# Pessimism Amid Plenty

1 Opinion February 23, 2018 Project Syndicate ![A. Michael Spence](/sites/default/files/styles/246w/public/assets/images/con_032670.jpg?itok=cxjGfIlv) By A. Michael Spence > While there is no shortage of challenges facing economies and societies today, they should not be allowed to obscure positive long-term trends.

A few years ago, I wrote a book called The Next Convergence, about how developing economies were “catching up” to their advanced counterparts in terms of income, wealth, health, and other measures of wellbeing. I looked not just at how these countries had achieved rapid growth – including the central role played by an open global economy – but also at the opportunities and challenges this process of convergence would bring.

In writing the book, I had planned to include a lot of data in visual form. But a respected literary agent told me that using graphs was a bad idea, because only a small share of people absorb quantitative information better when it is presented visually. I came to realize that graphs are, in a sense, answers to questions. If you don’t pose a question, a graph is somewhere between uninteresting and meaningless.

Recently, the Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker published a book documenting long-term positive trends in multiple dimensions of wellbeing, which he calls “the fruits of the Enlightenment.” Progress is not, Pinker acknowledges, consistent; there have been significant setbacks as new challenges, such as climate change, have emerged. But, generally, wellbeing has been improving since at least the mid-eighteenth century, with the Industrial Revolution bringing a sharp acceleration in welfare gains. Since World War II, 85% of the world’s population living in developing countries have benefited as well.

Read the full article as published in [Project Syndicate](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/unperceived-long-term-welfare-gains-by-michael-spence-2018-02).

\_\_
*A. Michael Spence is a William R. Berkley Professor in Economics & Business.*## More Opinions from Michael Spence

- [COVID-19 Is Beating Trump](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/index%2ephp/experience-stern/faculty-research/covid-19-beating-trump)
- [COVID-19 and the Trust Deficit](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/index%2ephp/experience-stern/faculty-research/covid-19-and-trust-deficit)
- [The Priority for the Social-Distancing Period](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/index%2ephp/experience-stern/faculty-research/priority-social-distancing-period)
- [Can China’s Economy Withstand the Coronavirus?](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/index%2ephp/experience-stern/faculty-research/can-china-s-economy-withstand-coronavirus)
- [What My Younger Self Never Expected](https://www.stern.nyu.edu/index%2ephp/experience-stern/faculty-research/what-my-younger-self-never-expected)