Life expectancy is one of the most visible signs of humanity's progress. Thanks largely to safer childbirth practices, the average age in many countries has shot up from 40 years in 1838 to over 80 years today.
Child mortality rates have fallen considerably within the last 150 years, particularly as doctors improved their delivery procedures and vaccines began limiting the risk of fatal disease.
The world is collectively getting richer. While roughly 1.3 billion people still live in extreme poverty, quality of life is rising for billions more.
Adjusting for inflation across the last two centuries puts the improvements in even greater relief. Decade over decade, people are escaping a life of poverty.
Fortunately, these gains in quality of life also coincide with fewer working hours. In the late 19th century, Europeans worked nearly twice as long as they do today.
Around the world, societies are becoming more democratic and less authoritarian. Colonialism died out in the early 1990s.
Though there are still autocracies, democracies are becoming the norm. More than half of the world lives in a democracy.
The trend toward democracy is mirrored in the decline of war-related deaths. As cognitive scientist Steven Pinker has noted, global violence has been on the decline for centuries.
Meanwhile, the world has taken big steps to ensure countries stay peaceful with one another. Despite the barrage of violence in the news and on our social feeds, the world really is at its safest point in history.
Genocides have largely stagnated for the last few decades, marking another sign that humans are growing more tolerant.
Perhaps it's the exposure to new ideas: Global literacy rates have climbed immensely since around 1950. With greater access to fresh perspectives, people are able to absorb more information about the world.
Education more generally is also increasing, as the rates of people with no schooling at all have been falling worldwide since the 1970s, when data was first collected.
As the world grows more inter-connected, access to the internet moves from being a luxury good to a necessity. Nearly all regions of the world have experienced growing access over the last 20 years — though some with more restrictions than others.
Finally, mass communication is the most robust it's ever been. Beginning in 1990, the rates of cell phone ownership have jumped all over the globe. As the infrastructure expands, those rates will only continue to grow.
