Description
A Book of the Year for The Economist and the Observer
It's all over our televisions, newspapers and the internet. Every day we're bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is Brexit, financial collapse, unemployment, poverty, environmental disasters, disease, hunger, war. Indeed, our world now seems to be on the brink of collapse, and yet:
- We've made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000
- 285,000 more people have gained access to safe waterevery dayfor the last 25 years
- In the last 50 years world poverty has fallen more than it did in the preceding 500
Contrary to what most of us believe, our progress over the past few decades has been unprecedented. By almost any index you care to identify, things are markedly better now than they have ever been for almost everyone alive.
Examining official data from the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Health Organiza
