Progress

Lane Kenworthy, The Good Society
November 2025

Social scientists and journalists often emphasize our problems and shortfalls. That’s helpful, because it spurs us to do better and (hopefully) helps us figure out how to do so. But it can also give us the impression that things are getting worse.

In fact, on a wide range of aspects of wellbeing, we’ve made an astonishing amount of progress over the past two centuries. And in most respects that progress continues.

Barack Obama sums this up nicely: “If you had to choose a moment in history to be born, and you did not know ahead of time who you would be — you didn’t know whether you were going to be born into a wealthy family or a poor family, what country you’d be born in, whether you were going to be a man or a woman — if you had to choose blindly what moment you’d want to be born, you’d choose now. Because the world has never, collectively, been wealthier, better educated, healthier, less violent than it is today. That’s hard to imagine, given what we see in the news, but it’s true.”1

Highlighting progress is valuable not only because it’s an accurate picture of developments over time, but also because progress tends to beget progress. Some evidence suggests that knowing things have improved encourages us to do even better, whereas the absence of progress is more likely to generate a sense of powerlessness and frustration.2 And advances in material wellbeing tend to change beliefs and preferences — desire for more insurance (including government services and safety net programs), desire for more fairness for members of “outgroups,” and greater prioritization of individual liberty — in ways that lead to progress in other areas.3

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WHAT IS PROGRESS?

What constitutes progress? Steven Pinker, in his book Enlightenment Now, offers a good answer: “Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than illiteracy. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Intelligence is better than dull-wittedness. Happiness is better than misery. Opportunities to enjoy family, friends, culture, and nature are better than drudgery and monotony.”4

How do we identify progress? “All these things can be measured,” Pinker notes. “If they have increased over time, that is progress.”5 Or put another way: “How can we soundly appraise the state of the world? The answer is to count.”6

PROGRESS

There are many indicators of progress in wellbeing.7 I’ll note just a handful here.

Begin with economic affluence. It’s increased everywhere, though there is considerable variation across regions, as we see in figure 1.

Figure 1. GDP per capita
Gross domestic product per person, adjusted for inflation and for differences in cost of living. “k” = thousand. Data source: Our World in Data, “GDP per capita,” using data from Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zande, Maddison Project Database 2023. Thick line: world.

Figure 2 shows that this increase in economic product didn’t only go to people in the upper part of the income distribution. Some of it went to those at the bottom. Worldwide, “extreme poverty” — the share of people with an income of less than $2.15 per day — has fallen dramatically. And in the recent decades for which we have data, poverty using other measures also has decreased.

Figure 2. Poverty
Worldwide. Share of persons with income below the poverty line. Data source: Our World in Data, “Poverty,” using data from Michail Moatsis, “Global Extreme Poverty: Past and Present Since 1820”; World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform.

Education has risen sharply not only worldwide but in every region, as figure 3 shows.

Figure 3. Educational attainment
Average years of schooling completed among persons age 15 to 64. Data source: Our World in Data, “Education,” using data from Barro and Lee, “Projections of Educational Attainment,” 2015; Lee and Lee, “Human Capital in the Long Run,” 2016. Thick line: world.

The same is true for life expectancy, as we see in figure 4.

Figure 4. Life expectancy
Years at birth. Data source: Our World in Data, “Life expectancy,” using data from Human Mortality Database 2024, UN World Population Prospects 2024, Zijdeman et al 2014, and James C. Riley 2005. Thick line: world.

Figure 5 shows the long-run decrease in homicides in the United States — a massive improvement in safety.

Figure 5. Homicides
United States. Per 100,000 population. Data sources: 1700-1900 from Claude S. Fischer, “A Crime Puzzle,” Made in America, 2010; 1900-1932 from Douglas Lee Eckberg, “Estimates of Early Twentieth-Century U.S. Homicide Rates: an Econometric Forecasting Approach,” Demography, 1995, table 4; 1933-1950 from M. Duane Smith and Margaret A. Zahn, eds., Homicide: Sourcebook of Social Research, Sage, 1998, figure 2.1, using FBI data; 1950ff from Bureau of Justice Statistics, using FBI Uniform Crime Reports data.

Democracy has been spreading across the world fairly continuously, as we see in figure 6.

Figure 6. Democracy
Share of the world’s population living in a country with a democratic political system. Polity IV democracy scoring ranges from -10 for a hereditary monarchy to +10 for a consolidated democracy. Data source: Max Roser and Bastian Herre, “World Citizens Living Under Different Political Regimes,” Our World in Data.

Figure 7 shows an indicator of the expansion of equal rights: the decline of legal slavery.

Figure 7. Decline in legal slavery
Number of countries with slavery abolished. The vertical axis is inverted. Data source: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, figure 4.6.

Figure 8 shows a second indicator of the expansion of equal rights: the rise since the early 1990s in the legal rights of LGBT+ persons.

Figure 8. LGBT+ rights index
The index captures the extent to which LGBT+ people have the same rights as straight and cisgender people. It combines 18 policies, such as the legality of same-sex relationships, marriage, and gender marker changes. Higher values indicate more rights, negative values regressive policies. Data source: Our World in Data, “LGBT+ rights index,” using data from Velasco 2020. Thick line: world.

Finally, figure 9 shows the share of people around the world who are, according to Gallup, “thriving.” These data are available only since 2007. Strikingly, despite the 2008-09 global financial crisis and the 2020-23 Covid pandemic, the share of people worldwide who rate their current life and expected future life highly has increased by 10 percentage points.

