The past half-century is but a small part of a story that has evolved over the course of 250 years or so. In the middle of the eighteenth century, perhaps 90 percent of the world’s population lived in a state of abject poverty, subsisting on the equivalent of less than $1 per person per day, measured in today’s terms.
In fact, for most of human history, abject poverty—including inadequate nutrition and rudimentary shelter—was the norm for almost everyone, everywhere. This began to change in the eighteenth century with the Industrial Revolution and its associated mechanization of tasks that had always been laboriously done by humans or animals.
Stimulated in the early years by the invention and application of the steam engine, the Industrial Revolution initiated a massive cascade of innovations in transportation, chemistry, biology, manufacturing processes, communications, and electronic technology.
This continuing process of invention and innovation has made little headway in many parts of the world, but where it has taken hold, there has been a sustained rise in average real per capita income and a corresponding decline in poverty. By 1820, the extent of abject poverty had fallen from 90 to 80 percent; by 1900, it had dipped below 70 percent; and it has continued to decline since. Before the Industrial Revolution, more than five out of six people lived in abject poverty; today, it is one out of six.
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