A Better World, Backed by Data
It’s politics season in America. This one is particularly bad. I’ll leave off lamenting our lack of endearing candidates and endeavor to destabilize a bit of the unbridled pessimism that springs forth when two opposing political parties turn a nation into their battleground of divisive plays for power.
The 50 states of America unite not just to advance America but to continuously improve our world at large. As one of the most powerful nations in this world, our responsibility and duty rests first and foremost in the intelligence and worldliness of our populace. That is to say, not just an understanding of the present. We must have the wisdom to look beyond our borders and deeper into history. A broader perspective on time reveals that things may not be as they initially seem.
While the percentage of US citizens holding a passport is growing, it’s still only about 100M Americans. That 1/3 of the county leaves 66% of Americans unable to legally travel outside USA. It’s therefore no wonder that our news is overly nationalistic and tends to lack a cohesive worldview. Let’s take a crack at breaking that trend whilst instilling a healthy dose of rational optimism toward humanity’s shared global future.
The world is much better than it has ever been, as evidenced by the following economic data visualized by Max Roser at University of Oxford.
First, let’s all rejoice that pretty much everyone is living longer. Life expectancy has doubled from 1800 to 2001.
Play around with this graph to explore changes in life expectancy of countries:
Longer life expectancy may not mean much if quality of life is not also improved. Luckily, nearly every metric is ascending.
The UN’s overall Human Development Index has been on the rise for decades.
Fewer than 10% of people on the planet now live in absolute poverty. We’re not talking about losing a car to a debt collector. We’re talking about raw destitution.
Absolute poverty is defined by the United Nations as “a condition characterised by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services.” In 1900, 80% of the world’s population lived in absolute poverty.
Just look at these changes in GDP per capita over the past few hundred years! Here it’s shown in purchasing power of the 1990 USD.
Global income distribution is also on the rise. In the late 1990s, the world was clearly divided between rich and poor. Despite the growing wealth inequality problem in America, the global distinction is much less pronounced as wealth creeps ever higher and more evenly distributed.
And what are we doing with this newfound wealth?
We’re educating everyone.
We’ve innovated tremendously in commodity production, such that most people can afford food,
and electricity,
which if you live in a developed nation and want to turn on a lightbulb, is trending toward free.
Electricity even packs exponentially more punch per kwh.
Sure, you may say, we have more. But we’re working more for it. Actually..
100 years is not so long ago that we should accept forgetting it. The web is full of posts lamenting the hours in an average workweek and sure, I’m among those who often work passionately for well over 40 hours a week. Yet if we consult historical data, people — including Americans — work on average nearly 20 hours less per week now than the did in the year 1900.
Last in this post and certainly not least, democracy is on the rise.
About half of citizens around the world live in democratic conditions, compared to a mere 10% in 1901. The percentage of anocracies, unstable governments, has somewhat ironically remained steady. There are still far too many people living in autocracies; however, it is invigorating to see that the relative percentage is on the decline.
Globally, death by war is on the decline. And where it’s not, we’re drawing on clever algorithms to predict and hopefully prevent many of the would-be future deaths.
Conclusions
We have access to more resources by working fewer hours. Those resources are getting cheaper year by year. Ultimately, a better world means both better quality of life and deeper connections to one other. These graphs by no means cover everything. There are still plenty of foes of progress; however, we stand to benefit by bearing in mind how far humanity has come since the Industrial Revolution.
As we ponder the future of America, it is important to consider her not in isolation but relative to the world at large and in the broader context of history. May these data catalyze productive conversations. In times of political dissonance, perhaps that’s what we need most.
Originally published at Amy Robinson Sterling.
