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:
“Unlike the normal pattern, I know I have grown more liberal as I’ve grown older. I have become more convinced that there is room for improvement in the world.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)
“Even through the hollow eyes of death
I spy life peering.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“If there is a species which is more maltreated than children, then it must be their toys, which they handle in an incredibly off-hand manner.... Toys are thus the end point in that long chain in which all the conditions of despotic high-handedness are in play which enchain beings one to another, from one species to another—cruel divinities to their sacrificial victims, from masters to slaves, from adults to children, and from children to their objects.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)