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7 Maps Showing How The World Is Actually Getting Better

7 Maps Showing How The World Is Actually Getting Better

Ian Wright
October 14, 2024

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Today, I have a somewhat special edition of the newsletter for you.

Normally, I just publish maps that other have created but today I’m featuring 7 maps I’ve put together using maps and data from Our World In Data.

The goal is simple, I wanted to show that despite the doom and gloom from both the left and the right, the world today is so much better, in so many ways than when I was born 42 years ago.

Here are just a few highlights:

All but 6 countries in the world have higher life expectancy rates today than in 1982. With East Timor more than doubling its life expectancy.
China reduced it’s extreme poverty rate from 91.8% in 1981 to 0% today, this is due to it’s incredible economic growth which has seen the average Chinese person increase their wealth 9X in real terms in 40 years.
Infant Mortality rates have fallen in every country on earth expect for one, with many countries reducing deaths by over 90%!
CO2 emissions per capita have grown a lot less slowly than I expected, they grew 14% per person globally, but have fallen in many rich countries such as Canada (-14%), US (-23%), Germany (-39%), France (-43%) and the UK (-51%).

To me the UK number is the most interesting. It was the birthplace of the industrial revolution power by coal.

Yet on 30 September 2024, UK shut down it’s last coal power station after 142 years. The UK now produces less CO2 per capita than it did at the end of the Crimean War in 1856!

This suggests that economic growth does not have to equal a growth in CO2 emissions. Combined with falling fertility rates (especially in China and India) means our impact on the planet is very likely close to reaching its peak.

So while the world is far from perfect, and there a lots of thing that can still be improved, I’m actually even more of an optimist about the future after researching these maps than I was before.