Could it be that the world is getting better?

We had much to be glum about as we came to the end of 2021. We are brainwashed with bad news. “If it bleeds it leads,” say the wags in the newsroom. One plane crash or celebrity’s death or royal family transgressions or Russian military manoeuvres are worth more airtime than news that we are winning the fight against early death.
Is the natural condition of mankind pessimism, whereas, in truth, we have good reason to be optimistic?
The World Health Organization has some telling facts. Over the last two decades infant deaths have fallen by a half. Measle deaths have fallen by three-quarters and both tuberculosis and maternal deaths by a half. Aids-related illnesses have been cut by over a quarter. In 1960 one in five children died before the age of 5. Today it is one in 20 and falling. Nevertheless, 7.4 children under 14 have died because of preventable and treatable causes.
Developing countries have caught up far more quickly in health than in wealth. For instance, Vietnam has the same health as the US had in 1980 but at present the same income per head as the US had in 1920.
Despite the Great Recession of 2007-2009, poverty has plummeted. The Chinese government claimed last year that it had abolished poverty. In India a lot of progress has been made. Although most of that drop has happened in China and India it has also happened to various degrees in most Third World countries. However, Covid has slowed, sometimes reversed, some of these gains. Even so sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest of the continents, appears to have avoided the worst of the disease.
Population growth is slowing. The number of children in the world today is the most there is likely to be. Hans Rosling of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute told the BBC, “We have entered the age of the ‘Peak Child’.”
Education is spreading rapidly for girls. In Muslim Bangladesh there are as many girls in school as boys. In conservative Saudi Arabia there are more young women in university than men- and their exam results are better.
In 2022, doubtless there will be war in Somalia, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Yemen and perhaps Sudan, and on a reduced scale in Afghanistan and Syria. Small bands of Islamic militants will disrupt some West African countries and Mozambique. Of that we can be sure. But adding the populations of these countries together, war affects a tiny percentage of the world’s population.
There will probably be another year of “Cold Peace” between Russia and the West unless both sides can engineer a way out of the quite unnecessary Ukrainian imbroglio and find a way to work together- to nuclear disarm, to roll back the expansion of Nato, to reverse climate change and to pull the rug from under the Islamic State movement (IS). Only ignorance and prejudice keeps the two superpowers apart. It should be possible for intelligent people to bridge the present gap in understanding. The European Union has been hurt by Brexit but it continues to be the most peaceful, healthy and successful part of the globe.
The pace of action against malaria, other tropical diseases and global warming is out of step with what is necessary. But we know the solution to these three problems. At last we can say, that after years of propaganda and education by enthusiasts, a majority of the world’s people understand the basic issues and are prepared to support new initiatives.
There is no good reason why there shouldn’t be rapid progress in vaccines now that scientists have shown what can be done if they are given money and incentives by governments.
Right after the ending of the Cold War in 1991 there was a surge in the growth of the number of states practicing democracy. But over the last 15 years the numbers have dropped. Nevertheless, if we look at the number of people who live under democracy rather than the quantity of states, the numbers look different. The countries which have become less democratic, excluding Russia and the US, are countries with small populations. Looked at this way the fall-off is not severe.
At the onset of 2022 we need a return to perspective. Our destiny is not down. The world is a far better place than it was at the end of the Second World War.