It’s easy to get caught up in the daily to-and-fro of domestic politics ? particularly on a day when Congress has acted so irresponsibly by passing a foolish, pork-laden bailout bill ? but I think it’s often valuable to step back, take in the larger picture, and celebrate human progress.
As I have previously noted, the past two generations have seen the most dramatic reductions in poverty and misery in the history of the human species. To a large extent, this accomplishment is due to a combination of economic liberalization adopted from within (particularly by the likes of China, India, Brazil, and Chile), overall technological change, and the active and heroic transfer of technology and ideas from the West to Asia and Latin America.
New data from a separate UN measure of extreme poverty further illustrates the trend in recent years. In 1990, 56 percent of East and Southeast Asians, 49 percent of South Asians, and 10 percent of Latin Americans lived on the equivalent of $1.25 a day. By 2005, keeping the benchmark adjusted for inflation, that rate had plummeted to 18 percent in East/Southeast Asia, while falling 10 points to 39 percent in South Asia and two points in Latin America, to 8 percent.
Unfortunately, Africa was, as usual, the outlier. While conditions slightly improved during those 15 years, from 56 percent in 1990 to 50 percent in 2005, the gap obviously widened. In other words, Africans and East Asians were equally likely to be extremely poor in 1990. Now, Africans are almost three times as likely to be poor.
What do they lack? Basic freedom, basic infrastructure, and governments that are more than just armed gangs or kleptocratic syndicates.
