One of humanity's most basic needs is food. Without sufficient calories on our plates, all of our other desires become unimportant. As recently as the 18th century, 20% of people from England and France had access to so few calories that they were physically unable to work, Norberg writes in his book, which led to people being short, stunted and unhealthy.
While malnutrition is still a serious problem in parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, we have seen a rapid fall in the percentage of people affect within the last few decades. In 1992, 19% of the world's population was undernourished, but this has fallen to 11% in 2016.
"Food is not enough to sustain life," Norberg said. "A lack of sanitation and clean water has historically led to the most suffering and early death. That’s now been taken care of."
From the end of the 19th century, many wealthy cities began building up-to-date sewer and water systems. This reduced mortality rates in these cities by more than 40%, Norberg explains in his book. Poorer countries were not able to take advantage of effective sanitation until the late 20th century, but when they did, the progress was rapid. 2.6 billion people have gained access to safe water supplies since 1990, according to Norberg.
Those in the older people who are nostalgic about the past ought to be thankful that they are still alive, according to Norberg's findings.
As recently as 1900, worldwide average life expectancy was just 31. Now it has sky-rocketed to 71.
"Nothing happened in life expectancy for 100,000 years and then in 200 years we’ve doubled it," Norberg said. "It continues to outperform what all the scientists expected."
While Norberg admitted that economic inequality has grown in recent times, with a tiny group of billionaires owning a greater share of the world's wealth than ever before, in absolute terms, everyone is a whole lot wealthier.
In 1820, 94% of the world's population lived in "extreme poverty," according to Norberg. Now that figure is less than 11%. Moreover, much of that improvement has taken place in recent years. Every day between 1990 and 2015, 138,000 people were lifted out of extreme poverty.
"We live in a remarkable time," Norberg wrote. "Never before has the world seen such a dramatic poverty reduction."
One of the most counterintuitive claims in Norberg's book is that we live in less violent times than ever before.
While tragic wars in the Middle East and elsewhere rage on and dominate our news headlines, there are actually fewer people killed in these conflicts than in the wars of previous generations.
"We have probably never lived in such a peaceful era as the one right now," Norberg said. "One of the reasons for this is that we’ve moved from the culture of 'honour,' where we constantly defend our honour and the family’s honour by being violent."
Norberg's next claim is perhaps even more surprising.
"If you look at the leading pollutants that we worried about in the 1970s — those which pollute our rivers and forests and so on — they've been reduced by something like 60% since the 1970s," he said. "We've reduced the amount of oil spilt in the ocean by 99% since the 1970s."
However, the fact that we are more environmentally friendly than we were in the 1970s does not mean that we have dealt with the problem of global warming.
"That’s absolutely right, but, when it comes to industrial pollution, that’s a modern phenomenon," Norberg responded. "We mus not forget that when we are creating these problems we are often solving other problems which are worse for mankind."
One area it hard to deny that we have made progress in is literacy. The percentage of people able to read and write has quadrupled from 21% in 1900 to 86% in 2015, according to Norberg's data.
But, in recent years, since the spread of the internet and rise of social media, more people have begun using writing as a tool for communication than ever before.
"Just a few gens ago very few people wrote more than the odd letter," Norberg said. "Now we all write."
Another big gain for humanity in recent years has been the increase in freedom and democracy.
While slavery and human trafficking still exists in crime syndicates and the underworld, just 200 years ago it was legal in many countries. The global slave trade began shrinking when it was abolished in all British colonies 1834 and has since been made "formally banned everywhere," Norberg said.
Alongside the abolition of the slave trade, the world has become much more democratic. In 1900, no countries in the world gave each and every citizen one vote. Norberg writes:
"By 1950, the share of the world population living in democracies had increased from zero to thirty-one per cent, and by 2000, increased to fifty-eight per cent, according to Freedom House, the civil liberties watchdog."
"We do complain about bigotry when its out there but that's because we are most sensitive to it," Norberg said. "One of the reasons we are so sensitive to it now is because it is no longer generally acceptable."
The rights of ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals, and transgender people were almost unheard of in even the freest western democracies 100 years ago, Norberg argues. For example, in 1900, only New Zealand gave women the right to vote.
While huge progress has been made in giving equality of rights to all people, Norberg admitted that there was still a long way to go.
Norberg's final reason for why 2016 is best time to be alive is that things are looking even brighter for the next generation.
The rate of child labour is constantly dropping (from 168 million in 2012 to 245 million in 2000). In turn, rates of child death are falling, and education is rising. Moreover Norberg argues that the number of people who own smartphones (soon to be three billion) will have a profound impact on the people's breadth of knowledge.
Nevertheless, Norberg does not see progress as inevitable.
"If people don't understand the progress we have made, if we don't understand the alternative to the kind of open liberal societies that we live in, then there’s a huge risk," Norberg said. "We could throw it away, in exchange for the temptation of any kind of demagogue who promises us anything in return for our liberties."
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