Right now, many people are anxious about the state of the world. Issues like climate change, nuclear proliferation, and flu pandemics are all things that could effectively end life as we know it in the west. Worse still, the media tends to focus on these future unknowns instead of the successes that we’re achieving today. The 2010s were, globally-speaking, a roaring decade that saw more people lifted out of poverty than ever before in the history of our species.
Even in the US, things are looking good. Between 1970 and today, incomes doubled. Continued progress in technology and factor productivity mean that the average person today is around twice as productive as their counterparts fifty years ago.
The statistics on poverty are promising too. The number of people in the US living below the poverty line has fallen substantially since World War Two, owing to a combination of government welfare programs and economic opportunities in the private sector.
If you would like to learn more about the role of the government in tackling poverty across America, take a look at the following infographic. It charts the progress of the nation from the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the aftermath of the Great Depression up to the present day.
What’s nice about it is that it leads to some optimistic reading. It proves that the world isn’t all bad and that, overall, our societies are making substantial progress. Poverty rates are falling long term, and they could go even lower in the future if productivity and wages pick up.
Infographic by Norwich University
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