If you have, for the last two years – been religiously following our commentary, you may have already created an impression that we are prophets of gloom and harbingers of bad news.

That is so not true.

As for this article – we now consider how our lives have incrementally improved as far as our standards of living are concerned over the last 200 years.

That the world as we know it is not a total basket case, and that human life is not going to the dogs, at least not anytime soon.

We now take into account six global trends that have defined human development as slowly progressing and coming out of the darkness of primitive regression - and into the light.

We look into a bigger and longer picture – of economic improvement over the last 100 years to stress our point.

That the world has evolved into a better version of what it was over a century ago – and that life and living standards have progressed to accommodate a majority of the living.

Here are the facts:

#01 Eradication of Extreme Poverty.

We are better off compared to 100, 50 or even 30 years ago.

Global economic progress has alleviated even those on the sidelines and in far-flung areas. The number of people making less than US$2 dollars per day has dropped significantly. That number stands at 10% today compared to back in the 1940’s when it was 75% of the global population.

Only recently, China opened its doors to global trade and enabled about 700 million Chinese access to the free markets and to capitalise upon their cheaper labour and materials to alleviate themselves from extreme poverty.

#02 Basic Education as a Human Right.

While it was a privilege to get basic schooling way back in the 1820’s - more and more countries offer primary to secondary and even tertiary schooling as free and government sponsored.

Today, close to 90% of the world’s population has basic education compared to just less than 20% 100 years ago.

#03 Literacy.

A corollary to having a more educated populace is, of course, more people knowing how to read, write and do the maths.

Over the last 200 years, the literate population shot up from 12% to 85%. That is from 100 million people way back in the 1920’s to around 4.6Bn people today.

#04 Free Society.

While it is true that some parts of this world still cower in fear and live under totalitarian or deeply repressive regimes – the world is moving forward to a [general] direction where walls are crumbling, and chains are breaking apart.

Only 1 in 100 people can say they lived in a democracy 100 years ago, the majority of the world’s population (56 for every 100 people) can say they can live and move freely now and can vote for their leaders in a fair election.

#05 Universal Healthcare.

By that, we mean a healthcare system that frees us from disease and illnesses that has inundated humankind for centuries.

Today, vaccination is promoted by progressive states and governments as a human right – and is usually always available free of charge in government hospitals or non-government health centres.

Gone is a world plagued with tetanus, malaria, tuberculosis and diphtheria where access to healthcare was almost nil 200 years ago – with 86% of the world’s population vaccinated today.

#06 Child Mortality.

A hundred years ago, it was estimated that about 30% of infants would die before they even reached their 5th birthday.

Given the advancement in medicine and developments in housing band sanitation as well as governments looking into the reproductive health issues and family planning – child mortality is down to just 4%.

On a scale of 200 years and over 8 billion of people today – we see how human advancement has progressed towards the necessities of human life.

The above bigger picture only proves humanity’s powerful statistical story of survival and progression.