Answer this: In the last 20 years, the percentage of the world population living in extreme poverty has:

1. Almost doubled?
2. Remained about the same?
3. Dropped by two-thirds?

The correct answer is C. The number of people living in extreme poverty is less than 9%. It was more than three times greater, 29%, in 1997.

If you answered A or B, you are not alone. In fact, an online poll conducted by Hans Rosling found that 90% of those polled got it wrong.

I wrote about Rosling before. LINK

His life work is correcting misconceptions. And one of the biggest misconceptions he’s discovered is that most people – and this includes most educated people – believe that poverty is getting worse.

Here are the facts:

In 1800, roughly 85% of the world population lived in extreme poverty, deprived of such basic human needs as food, safe drinking water, shelter, and access to medical care.

And this was not confined to Asia and Africa. It existed everywhere. Even in England, the US, Europe, and Scandinavia. The world economy back then was still agrarian. When crops failed, people starved.

The situation improved only slightly for the next 70 or 80 years. But by then the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. Wealth was being created at a rate that was faster, by multiples, than at any previous time in human history. And the beneficiaries were not only big industrialized countries but also their trading partners.  READ MORE