Human Progress, which does an excellent job of providing statistics showing how much the world has improved over the last century, has an interesting Your Life In Numbers sub-site where you can see how much the world has changed since you were born. Just enter where and when you were born, and the site will show you how much the world has changed both in your birth country and the world since then.
For example, I was born in the United States in 1968.
The page also notes that since I was born,
- In 1966, average life expectancy was only 56 years. Today it’s 72. That’s an increase of 29 percent.
- Out of every 1,000 infants born, 113 died before their first birthday. Today, only 32 die. That’s a reduction of 72 percent.
- Median income per person rose from around $6,000 to around $16,000, or by 167 percent – and that’s adjusted for inflation and purchasing power.
- The food supply rose from about 2,300 calories per person per day to over 2,800 calories, an increase of 22 percent, thus reducing hunger.
- The length of schooling that a person could typically expect to receive was 3.9 years. Today, it’s 8.4 years – a 115 percent increase.
- The world has become less authoritarian, with the level of democracy rising from -0.97 to 4.23 on a scale from -10 to 10. That’s an improvement of 536 percent.