Born On A Cusp

(Fewer kids are dying, thanks to simple solutions such as vaccination and breastfeeding. Photograph by bornonacusp.)

Excerpt from Foreign Policy, Five Reasons to be Thankful This Holiday Season:

Your Plane Isn’t Going to Crash: 2006 was the safest year on record for air travel.

Last year, there were just 77 major commercial plane crashes worldwide, the lowest number ever recorded. Of those, only 20 were fatal crashes, resulting in 855 people killed. That’s an amazing safety record, given that 2.1 billion passengers boarded flights last year.

Why: Better safety standards. Planes themselves have gotten far safer.

Fewer Kids Are Dying: Mortality rates for young children are at a record low.

The number of children younger than 5 who died worldwide in 2006 fell to 9.7 million, the first time that figure dropped below 10 million since such records have been kept.

Why: More kids are getting vaccinated. More kids are avoiding malaria by sleeping under insecticide-treated bed nets. Higher rates of breast-feeding and vitamin A supplements. Safer water, better nutrition, more cash for public health, and more community health workers.

Wars Are History: The number of wars involving states, and the deaths they directly cause, has decreased dramatically.

Between 1992 and 2003, the number of armed conflicts involving a government fell more than 40 percent, and the worst of those—conflicts with more than 1,000 deaths—decreased by 80 percent. The post-1945 period is the longest stretch in centuries that hasn’t featured a war between major world powers.

Why: With the end of the Cold War came the end of developing-world proxy wars between the USSR and the United States. As the colonial era waned, so did the wars of independence from colonial rule, which accounted for more than 60 percent of international conflicts from the 1950s to early 1980s.

Poverty Is Down: Fewer people are living on less than $1 a day.

In 1981, 1.5 billion people were living on less than $1 a day. By 1990, that figure had fallen to 1.25 billion people. By 2004, the extreme poverty rate had fallen to 18.4 percent, or just 985 million people. If current trends continue, the world will achieve the Millennium Development Goal of cutting in half—from 32 percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2015—the portion of the population in the developing world that ekes by on less than $1 a day.

Why: One word: Asia. From 1981 to 2001, the number of people living in extreme poverty in East and South Asia dropped by half a billion people. By 2004, the extreme poverty rate in East Asia was down to just 9 percent. China gets most of the credit, with an annual economic growth rate of 8.5 percent for two decades, but other Asian countries, such as India, have also translated high growth rates into less poverty.

You’re Living to Retirement: People are living longer than ever.

A child born 50 years ago could expect to live about 49 years. A child born today, however, can expect to live 18 more years, to age 67. China and India, with their billion-plus populations, account for much of those gains.

Why: Modern medicine. In the early 1950s, 50 million people contracted smallpox each year. By 1979, the disease had been eradicated. In developing countries, improved sanitation and water quality has helped people avoid coming into contact with deadly microbes in the first place. And in the developed world, medical advances are bringing down death rates of three major killers—heart disease, cancer, and strokes.

(Read entire Foreign Policy article here.)