10/21 Essay: After Dan’s lecture, I would like to reinstill a bit of empirical optimism regarding the progress of humanity. Despite the very real difficulties data scientists, humanitarians, developers, and other leaders face, progress is being made over large time scales. Go to this website (a supplement to Peter Diamandis’s 2012 book “Abundance”) which illustrates various forms of progress across multiple dimensions of human well-being. Pick a topic heading. Write a description of each of the trends you see, i.e., for each figure. Do you think each trend actually represents progress? If not, why do you think? Finally, with Dan and A. Sen in mind, what do you think could be barriers to progress in each topic? (another way to think about this is: why do you think progress hasn’t occurred even more rapidly?)

The problem of reducing poverty seems to have made progress over the past few centuries. Different aspects of life show that poverty is declining around the world, from looking at the percentage of populations in poverty to looking at hunger rates and the amount of money spent on food. Figure 1 showed different world regions, and that the percentages of their populations living in poverty had mostly decreased overtime, with the exception being Europe and Central Asia. Figure 4 looked at the percentage of absolute poverty in different regions and saw a decrease in all areas as well. However, both figures showed that Sub-Saharan Africa had small reductions in poverty and its population still had the highest percentage in poverty. Figure 3 showed that there has been a rapid decline in extreme poverty since 1970. Figure 5 and 8 also displayed the number of people living in absolute poverty, and figure 8 also compared this to the percentage of people in poverty and those living on less than $1.25 a day. Figure 5 predicted by 2030 about only 250 million people will be in absolute poverty in the world, and figure 8 supports this estimate because it showed the decrease to only 20% people live on less than $1.25 a day from 1980 to 2010. This trend hopefully will continue and the estimate of figure 5 will be accurate. Figure 2, 7, and 9 displayed information about people’s access to food and the nourishment in the world population. Figure 2 showed that the GHI scores of most countries decreased between 25-50% and China and Brazil saw decreases greater than 50% meaning there were great improvements in the hunger situations. Figure 7 showed that overtime, famines killed less people, and now they kill significantly less, maybe because there are less of them. Figure 9 showed that overall the amount of undernourished people in the developing world has decreased as well. Figure 10 showed that food supply per capita has continually increased over time. Figure 6 portrays the percentage of income in US spent on food from the home or not from home, and overall total food; the percentage spent on total food has decreased. Lastly, figure 12 described that the amount of farmers compared to other jobs has significantly decreased. I think these trends show progress overall, but not for all communities because most graphs show a decrease in poverty and absolute poverty, and an increase in food supply and nourishment, but this is only representative of the areas where data was able to be gathered. Especially in the graphs that focused on poverty directly, a few showed that Sub-Saharan Africa had made small changes in the right direction, but its percentage of poverty was still incredibly high. From looking at absolute poverty which is measured as earning $1.25 or less a day, there should be no one in this category, if poverty is reducing around the world. In 2010, there was still 20% of the world population in this category, which is millions of people.

Barriers to progress could be access to resources. Dan mentioned boundaries were not always clear, and some people as a result were not getting the help and resources they needed. This would cause poverty because if people don’t have access to food, they will be malnourished. Also, the cycle of poverty is very hard to get out of because it is hard to make money to support yourself, if you are uneducated and grow up without money. I found it interesting that the number of farmers has dropped dramatically, and wonder if it is because other jobs pay better. But as a farmer, I feel like you would not have to be as educated as long as you know how to farm. Healthcare is another factor that can lead to poverty because if you have a condition that requires you to spend a lot of money, that money can’t go towards food or a house, other basic things needed to survive. Overall, the trends show that we are going in the right direction in reducing poverty, but it isn’t fast enough because there are still people living in extreme and absolute poverty and dying from malnourishment.