Came here to mention “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think”. Definitely worth a read/listen.

https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Bett...

Source? According to the book Factfulnes by Hans Rosling, poverty has decreased significantly the past decades.

https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Bett...

The book "Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think" [0] brings a different perspective to this conversation. I strongly encourage folks to read it, but if I had to summarize the point that feels relevant here, it'd go something like this.

Relative to the whole of human history, the time we're living in right now is by far the most neutral, even OK, (in some cases, even good) things have ever been.

You are correct that the divide between privileged/lucky and not is still wide. But arguably this is more about the uneven distribution of progress, and ignores the fact that poverty has significantly gone down, deaths from disease are significantly lower now than even 10-20 years ago, and so on.

This does not minimize or invalidate the fact that many do live in dangerous or "not OK" environments, but it's worth looking at the broader historical context to help contextualize that.

Yes, more change must happen. There is much progress to be made. But much progress has been made, and that should be acknowledged.

- [0] https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Bett...

For sure. You'll find that our notions of our own world and societies are also very outdated on average due to how rapidly they're changing (and by and large improving).

A wonderful, easy to read book on this that I recommend is Factfulness.

https://www.ted.com/playlists/474/the_best_hans_rosling_talk...

https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Bett...

As an alternative to "2nd/3rd" or "developing" countries, I really like the "Four Levels of Global Income" model[0] that Hans Rosling put forth in his book Factfulness[1] (a must-read IMO).

It gives a much clearer perspective on how people live (and as you mentioned, how similarly people live across the world amongst the same income levels)

[0]: https://www.gapminder.org/topics/four-income-levels/ [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Bett...

Question was flagged before I could read it, but based on responses citing the birth rate, the premise of the question might have been along the lines of whether or not it's worth saving lives in areas with high birth rates if we're concerned about overpopulation.

Hans Rosling provides an exhaustive rebuttal to that question in Factfulness: https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Bett...

Here's a speech he gives on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnexjTCBksw

To make it as short as possible: if you're concerned about family sizes, the best path forward is, counterintuitively, improving health and reducing infant mortality, not the opposite. Parents seem to compensate for high infant mortality and high poverty with larger families, but naturally adjust family sizes downward as conditions improve. That trend seems to hold in countries all around the world, dozens of examples so far without counterexamples. (I.e., Malthus was wrong, according to all the data we have.)

But his book is still really worth reading, it bolsters his argument with much more data.

The late Dr. Hans Rosling's Factfullness is a great read.

Spoiler: The world is actually getting a lot better really fast.

If you're looking for a more global outlook on the longer term future, then this book is a great place. You can read it for free, per Bill Gates' donation to graduated of the class of 2018, here: https://archive.org/stream/FactfulnessByHansRosling/Factfuln...

I'd buy it for an easier reading experience here: https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Bett...

Here's a quick quiz for you to test if your knowledge of the world is better than a chimp's: http://forms.gapminder.org/s3/test-2018