By Bill Gates | January 4, 2018

Reading the news today does not exactly leave you feeling optimistic. Hurricanes in the Americas. Horrific mass shootings. Global tensions over nuclear arms, crisis in Myanmar, bloody civil wars in Syria and Yemen. Your heart breaks for every person who is touched by these tragedies. Even for those of us lucky enough not to be directly affected, it may feel like the world is falling apart.

But these events—as awful as they are—have happened in the context of a bigger, positive trend. On the whole, the world is getting better.

This is not some naively optimistic view; it’s backed by data...

By Bill Gates | January 4, 2018

Reading the news today does not exactly leave you feeling optimistic. Hurricanes in the Americas. Horrific mass shootings. Global tensions over nuclear arms, crisis in Myanmar, bloody civil wars in Syria and Yemen. Your heart breaks for every person who is touched by these tragedies. Even for those of us lucky enough not to be directly affected, it may feel like the world is falling apart.

But these events—as awful as they are—have happened in the context of a bigger, positive trend. On the whole, the world is getting better.

This is not some naively optimistic view; it’s backed by data...