Has it really? I’ve seen a lot of people claiming this since Hans Rosling’s famous TED talks, but I’ve never actually seen any data that backs this up. Particularly since Hans Rosling’s talk was 15 years ago, but the number always remains “past 30 years”.
Off course any graph can choose to show which ever stat is convenient for the message, that doesn’t necessarily reflect the lived reality of the individual members of the global poor. And as I recall it most standard of living improvements for the global poor came in the decades after decolonization in the 1960s-1990s where infrastructure was being built that actually served people’s need as opposed for resource extraction in the decades past. If Hans Rosling said in 2007 that the standard of living has improved tremendously in the past 30 years, he would be correct, but not for the reason you gave.
The story of decolonization was that the correct infrastructure, such as hospitals, water lines, sewage, garbage disposal plants, roads, harbors, airports, schools, etc. that improved the standard of living not productivity gains. And case in point, the colonial period saw a tremendous growth in productivity in the colonies. But the standard of living in the colonies quite often saw the opposite. That is because the infrastructure only served to extract resources and exploitation of the colonized.
Off course any graph can choose to show which ever stat is convenient for the message, that doesn’t necessarily reflect the lived reality of the individual members of the global poor. And as I recall it most standard of living improvements for the global poor came in the decades after decolonization in the 1960s-1990s where infrastructure was being built that actually served people’s need as opposed for resource extraction in the decades past. If Hans Rosling said in 2007 that the standard of living has improved tremendously in the past 30 years, he would be correct, but not for the reason you gave.
The story of decolonization was that the correct infrastructure, such as hospitals, water lines, sewage, garbage disposal plants, roads, harbors, airports, schools, etc. that improved the standard of living not productivity gains. And case in point, the colonial period saw a tremendous growth in productivity in the colonies. But the standard of living in the colonies quite often saw the opposite. That is because the infrastructure only served to extract resources and exploitation of the colonized.