Comment by andrepd

A global view is probably not the right way to look at things, encouraging as it may be. Of course globally hunger rates fell and so did child mortality. If nothing else, by the inexorable progress of science and technology.

But what about comparing the same country/region? After all that's a better sense of how things are progressing locally to you, and when people are asked "are things better or worse" they probably compare the way they live with the way their parents lived.

Would you rather be born in 1980 or 2020 in China? In Poland? No question. Same question but in the USA? In the UK? The West in general? I'm really not so sure.