Forget the Nightly News; Life Is Getting Better

Wall Street Journal ^ | August 17, 2004 | GEORGE MELLOAN

[OESY]

...Life expectancy at birth has increased for all socioeconomic groups, with black men making the most dramatic gains, to 68.2 years in 2000 from 60 in 1970.... Partly because of rising female employment, the median income of white households rose 19% between 1980 and 2000 and that of black families 39% from a lower base....

Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg cites a decline in starvation. "In 1970, 35% of the people in developing countries were starving. In 1996, the figure was 18% and the United Nations expects that figure will have fallen to 12% by 2010."

Professor Lomborg a few years ago set out to write a book predicting natural-resource scarcity and environmental decline. After exhaustive research, he did just the opposite, much to the dismay of "sky-is-falling" theorists, who promptly attacked him for his heresy. Writes he: "I found we are not running out of energy or natural resources. There will be more and more food per head of the world's population. In 1900, we lived for an average of 30 years; today, we live for 67 years...."

China, for example, is no longer the backward, brutal fiefdom of Mao Tse-tung. Per capita income and the average years of schooling have soared as the reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s have transformed the country. The Communist Party still holds sway but is finding it increasingly necessary to satisfy the aspirations of a richer, better-educated population that is engaged in a vigorous underground political discussion by means of the Internet.

Politicians like to take credit for these advances.... But while some politicians have helped provide a better environment for human progress, most of the credit belongs to the many millions of individuals who have labored to make their own lives better and the world a better place....

[notpoliticallycorewrecked]

ping for later read

[w1andsodidwe]

But, I thought polution and global warming was causing havoc. How can this be?

[meowmeow]

...most of the credit belongs to the many millions of individuals who have labored to make their own lives better

say it isn't so!

[LouisWu]

at least they didn't credit Klintoon.

[Republic If You Can Keep It]

...most of the credit belongs to the many millions of individuals who have labored to make their own lives better...

.....during years when capitalism steadily spread & communism steadily declined throughout the world.

[monday]

This is not going to be a popular article with FR's resident Chicken Littles.