This is the first in a two-part series about how our world is continually improving, and what more can be done to continue this progress. Read the second part here.

This article was written by the original owner of startupguide.com, Ryan Allis, and published on his website in 2012. Read more about why Ryan was happy to hand over his website domain to us here.

My grandmother Eva Allis was born in 1904 in Pennsylvania. She was 34 when she had my Dad in 1938. And my Dad was 46 when he helped bring me into the world in 1984.

When Eva was born at the beginning of the 20th century, global life expectancy was 32, 19.5 percent of infants died before they reached their first birthday, and the average person globally made $2,000 per year (in today’s dollars, adjusted for inflation).

Now let’s fast forward a little to over a century. As of 2013, global life expectancy is 70, infant mortality is 3.6 percent, and the average person globally makes $10,070 per year (in today’s dollars).

As a species, we’ve made immense progress over the last century. We’ve made this progress during a period in which we saw the green revolution in agricultural productivity, the invention of personal computing, and the creation of the internet.

We’ve made immense improvements in the measures of health, economics and education. However we’ve got work to do on the environmental measures in order to reach the goal of a world with sustainable prosperity for every person.

Fortunately, for the first time in human history, a world in which every person has access to food, water, shelter, healthcare, and education is in reach.

Infant mortality is usually defined as the number of infants who are born who do not make it to the age of one.

In 1900, the infant mortality rate in the United States was 160 deaths per 1,000 births (16 percent). Globally, the average infant mortality rate from countries that provided data at that time was approximately 19.5 percent according to a survey of available data by Charles Kenny, the author of Getting Better.

By 2012, the infant mortality rate globally fell to 3.69 percent. From 1900 to 2012, infant mortality fell 81 percent globally (from 195 deaths per 1,000 to 36 deaths per 1,000) as improvements in immunizations and antibiotics, increased food supplies and distribution, better nutrition, safer water supplies, and improved sanitation have surged.

I have been studying extreme poverty and equality since age 17 in an AP Macroeconomics class in 2001. My high school economics teacher Robert Fletcher, amazingly, taught economics from a human perspective rather than a mathematical perspective.

Professor Fletcher shared with me in 2001 that at the time, 22 percent of the world lived on under $1.25 per day. Ever since, I’ve been passionate about the topic of reducing poverty and increasing global access to entrepreneurship.

Following that class, I majored in economics at the University at North Carolina, took five trips to East Africa to invest in tech and solar companies, visited the Kibera slums of Nairobi, visited the Kakuma refugee camp near the South Sudan/Kenya border with the United Nations Foundation Global Entrepreneur Council, and took the Business, Government, and International Economics (BGIE) class as part of the first year MBA program at Harvard Business School.  

Through these explorations, I’ve found that what matters more than a disparity between incomes is ensuring that no one is living in extreme poverty. Let’s take two countries. Imagine in Country A, the bottom 25 percent makes $15 per day and the top 25 percent makes $150 per day. Now imagine Country B in which the bottom 25 percent makes $2 per day and the top 25 percent makes $8 per day.

There is, obviously, a lot less income inequality in Country B, yet in Country B everyone is worse off than in Country A. I find that some inequality of results is okay as long as there is socioeconomic mobility and access to opportunity.

I’m not saying tracking income inequality is useless or that at times an extremely high gini coefficient is never a factor in social unrest. I am instead saying that we should focus our policy and concerns first on reducing poverty levels, which across the world have been rapidly decreasing since 1900.

The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living under $1.25 per day. There are now 1.2 billion people living under $1.25 per day (in constant 2005 dollars).

In 1980, 42.6 percent of the world population was living in extreme poverty (1.9 billion / 4.45 billion total world population). Today, just 16.9 percent of world population is living in extreme poverty (1.2 billion / 7.1 billion total world population).

The cover article of The Economist in June 2013 discussed this rapid decline in poverty.

“Poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25: people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short. They lack not just education, health care, proper clothing and shelter—which most people in most of the world take for granted—but even enough food for physical and mental health. Raising people above that level of wretchedness is not a sufficient ambition for a prosperous planet, but it is a necessary one. The world’s achievement in the field of poverty reduction is, by almost any measure, impressive.” – The Economist, June 1, 2013

Global life expectancy and income have dramatically improved in the last century while extreme poverty has rapidly declined, even as the number of people on the planet increased fourfold. Competitive markets, specialization, engines, energy, medical science, and computerization have greatly improved global productivity and, in turn, the real living standards of our species over the last century.

Modern humans (homosapiens) have been around for about 200,000 years. It took us 190,000 years, from 200,000 BC until 10,000 BC to reach 15 million people.

With the advent of agriculture and the growth of cities and civilization starting in Mesopotamia and then expanding outward, human population reached its first major tipping point, growing from 15 million in 10,000 BC to one billion by the year 1800.

In the 19th century, human population grew 60 percent  from 1.0 billion to 1.6 billion. Then, in the 20th century, human population skyrocketed nearly 300 percent from 1.6 billion to 6.1 billion. Today in 2013, population has reached 7.1 billion and is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.

Only through the progress of medical science, the development of advanced agriculture and the industrial revolution (which brought together both energy and engines), has this immense growth been possible over the last two hundred years.

And with greater population comes the ability for scientists to finally have the economic incentive to solve rare diseases and the ability for economies of scale to enable complex supply chains that bring a variety of goods to your local markets. In short, our ability to choose our products is expanding by the day.

Some may ask, even if we are now living in the most economically prosperous time in human history with low infant mortality, high literacy rates and long life expectancies, are we actually happier than before? This is a valid question.

A 2010 study by Princeton researchers Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, showed that emotional well-being increases with income up to $75,000, but did not rise further after reaching $75,000.

To be clear, I’m not talking about people making $75k earning more. I’m talking about the positive impact of hundreds of millions of families coming out of poverty in the last 100 years. The average person’s income globally increased from $2,000 in 1900 to $10,070 in 2012.

There’s a big difference in what is possible for your life and how well you can take care of your family when you’re earning $35 per day compared to $8 per day (the average in 1900). Reducing death and disease, and having incomes rise sufficiently to enable access to basic needs increases quality of life.

Back in 1900, life expectancy at birth was 32. There was no anti-bacterial medication, penicillin, or anesthesia. Women of childbearing age knew that each pregnancy might kill them. Mothers knew they were likely to lose a child before age 5. Many died from the common cold, flu, typhoid from unclean water, and spoiled food.

We as a species have made a lot of progress since 1900.

Read also: The world is actually getting better: Part 2

Main photo: Unsplash

*This article was originally published on October 17th, 2018 and updated on December 11th, 2018.