Climate, poverty, health: worldwide positive trend

Published today at 9:20 am

There was once a time when optimistic popular science books were a box office hit. The evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker told the public that we have never lived in such a peaceful, healthy and wealthy society as we do today.

Maintaining this confidence is difficult given the headlines of the last few months and years. Wars, crises, climate – the bad news seems to never end. One person who doesn’t let this discourage her is Dina Pomeranz. The professor of applied economics at the University of Zurich says that not everything is good in the world, but many things are getting better and better.

Pomeranz attributes the rampant hopelessness to, among other things, “the fact that many people are not aware of where we actually stand and where we come from.” At the end of the year, we’ll look at six developments with her that are encouraging.

Spectacular reduction in poverty

Deprivation, hunger, abject poverty: for most of history, these conditions were a reality for a majority of people. Calculations show that around 1900 around 60 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. This means that they were unable to satisfy basic needs, such as having enough food.

Over the last 200 years, global poverty has steadily declined. In the last few decades, this has increased particularly rapidly: in 1990, 30 percent of the world’s people were considered extremely poor, today the figure is still 9 percent. Even in absolute terms, the number of the poorest people is falling rapidly – even though the number of people in the world has multiplied.

“Theoretically, it could be in the headlines every day: Since yesterday, over 100,000 people have escaped extreme poverty,” says Pomeranz. “Our generation has experienced a massive reduction in poverty like no other before it.”

It is interesting that many people assessed this development in exactly the opposite way. Surveys often express the belief that the proportion of poor people has increased. The glorified idea that people used to live simply but happily is also wrong. “Data clearly shows that people in poverty have less life satisfaction and more depression.”

Almost all children worldwide experience their fifth birthday

Losing a child is probably the worst thing that can happen to a parent. And yet it was the fate of many families over the centuries. As recently as 1900, it was estimated that more than four out of ten children worldwide died before the age of five. In Switzerland, too, at the beginning of the 20th century one in five children died in the first few years of life, and in the 1940s one in 20 died.

Today this rate is 0.4 percent in Switzerland and 3.7 percent worldwide. Pomeranz speaks of “one of the greatest revolutions of the last century”. She cites medical advances such as vaccinations and antibiotics as well as access to health services and clean drinking water as the main reasons for the positive development. Her great-uncle died as a child from blood poisoning from a bee sting. Nowadays this could be prevented with a simple antibiotic treatment.

People are getting older and are healthy for longer

While child mortality fell, life expectancy steadily increased. Pomeranz says: “In 1940, life expectancy in Switzerland was the same as, for example, in today’s Ghana – it’s hard to imagine.”

Many people are not aware that this development continues to this day. Compared to 1970, people in Switzerland are now ten years older, and on the African continent it is almost 20 years old. “These are, if you will, decades given away,” says the economist. “Because people not only live longer, but are also healthy for longer.”

Many types of cancer can now be combated more effectively, and the treatment of cardiovascular diseases has also made great progress. And even the potential of vaccinations, which have saved countless lives since their invention, has not yet been exhausted. This is how a syringe is about to break through, which protects against infection with HIV.

More and more people can read and write

This curve is also pointing steeply upwards: more and more people around the world are enjoying school education. In 1900, only one in five people worldwide could read and write, but today the figure is almost nine out of ten.

Dina Pomeranz says the situation is even better than this data suggests at first glance. “Many of those who still appear in statistics today as illiterate people belong to the older generation. For example, while in many African countries less than 30 percent of people over 65 can read and write, among the young generation between 15 and 24 years of age in the same countries it is often more than 80 percent.

Women are no longer second class citizens

According to Pomeranz, it is probably human nature to get used to progress quickly. Accordingly, it is sometimes forgotten how quickly women’s and minority rights have developed in many places over the past decades: “My mother was not allowed to go to high school in central Switzerland in the 1960s because she was a girl. A generation later, I became a professor. A lot has changed already.”

These changes can also be seen in politics: in 1990, 9 percent of parliamentary seats worldwide were held by women; in 2023 it was 26 percent. In the Swiss National Council, the proportion rose from 14.5 to 38.5 percent over the same period. In most countries today, women have – at least on paper – the same property rights as men.

The legal and social situation of sexual minorities has also improved. Marriage of same-sex couples is possible in more and more countries. While the Netherlands started in 2001, marriage for everyone in Switzerland came into force in 2022.

Pomeranz says: “You may find it late. And – as in all areas – there is still a lot of room for improvement. But it is also a fact: billions of people can live more freely and more equally thanks to human rights achievements.”

Don’t despair about the climate crisis

Are progress in the areas of poverty reduction, equality and education fading when there is a danger that is greater than anything else – global warming? Dina Pomeranz frowns: “Yes, the climate crisis actually represents a very big challenge for humanity. But we know many possible solutions. The question is: Will we humans implement this in time?”

The faster our economy and society reduces greenhouse gases achieved the net zero target, the less the damage will be. The economist points out that the expansion of alternative energies has recently made good progress. “The price of solar panels, for example, has fallen dramatically – from more than $120 per watt in 1975 to $0.3 in 2023. And the price is still falling every year.”

The share of wind, hydropower and solar energy in total energy production is currently increasing steadily. In addition to political measures, there are also economic reasons, says Pomeranz, and that is good news: “If it is suddenly one of the cheapest options to produce electricity using solar and wind energy, then companies and consumers have every reason to take this route – regardless of their political ideology.”

The economist considers the rhetoric that prevails in certain parts of the climate movement to be counterproductive. “If the impression arises that the world is doomed, it can lead to hopelessness – and those who are hopeless no longer advocate for good solutions.” It is important that the situation is taken seriously and that effective economic policy decisions are made quickly.

What we can learn from it

Surveys show that many people assess the world situation more negatively than it actually is. Pomeranz says we are probably evolutionarily conditioned to react more strongly to danger than to non-threatening situations. “In addition, positive developments usually happen slowly and steadily, while bad events often occur abruptly.”

The latter has greater novelty value for the media therefore tend to generate headlines. That could be dangerous. “If we think that everything is getting worse, then we can become cynical and hopeless – which can lead to passivity but also to extremism.”

It is undisputed that we are currently facing many major challenges – especially in the geopolitical context and the climate. It is also important to Dina Pomeranz to emphasize that the world is not necessarily or automatically getting better. “But it can be if we work for it.”

This requires the commitment of many people, on a large and small scale: “Be it in politics, science, the media, business, or in dealing with other people.” A look at long-term developments can encourage us.

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