James Peron reflects on his 70 years of life amidst global progress, noting substantial advancements in life expectancy, education, and poverty reduction. He observes declines in child mortality and famine deaths, emphasizing the transformative impact of technology and liberal democracies despite pervasive fearmongering in contemporary politics.
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By James Peron*
A lifetime of progress
I suspect it is pretty safe for me to assume most of you don’t really think of the year 1954. Even in the historical or newsworthy sense it isn’t very exciting. I only think about it because it is the year I was born. That isn’t earth-shattering or newsworthy.
With my 70th birthday I thought I’d look at the progress of a lifetime—not my progress but global progress.
In today’s political climate a lot individuals want to panic the populace with dire predictions. Authoritarians rely heavily on creating imaginary monsters and exaggerating bad news. They need to stampede the herd in the direction they desire and fear is how they do it.
As Bellweather, the villain in Disney’s Zootopia says, regarding her drive for power, “Fear always works.”
One of the various facts indicating the widest category of progress is life expectancy. It measures close to everything:ß health care, food supplies, education, social violence, etc.
According to Macrotrends the global average life expectancy was 47.44 in 1954, today they place it at 73,33. When I was born in the U.S. the estimated life expectancy was 66.7, today it is 77.5 years.
One thing this shows is what global improvements we’ve seen over the last 70 years predominantly benefitted developing nations. While life expectancy grew in developed nations the growth was far more dramatic outside those nations.
We can also look at one of the more heartbreaking problems that plagued humanity for centuries – child mortality. Losing a child is hard for even the stoutest individuals. In 1954 the child mortality rate in Africa was an astounding 30.1% but today, according to Our World in Data, they list the 2021 figure at 6.6%.
The rate for South Africa, in 1954, they put at 19.6% that year but at 3.5% for 2021.
We can also look at intake of nutrients in terms of kilocalories consumed per day. The estimate for the world average in 1961 was 2,181, and for Africa it was 2,011. By 2021 the estimates were 2,959.11 kcal for the world and for Africa it was 2,573.04 kcal. This means saved lives.
They estimate that during the 1950s some 8.9m died from famines. It jumped in the 1960s to 16.6m thanks to Maoist Communism in China but by the 2010s it was down to 250,000, mostly in Somalia. In terms of deaths per 100,000 population it was 32.2 in the 50s but down to 0.5 in the 2010s.
When it came to extreme poverty the World Bank estimates the percentage in that sad state was 56% in 1954 while in 2024 the general estimate is 9%.
Another important sign of progress is education and one key measure is the percentage of primary school-age children who are actually in school. Back in 1955 an estimated 63.6% of the world’s children were in school while in 2019 it was 89.3%, again with most the progress in the developing world.
During the same time period the percentage of South African children in schools increased from 39.9% to 84.4%.
Another important measure of human progress is the rise of liberal democracies. While this degree of freedom may be considered evil by the likes of Putin’s Russia or Communist China, it remains an important measure of human rights and freedom.
Our World in Data uses two main categories: autocracies versus democracies. Each of them are broken into two more groups. There are closed autocracies such as China and electoral autocracies where show elections are held, such as Russia. In democracies there are both liberal and electoral democracies.
In 1954 they put 64.74% of the world’s nations down as closed autocracies with another 18.59% as electoral autocracies, for a total of 83,33%. By 2022 they dropped to 18.44% and 30.17% respectively, for a total of 48.61%.
In contrast liberal democracies rose from 10.26% of nations to 18.99% while electoral democracies rose from 6.4.1% to 32.4%; an improvement from 16.67% in 1954 to 51.39%.
Of course, there is also the amazing improvement in world technology over that same time period. For instance, there are entire regions of the developing world that are too remote to access a power grid. Back in 1954 they had few options available. Today solar panels allow any village with sunlight to have access to power.
Back when I was born there simply was no such thing as a home computer or the internet. You could be a millionaire and would still be out of luck. Today an estimated 42% of the world’s population have home computers. In addition 63% of the global population has access to the internet.
Over my lifetime I’ve seen vast improvements in the world. Yet, I see fear merchants trying to promote bad news, even if they have to invent it.
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*James Peron: president of the Moorfield Storey Institute and author of several books, including Exploding Population Myths and The Liberal Tide, is a contributing author for the Free Market Foundation.
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