Charles Mann’s fascinating piece is worth reading:
Mann notes:
“In 1970, when I
was in high school, about one out of every four people was
hungry—“undernourished,” to use the term preferred today by the United Nations.
Today the proportion has fallen to roughly one out of 10. In those four-plus
decades, the global average life span has, astoundingly, risen by more than 11
years; most of the increase occurred in poor places. Hundreds of millions of
people in Asia, Latin America, and Africa have lifted themselves from
destitution into something like the middle class. This enrichment has not
occurred evenly or equitably: Millions upon millions are not prosperous. Still,
nothing like this surge of well-being has ever happened before. No one knows
whether the rise can continue, or whether our current affluence can be sustained.”