Are we progressing as human?

When I see the news like China and India has the highest population and in a race of population growth; I wonder how easy it is to have resources for all. Is this a correct understanding of the world? picture courtsy: gapminder.org

If we look at the data, we might be surprised to see that the number of children per woman is falling. That is counter-intuitive to common beliefs. To understand the reasons of such trend, one must understand the data analysis around the world, especially that on infant mortality. That means, families, when they realise that their child has a higher survival chance and access to birth control can stabilize the population. This is a miracle of public health systems, including vaccination policies, eradication programs like Polio, clean drinking water facilities and improved sanitization. .

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If you are curious on how the world changed, and continues to change towards a better society, the place you need to look at is GapMinder or read the book by Hans Rosling (
photo from wikimedia commons

If you are too lazy and need inspiration to read this book, please look at the above TED Talk by Rosling

The poverty trap and effect of economic policies

The next in line on the human progression is the poverty. Typical things poor people do is to do multiple jobs, start small business and see if they can save and move out. is this effective? The challenges here are in the initial investment (Capital Investment) and sustaining the business during uncertainities or changes in situation. Poor normally lends from loan sharks and not from banks. These behaviors from poor are extremely short sighted, makes them stay poor like the victorian thought this was how poor were. The long term view seems to come only when there is job stabilty and constant revenue soure.

How to understand those changes and causality analysis, why poor stay poor and what changes the state are described in the book by Abhijit Banerjee

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If you want to look further into the effect of leadership change or policy change and what statistical methods used in accessing these can be found at the course Political Economy

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