A college professor offered the type of big-picture analysis we used to expect from academics but rarely get anymore. “The world’s population has grown sixfold, and yet per-capita income has grown ninefold, contradicting the dire forecasts of Malthus and other prophets of doom,” John Horgan wrote in The Chronicle Review on March 2, 2012. “Today about one-fifth of the global population, or 1.4 billion people, scrapes by on less than $1.25 a day, the U. N.’s definition of ‘extreme poverty.’”
“That number is shamefully high—especially considering the world’s enormous wealth—and yet as a percentage of total population it is extremely low compared with historical levels.”
Horgan serves as director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. “According to statistics compiled by the Central Intelligence Agency, 32 countries now have a life expectancy above 80,” he noted. “(The United States, which spends much more on health care per capita than any other country, is not among that elite group, demonstrating that health does not require huge expenditures.)”
Horgan is also the author of the book, The End of War. “According to an analysis by the political scientist Milton Lettenberg, war killed almost four million people a year during the cataclysmic first half of the 20th century and almost a million a year during the second half,” Horgan wrote. “Keep in mind that during that same period, the global population quadrupled.”
“Casualties have since fallen over the last decade.” The rate of decline is also rather remarkable.
“Since 2000, annual combat casualties have averaged about 55,000—or 250,000 if you count civilians killed by war-related disease, famine, and exposure,” Horgan reports. “Between 2000 and 2010, war killed fewer people than in any decade in the previous century.”
Horgan’s conclusion might surprise both those on the Left as well as those on the Right. “In 1900, 12 percent of humanity lived under democratic rule,” Horgan notes. “That percentage rose to 31 percent by 1950.”
“Today, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank Freedom House, almost two-thirds of the world’s population lives in societies that are either ‘free’ (87 nations) or ‘partly free’(60 nations.)”
Nevertheless, Horgan shows that the center of the totalitarian world is a nation that, according to most commentators has a clean bill of health. “People are ‘not free’ in 48 countries, home to 35 percent of the global population,” Horgan observes. “A single nation, the People’s Republic of China, accounts for more than half of that percentage.”
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org
