Five reasons why the world is getting better this Christmas

The Christmas season is most certainly upon us with only one sleep left until the big day! While many children will lay awake with eager anticipation of the gifts they will receive, the adults may be looking forward to some time off to relax with family and friends this holiday season. 

For many of you reading this, you are no doubt busy with work, school, or raising a family. While you do your best to keep up with the news of the day, it can become pretty tiresome and draining with the constant barrage of information we are all faced with daily. 

Never mind just the sheer amount of news out there, the content of it is often depressing, disappointing, or even infuriating. Part of this is due to human nature of course but much of it is due to the media model which, especially in the online era, has every incentive to agitate and irritate the readership into clicking, sharing, or engaging with their content. 

All of this can leave you, as the reader, feeling very sad and dejected about the current state of world affairs and the media at large. 

However, while there are indeed things to be concerned about, both domestically and internationally, there are also many reasons for hope and joy this Christmas season. 

Before you let the winter blues get to you, take a look at this list of five encouraging statistics: 

1. Worldwide, we are 12 times more wealthy than we were 200 years ago. Due to increased global trade and improving technology, the size of the world’s economy has grown more than 100 fold since 1820 while the world’s population has only increased eightfold. Global per capita GDP now sits at $15,000 per year, compared to $1,200 per person in 1820. 

2. World poverty is at an all-time low. The global rate of absolute poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, sat 84% of the world’s population in 1820. In 1950, 130 years later, that number had dropped to 55%. By 2018, nearly two centuries later, that number was a mere 8.6%. 

3. We now live more than twice as long as we did two centuries ago. Back in 1820, you were most likely going to kick the bucket by the time you finished your twenties. Today, with our average life expectancy of 72, you’d be doing well to be married and/or have a family by the age of thirty! 

4. Over the last 30 years, 250,000 people a day have gained access to clean water. In 1990, 71% of the world population had access to an improved water source (water that has gone through at least a basic form of filtration). In the present day, 91% of the world has access to clean water. 

5. The number of battle-related deaths has decreased by 84% since 1950. The history of mankind is a bloody and brutal one – be thankful you’re alive right now. Seventy years ago, over half a million people died in war each year. The most recent data now has that number at approximately 87,000. 

Keeping all these encouraging trends in mind, you can see why there are many reasons to be thankful and happy this Christmas. While our country of Canada certainly has its challenges, given our material wealth and peaceful state, our resources to solve them may have never been this great. 

Although there is much work left to do, it is clear to see that real progress has, and is continuing to be made, around the world. Let’s all do our best to be charitable towards our fellow Canadians, regardless of their political stripe, to work together in 2020 to solve the problems, small or large, that lie ahead. 

Merry Christmas to all!