You Know what's not good? Extreme Poverty

Thankfully there's still good news even when talking about it

Here’s the definition of a bad thing.

Extreme poverty is the most severe type of poverty, defined by the United Nations as "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information.

But don’t let the deprivation of basic human needs get you down, because historically speaking we are living in good times in that regard.

Thanks to the people at gapminder.org I am pleased to convey the following good news:

Extreme poverty rate dropped faster than ever during the past decades

Whoo-hoo for humanity.

Check out this graph:

The Y-axis shows us the percentage of world-wide population. That’s truly mind-boggling. Nearly 80% were in extreme poverty. This isn’t just the spread of wealth mind you, it’s also improvement in technology, infrastructure and communications.

The X-Axis is years, and the undefined point where we have ZERO extreme poverty is around 2035 or so. I’m not sure that’s realistic, but the graph and what it represents is good.