In the last month, Rohingya Muslims have been the victims of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, terrorist attacks have occurred in France, Canada, and London, Spain has reached the verge of a possible second civil war, and Kim Jong Un and President Trump are treating the threat of nuclear annihilation like a game of chicken. With all of these things happening around the world, it's not difficult to see why most people believe that the world has gotten worse overall in the last year. According to USNews, a survey of more than 21,000 people from 36 countries in all regions of the world states that roughly 60 percent believe that the world has gotten worse, rather than gotten better, or stayed the same. But, if you look at the data, the world is better off now than at any other time in human history. If this is true, then why do people think the world is worse now than before?

Humanity has made great strides in all fields in recent decades. Since 1990, AIDS-related deaths have dropped by 24 percent, deaths in childbirth and infant mortality have dropped by half, and deaths from measles have dropped by over 70 percent. In all, the average life expectancy of all humanity jumped to 70 years in 2011, compared to just 47 years in 1950. What does all of this mean? Essentially, less people are dying untimely deaths from preventable causes than ever before, but these great achievements don't stop with medical advances. The world is also experiencing the highest overall standard of living ever. 721 million fewer people are living in extreme poverty (living on $1.25 a day or less) in 2010 than in 1981, according to a World Bank study from October 2013. This is a decline from 63 percent to 44 percent in that time span. War is also becoming much rarer, despite what you may be seeing on the news. Per 100,000 people, the number of deaths from civil or interstate wars has gone from 300 during World War ll, to the low teens during the Vietnam War, to less than one since the year 2000. This is most likely because democracy has spread across the world, and democratic nations almost never fight each other. Today, about 60 percent of all states are democracies, compared to roughly 40 percent just at the end of the Cold War.

So if fewer people are dying of disease, living in poverty, or going through the horrors of war than ever before in the history of the human race, then why do people think the world is going to hell? It's hard to pin down a be-all and end-all reason, but my personal belief is that it's much easier to report bad news than good news. Not only does it produce higher ratings, bad news and events typically happen all at once, while good news, as we've seen, takes years or decades to achieve results, however wonderful they may be. It's easy to think that the world is a sad, terrible place, but whenever you feel this way, remember all of the great things that we have accomplished. Remember all of the suffering that has been averted, all of the people that are alive today that wouldn't have been just ten years ago, and know that the world is only going to get better from here.