In the past 30 years, we have spent $2.74 trillion on foreign aid, seen the rise and fall of the dotcom bubble, witnessed some of the worst civil wars in the century ( ie. Lebanon, Rwanda, Algeria, etc.), lived and are living through different pandemics ( ie. SARS, Bird flu, Swine flu, etc), managed to bring the world on the edge of global warming and lived through two Bush administrations.
Sometimes, you have to wonder, is our world and humanity getting any better? Any more civilised? Here’s some stats from The Economist to shed some light.
1) In China 25 years ago, over 600m people—two-thirds of the population—were living in extreme poverty (on $1 a day or less). Now, the number on $1 a day is below 180m.
2) In the world as a whole, a stunning 135m people escaped dire poverty between 1999 and 2004. This is more than the population of Japan or Russia—and more people, more quickly than at any other time in history.
3) In South Asia, the number of those without clean water has been nearly halved since 1990.
4) In 2007 Unicef, the United Nations child-welfare body, said that for the first time in modern history fewer than 10m children were dying each year before the age of five.
5) The long march to literacy is nearing an end: three-quarters of people aged 15–25 were literate in 1975; now the rate is nearly nine-tenths.
6) A World Bank study of 19 poor countries concluded that every 1% increase in national income per head translates into a 1.3 point fall in extreme poverty.
7) In 2007, the global economy entered its fifth year of over 4% annual growth—the longest period of such strong expansion since the early 1970s. ( yes yes, this is rather hard to swallow given current situations).
The International Monetary Fund reckons that in 2008 China and India will be the largest contributors to worldwide growth for the first time.
9) Since the mid-1990s, the incomes of the poorest fifth have risen everywhere except, marginally, in Latin America, where they have been affected by the after-shocks of debt crises. In Asia, the real incomes of the poorest fifth rose 4% a year; in Africa, by 2% a year, faster than the rise for other income groups.
10) In 1990 those on $1 a day accounted for more than a quarter of the population of developing countries. By 2015, on current rates, the proportion of very poor people should have shrunk to 10%.
11) The number of conflicts (both international and civil) fell from over 50 at the start of the 1990s to just over 30 in 2005.
12) There has been a dramatic rise in the number of conflicts resolved. During this decade civil wars have come to an end or have been restrained in Aceh, Angola, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, Nepal, Timor-Leste and Sierra Leone.
13) Despite claims to the contrary by the Bush administration, the number of international terrorist incidents has risen since September 11th 2001, after a decade of decline. The number of deaths from terrorist acts has climbed almost everywhere. However, this picture of worldwide growth is misleading. While it is true that Asia, Latin America and Europe have all experienced more terrorist attacks than before, they are still rare.
14) Since 2001, the Middle East has suffered more violence and fatalities than the rest of the world put together.
***
So what does this all mean? Stepping back and looking at things on a LARGER scale, we can really see that we’re shaping a better world, even if it means piecing it together
s l o w l y.
photo credit: greencandy8888