“BY ALMOST any measure, the world is better than it has ever been,” Bill Gates wrote in his 2014 annual letter for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “People are living longer, healthier lives. Many — though by no means all — of the countries we used to call poor now have thriving economies. And the percentage of very poor people has dropped by more than half since 1990.”
Too few people recognize the progress, Mr. Gates notes, so too few understand how achievable further progress would be. And further progress is needed. More people have entered the middle class than most economists would have thought possible a generation ago, and the ranks of the poor have shrunk even as world population has grown. But more than 1 billion people still live in extreme poverty — on less than $1.25 a day.
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