The View | Statistics show us that things are not as bad as they seem
Compared with historical norms, most people are richer, healthier, more educated and freer
Last week’s deadly collapse of a sludge pile in Shenzhen seems symbolic of the year we are about to put behind us. Economic conditions are anaemic, middle classes are shrinking, terrorist attacks have occurred on almost every continent, intolerance and political tensions are deepening around the globe. On a personal note, a trip home for Christmas revealed that half my relatives want to vote for Donald Trump.
What can we possibly toast to this year? It will have to be statistics. Ignore the headlines and seek comfort in the numbers, because they remind us that on the whole, life is getting better. Compared with historical norms, most global citizens alive today are richer, healthier, more educated, freer and at minimal risk of war or deadly violence.
In the modern world, most of us are more likely to die from diseases related to surplus (like obesity) than want
Some of the data Roser has collected are approximations that go back centuries, showing everything from the rate of violent death among the Crow Cheek tribe in North America in the 14th century based on archaeological diggings – a gruesome 60 per cent – to the fact that wages and food prices are much less volatile now than over the long arc of history. The crazy ride in commodities we’ve seen in the past decade is in fact tame compared with how, say, wheat prices in Pisa performed for much of the past millennium, according to the number-crunchers at Our World In Data.
Why then are so many of us feeling that things are getting worse? For those in the rich world, many jobs and opportunities are moving to the emerging world – and the capitalists who execute, or otherwise benefit from this transition are stupendously compensated. Thus the widening wealth gap in the mostly rich-world OECD member countries. Still, globalisation has helped lift millions in the developed world from rock-bottom poverty. There is more wealth equality among nations than in the past.
As countries get richer they tend to invest in education, and more educated populations agitate for political freedoms. At the beginning of the 20th century only 10 per cent of the world’s population lived in democracies, today it is more than 50 per cent.
