americans, life is getting better: Median incomes are rising, average health is improving, and violent crime, divorce and teen pregnancy are all trending down.”
“Perhaps it also feels irresponsible to celebrate the many ways the world is quietly getting better because it distracts from the fight against things that are loudly getting worse: polarized and authoritarian politics, deadly opioids, nuclear proliferation, and most of all, a warming climate - a consequence of all those new middle-class entrants burning fossil fuels…”
“The problems the world faces are far smaller than those it has already overcome and can be solved the same way: not by betting on miracles but by patiently applying knowledge and tools we already possess… If we can solve global poverty, we can solve other problems like climate change.”
It is important to point out the the remarkable change of life expectancy for the world has not been the result of improvements in clinical care. Clinical care is important, but it has been estimated that 75-85% of the improvement has been the result of inexpensive public health measures, including hygiene, vaccination, nutrition, etc of which the world spends little on. Since 1950, every year global life expectancy has increased, truly a remarkable phenomenon.
There is a wonderful set of papers by Omran, called the epidemiologic transition.
I agree that we are better off now than we have ever been. Think of your parents and grandparents, most died in their late 50 and early 60s, now we can look forward world wide to living into our late 70s
Ronald LaPorte, PhD, emeritus professor of epidemiology, and former WHO Collaborating Center director ([email protected])
Posted by: professor ronald laporte | February 18, 2019 at 11:23 AM
I think that one big point to make is that Americans tend to look at things from an American or Western European point of view. In the "developed" Western World (US and Europe), we are seeing falling living standards for the average working man or woman and the accumulation of debt to attempt to sustain a standard of living that is not sustainable for the long term. We are seeing a concentration of wealth where the top 400 people earn more than the bottom 60% of the population, 150 million people. So, without meaningful reform, average standards of living will fall even further. Yes, things are getting much better in the World, I think primarily because commerce has replaced war as a means of gaining power and acquiring things. The poorest countries are those who continue to have armed conflict, and continue to choose war over commerce, trade, and education. My concern is that in "America" we are falling back into a "dark ages" with nationalism, patriotism, and a disregard for our fellow man or woman on the rise. We are sowing the seeds of our own undoing.
The distribution of cell phone technology with solar charging capabilities has brought with it a way to connect even the remotest villages and tribes into "the world" where they can educate and bring their societies forward into modern times. If we can continue to focus on peace, commerce, and education, the world would be a much better place. America needs to put down its arms and educate its population at a higher European level, or face becoming a 3rd world country in the late 21st century.
And bully to those countries who are lifting their countries out of poverty and into the modern age of prosperity. The days of armed conflict should end as no one can afford to go to war or be at war any more. Guns to plowshares, or more like armed drones to robotics which help the elderly and disabled.
Posted by: Glen Austin | February 18, 2019 at 11:59 AM