Is the World Actually Getting Better?
If you judged the world only by your feed, you would assume it is in freefall. Every notification is another crisis. But zoom out from the daily headlines to the long-run data, and a very different picture appears, one of enormous, uneven, and easily overlooked progress. So which is true? Both, it turns out, and the gap between them is worth understanding.
Short version: on many of the biggest measures, from extreme poverty to child mortality to literacy, the world has improved dramatically over the last few decades. That progress is real, but it is uneven, fragile, and in some areas has recently slowed. And because good news is slow and bad news is loud, the improvement is easy to miss entirely.
The case that things are getting better
Start with the numbers that rarely trend. These are long-run measures tracked by organizations like Our World in Data, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations. They are not spin. They are among the most important facts about the last generation, and most people have never heard them.
The share of the world living in extreme poverty fell from roughly 38 percent in 1990 to under 10 percent in recent years, even as the global population grew by billions, according to Our World in Data.
The number of children who die before their fifth birthday dropped from about 12.8 million a year in 1990 to under 5 million, and the under-five mortality rate has more than halved, per WHO and UNICEF estimates.
Global life expectancy has risen by decades over the last century, and the share of adults who can read has climbed from a small minority two centuries ago to the large majority of humanity today.
Behind each figure are undramatic, world-changing efforts: vaccines and clean water, oral rehydration and better nutrition, schools built and diseases pushed back. None of it arrived as breaking news. It accumulated quietly, year after year, which is exactly why it is so easy to overlook.
Why it does not feel that way
If things are improving, why does it feel like the opposite? Two reasons, and neither is that you are wrong to feel uneasy.
The first is negativity bias. Humans evolved to notice threats more than improvements, because missing a danger was far costlier than missing a nice surprise. A frightening headline grabs you; a chart trending gently in the right direction does not. We wrote more about this in why the news is so negative.
The second is the pace mismatch. Bad news is often an event: a crash, a disaster, a scandal, something that happens on a Tuesday and fits neatly into a headline. Good news is usually a process: extreme poverty falling by a fraction of a percent a year, decade after decade. Journalism is built to cover events, so the slow, cumulative victories almost never qualify as news. Progress is real, but it is the wrong shape to be reported.
Bad news is an event. Good news is a trend. Only one of them fits in a headline, and it is not the one that has quietly saved millions of lives.
The honest caveats
Optimism only earns trust when it is honest, so here is the other side. "Better than before" is not the same as "good enough," and progress is neither universal nor guaranteed.
- It is uneven. Averages hide enormous gaps. Whole regions and communities have been left behind, and a global improvement can coexist with a local crisis.
- It can stall or reverse. The decline in extreme poverty slowed sharply in the early 2020s, and the fall in child mortality has decelerated in recent years. Trend lines are made by people, and they can bend the wrong way.
- Some problems are genuinely getting harder. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and rising inequality are real and serious, and pointing to progress elsewhere does not wave them away.
Holding the caveats and the progress together is the whole point. The goal is not to feel good. It is to see clearly.
Why any of this matters
This is not an argument for looking away. It is the opposite. When people believe nothing ever improves, they disengage, because effort feels pointless. But the record shows that huge problems have been reduced before, again and again, by ordinary people who kept working at them. That is not a reason to relax. It is a reason to act, and to expect that action can work.
Informed optimism is not the belief that everything is fine. It is the refusal to let the loudest, worst version of events be the only story you carry around. And it starts with letting a little of the other evidence back in.
Let a little of the good news back in
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Download on the App StoreFrequently asked questions
Is the world getting better or worse?
On many long-run measures the world has clearly improved. Since 1990, the share of people in extreme poverty has fallen from about 38 percent to under 10 percent, and the under-five child mortality rate has more than halved. Progress is real but uneven and, on some measures, has slowed recently, so both things are true at once: serious problems remain, and life has improved dramatically for billions of people.
Has extreme poverty really fallen?
Yes. According to Our World in Data, the share of the global population living in extreme poverty fell from roughly 38 percent in 1990 to under 10 percent in recent years, even as the world population grew. The pace of decline has slowed since 2020, but the long-run trend is a dramatic reduction.
Why does it feel like everything is getting worse?
Because the news is structured to show you the worst of everything, and your brain is wired to pay extra attention to threats. Progress tends to be slow, gradual, and undramatic, which is exactly the kind of story that does not make headlines, so steady improvement stays invisible while every crisis is loud.
Is it naive to be optimistic about the world?
No. Informed optimism is not the belief that everything is fine. It is the recognition that many problems have been reduced before, by people who kept working at them, which is a reason to act rather than a reason to look away.
Sources: Our World in Data, Poverty; World Health Organization, Child mortality; UNICEF Data, Under-five mortality. Figures are long-run estimates and are updated periodically by these organizations.