[coddingtonbear]

I usually respect the Jacobin as a publication, but am I misreading something if I still read those figures as absolute improvements - especialy given that the world population increased by 2 billion in the noted time frame? I absolutely agree that the originally-cited poverty metric is absurdly poor, and focusing on an at least somewhat higher standard should be our goal as a civilization, but I don’t see any evidence here that refutes Pinker’s core argument.