Why I'm an Optimist

From an article coauthored by Charles Kenny:

The World Bank did its annual assessment of poor countries last week. Low-income countries are those with average gross national incomes (GNIs) of less than $1,005 per person per year.

And there are only 35 of them remaining out of the countries and economies that the World Bank tracks. That's down from 63 in 2000.

It's hard to remember how concerned we were about the Third World, as it used to be called. (see here for the Google ngram, usage peaked around 1980 and has been falling ever since). There's still much to be concerned, but the picture is much better than it was around 1975 or so.