How healthy is the world?

We are often told that we are destroying our environment and that living conditions are deteriorating. The author of The Skeptical Environmentalist looks at global data and comes up with a more optimistic view

In The Skeptical Environmentalist I set out to describe the entire state of the world in a single book.1 This was by no means easy, and so I was a bit hesitant when the BMJ asked me to do the same again—only this time in 1500 words. So how can the true state of the world be reduced to 1500 words? Of course, it cannot be. But by relying on official statistics, global trends, and long term tendencies (what I usually refer to as fundamentals), we can draw a reasonably good picture. However, not everything can be fitted into this picture, and this article will focus on human welfare.

Measuring human welfare is complex because it consists of a myriad of inter-related subjective and objective factors. I will therefore focus on international acknowledged objective indicators of human welfare such as life expectancy, prosperity, and the fulfilment of basic needs.