"You're wrong. The world is, for the most part, not getting worse. 58 percent of folks in 17 countries surveyed in 2016 thought the world is getting worse rather than better or staying the same. Americans were even more glum : 65 percent thought the world is getting worse and only 6 percent thought it was getting better. The uncontroversial data on major global trends in this book will persuade you that this dark view of the prospects for humanity and the natural world is, in large part, badly mistaken. World population will peak at 8 to 9 billion before the end of this century as the global fertility rate continues its fall from 6 children per woman in 1960 to 2.4 now. The global absolute poverty rate has fallen from 42 percent in 1981 to 8.6 percent today. Satellite data show that forest area has been expanding since 1982. Natural resources are becoming ever cheaper and more abundant. Since 1900 average life expectancy has more than doubled reaching more than 72 years. Of course, big problems like climate change, marine plastic pollution, and declining wildlife populations are still with us, but many of these concerns are already in the process of being ameliorated as a result of the favorable economic, social, and technological trends documented here. You can't fix what is wrong in the world, if you don't know what's actually happening. Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know will provide smart, busy people with speedy, easily understandable, and entertaining access to surprising facts that they need to know about how the world is really faring"--