Improvement of Life Conditions
The UN estimates that, at the beginning of the 20th century, about 60% of the world population lived in conditions of extreme poverty. In 1981, 40% of the world population lived extreme poverty. In 2001, the percentage had been halved to 20%. Several developing countries, in particular in Sub-Saharan Africa, still suffer from social and economic backwardness, but life conditions have significantly improved in most regions of the world, in particular in Asia. The overall improvement in life conditions and the role of technologies now available have contributed to increase GDP per capita by one and a half times in less than half a century (1960–2005), with peaks of over eight times in Eastern Asia. Only in a few countries, concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, growth of per capita income has been very slow.
Read more about this topic: Contemporary Society
Famous quotes containing the words improvement, life and/or conditions:
“We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.”
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
“The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise to it.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)