It's a bit more nuanced than that. The standard of living for the bottom half globally has substantially improved over the past 100 years. The standard of living for the bottom half of the developed world has arguably declined in the past few decades. In the last 5 years or so, due to inflation and Covid, more people have fallen into extreme poverty.
I agree with you, but it is important to keep long-term trends in mind. If we track from 1700 to now, things go vertical in the late 1800s, and then only accelerate from 1990 forward. Periodic dips are somewhat expected due to inflationary expansions of credit and subsequent retractions in credit as people and organizations default. Likewise, wars tend to happen which cause periodic drops in theater.
The elephant curve[0] is an interesting quantification of global income changes in the modern era. Notably it represents global incomes so presumably the United States occupies the higher end of this range.
> The standard of living for the bottom half of the developed world has arguably declined in the past few decades. In the last 5 years or so, due to inflation and Covid, more people have fallen into extreme poverty.
What’s the source for this? It was my understanding (e.g. from the poverty line) that there’s been significant improvements also in the last few decades.
"The standard of living for the bottom half of the developed world has arguably declined in the past few decades."
I am willing to hear this argument, but intuitively it seems like this is not the case. Does a poor person in Arkansas have a lower quality of life now than they had in the 1980's? I feel not, but I'm not sure how to measure or validate this. Income numbers aren't great, because often they don't account for various assistance programs and subsidies (not that assistance programs are a satisfying end-state).
I'd love to look at things like
- whether that have indoor plumbing (I would have assumed this was near 100% even in 1980, but I don't know).
- Ownership of microwaves, TVs, cars, etc.
- Hours spent working
- Usage of things that have made all our lives better, like vaccines and other medicine, internet, education, etc.
I don’t know about the hypothetical average person from Arkansas but I’m sure the average Israeli, South Korean, Taiwanese, Czech and many others are immensely better off today than in 1980.
And in 40 years the same will be true for the average Indian, Vietnamese, Bangladeshi and the other fast growing developing economies of today (unless climate change wrecks havoc in the tropics by then).
We’re seeing the highest growth in the countries that aren’t already at the top.
