Getting better : why global development is succeeding : and how we can improve the world even more

An expert on the developing world reflects--with optimism--on the past fifty years of aid interventions.;Foreword to the Paperback Edition by Bill Gates; Prologue; 1. Abandoning Hope; 2. The Bad News: Diverging Incomes; 3. The Worse News: It's Hard to Raise Growth Rates; 4. The Good News: The End of the Malthusian Trap; 5. The Better News; The Great Convergence in Quality of Life; 6. The Great News: The Best Things in Life Are Cheap; 7. Drivers of the Better Life: Innovation and Ideas; 8. Policies for Quality of Life; 9. The Global Agenda; 10. Conclusion: Realistic Optimism; Acknowledgments; Notes; Bibliography; Index. As the income gap between developed and developing nations grows, so grows the cacophony of voices claiming that the quest to find a simple recipe for economic growth has failed. Getting Better , in sharp contrast, reports the good news about global progress. Economist Charles Kenny argues against development naysayers by pointing to the evidence of widespread improvements in health, education, peace, liberty — and even happiness. Kenny shows how the spread of cheap technologies, such as vaccines and bed nets, and ideas, such as political rights, has transformed the world. He also shows that by understanding this transformation, we can make the world an even better place to live. That's not to say that life is grand for everyone, or that we don't have a long way to go. But improvements have spread far, and, according to Kenny, they can spread even further. As the income gap between developed and developing nations grows, so grows the cacophony of voices claiming that the quest to find a simple recipe for economic growth has failed. In sharp contrast, this work reports the good news about global progress. The author, an economist, argues against development naysayers by pointing to the evidence of widespread improvements in health, education, peace, liberty, and even happiness. He shows how the spread of cheap technologies, such as vaccines and bed nets, and ideas, such as political rights, has transformed the world. He also shows that by understanding this transformation, we can make the world an even better place to live. That's not to say that life is grand for everyone, or that we don't have a long way to go. But improvements have spread far, and, according to the author, they can spread even further.