Figure 9. Thriving
Share of the world’s population responding 7 or higher for the present and 8 or higher for the future to the following questions: “Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time? Just your best guess, on which step do you think you will stand in the future, say about five years from now?” Data source: Gallup World Poll, via Benedict Vigers, “More People Globally Living Better Lives,” Gallup, July 28, 2025.

EXCEPTIONS

The most important exception to progress is climate change. Through an assortment of processes that increase greenhouse gas (especially carbon dioxide) emissions into the atmosphere, we’ve been causing the planet to warm, as figure 10 shows. The consequences will almost certainly be bad and potentially quite severe.8

Figure 10. Earth’s average temperature
Difference from the 1901-2000 average. Degrees Celcius. Land and ocean. Data source: National Centers for Environmental Information, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global. The line is a loess curve.

Other possible exceptions to progress include income inequality (see below), civic engagement, trust, social connections, obesity, and privacy.9

CAUSES OF PROGRESS

There are many contributors to progress. Major sources over the course of human history include science and reason, humanism (prioritization of individuals over groups), government, democracy, a variety of capitalist economic institutions (private property, contracts, trade, markets, limited liability, bankruptcy protection), firms and other organizations, research laboratories, schools, and the welfare state (public services and public insurance programs).10

WHY SOME RESIST THE CONCLUSION THAT WE’VE MADE PROGRESS

One source of resistance to the conclusion that we’ve made a lot of progress is a belief that it’s descriptively inaccurate. For example, some believe we tend to incorrectly jump to a conclusion of progress when in fact things are moving in cycles — first improving but then getting worse. Sometimes that’s correct. As figure 11 shows, income inequality in most of the world’s rich democratic nations increased in the late 1800s, then decreased from the early 1900s through the 1970s, but since then has increased again.11 Note, though, that in nearly all of these countries the current level remains much lower than in the late 1800s and early 1900s. So while it’s correct to say that income inequality has moved in a cycle, it’s also correct to say that overall there’s been progress (toward less inequality).

Figure 11. Income inequality
Top 1%’s share of income. Pretax income. Excludes capital gains. Data source: World Inequality Database. Thick line: United States. “Asl” is Australia; “Aus” is Austria.

A second group who are skeptical that we’ve made progress hold this view because they’re focused on a particular development or outcome they see as far more important than anything else. For instance, pessimistic leftists conclude that conservatives or big money dominate politics and the economy and are making things worse. Pessimistic conservatives think government is running amuck and the left has won the culture war. Many “populists” believe immigrants and imports are weakening their country’s economy and society. These arguments tend to focus too narrowly on one or two aspects of wellbeing, and they often ignore the long run.

A third group who resist the conclusion of progress do so because they worry about its potential implications. There are several versions of this concern.

One says concluding we’ve made progress implies that everything has gotten better. But it doesn’t imply that at all. In a few respects, things have indeed gotten worse, and yet in a lot more respects they’ve improved. On balance, there’s been progress.

Another says concluding we’ve made progress implies that things are good enough. But it doesn’t. As Max Roser puts it: “The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time.”12 For example, the United States has a much higher homicide rate than any other rich longstanding-democratic nation. And yet our homicide rate is far lower than it was several centuries ago.13 Life expectancy in the United States is lower than in any other affluent democratic country. Yet it has doubled since the late 1800s.14 By the standards of contemporary rich democracies, the United States has a stingy welfare state; our public social programs are less expansive and generous than those of nearly every other comparable nation. Yet America’s welfare state is far more expansive and generous than it was a century ago.15 About 700 million people around the world live in extreme poverty (income of less than $2.15 per day). Yet the share of people in extreme poverty has decreased from around 80% in 1820 to 10% today.16

According to another, a conclusion that we’ve made progress implies that progress happens automatically — that there’s no need for us to push for change. This too is incorrect. Recognizing we’ve made progress doesn’t imply that it will continue, and certainly not that it will continue without effort on our part.

  1. Remarks by President Obama at Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens, Greece, November 16, 2016. ↩︎
  2. Benjamin M. Friedman, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, Knopf, 2005. ↩︎
  3. Lane Kenworthy, “Affluence and Progress,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  4. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now, Viking, 2018, p. 51. ↩︎
  5. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, p. 51. ↩︎
  6. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, p. 42. ↩︎
  7. Angus Deaton, The Great Escape, Princeton University Press, 2013; Johan Norberg, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, Oneworld Publications, 2017; Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 2018; Hans Rosling, Factfulness, Flatiron Books, 2018; Kenworthy, The Good Society; Max Roser et al, Our World in Data. ↩︎
  8. Lane Kenworthy, “Climate Stability,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  9. Kenworthy, “Civic Engagement,” The Good Society; Kenworthy, “Trust,” The Good Society; Kenworthy, “Social Connections,” The Good Society; Kenworthy, “Weight Moderation,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  10. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Viking, 2011; Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Crown, 2012; Ronald Inglehart, Cultural Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 2018; Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now, Viking, 2018; J. Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, Basic Books, 2022; Lane Kenworthy, “Affluence and Progress,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  11. Thomas Piketty, Inequality in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press, 2014. ↩︎
  12. Max Roser, “The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better,” Our World in Data. ↩︎
  13. Lane Kenworthy, “Safety,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  14. Lane Kenworthy, “Longevity,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  15. Lane Kenworthy, “Social Programs,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  16. Max Roser, “Extreme Poverty,” Our World in Data, 2023. ↩︎