As 2024 draws to a close, we look forward to 2025.
Despite the many challenges that confront us, this is the time of year we reserve for hope and dreams, for to hope and dream is to be positive. While we humans are optimistic by nature, we must nevertheless find reassurance to channel expectation into action, progress, and success. Yet in a world where ‘bad’ is too often a redundant modifier of ‘news’, positive outcomes largely go unreported.
That is wrong and unfortunate. We should be aware of what is going well. We should find strength in positive trends and therein renewed faith that we can improve our lives, the lives of loved ones and strangers, the vitality of our communities, and the health of our planet.
Without diminishing the importance of what we must still put right, it is imperative we take time to acknowledge progress. Hope, after all, is a human condition reinforced by achievement.
What follows is a sample—a mere subset—of positive trends in our world at the end of 2024.
- Life expectancy at birth, low-income countries. In 1960, life expectancy at birth in low-income countries (as classified by the World Bank) was just 41.1 years. In the ensuing 39 years, it increased to age 50. And then came a major transformation. In the first two decades of this century, life expectancy in low-income countries jumped another 12 years to 63.4 years in 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the upward trend, but life expectancy is again rebounding. Improvements in health sciences (e.g., access to vaccinations), basic services (e.g., potable water), relief from famine caused by war and civil unrest, and access to world markets (globalization) are among the critical success factors behind rising life expectancy in the world’s poorest countries.
- Total US carbon dioxide emissions, all sectors. In 1970, the US spewed 4.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That figure grew to 6 billion metric tons by 2007. Since then, however, it has declined significantly. As of 2021, total annual US CO2 emissions were again below 5 billion metric tons. Nor is that outcome due to recessions or episodes of weak growth. It has been a downward trend for 15 years and has occurred despite ongoing economic and population growth. Carbon dioxide reductions are broad based, across transportation, residential heating and cooling, and electric power generation sectors, among many others.
- World literacy. In 1976, 35% of the world’s population over the age of 15 could neither read nor write. As of 2022, that figure had fallen to 13% — still too high, but nevertheless a vast improvement. A further encouraging sign is the advancement in recent decades of literacy rates among those aged 15-24. In 1976, 77.1% of young people could read and write. As of 2023, that figure rose to 92.7%. Increasing levels of literacy offer no assurances of liberty or prosperity, but they improve the odds that individuals and communities will be shaped by reason, logic, knowledge, and civility.
- Declining crime rates. Based on data gathered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), almost all measures of serious felony crime in the US have declined sharply since the 1990s. Over the past thirty years, for example, total violent crimes per 100,000 people have declined by 49% and property crimes have fallen by 58.8%, led by a 75% decline in burglary rates. Falling crime rates are not merely a US phenomenon. Since the 1990s, declines in serious violent and property crime rates have been recorded in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand, among other advanced economies. Europe has experienced a 63% fall in homicide rates this century (2002-2019 data). Homicide rates have fallen 36% in Asia since 1990. While little consensus exists among the factors leading to falling crime rates across advanced economies, changes in policing tactics and levels of incarceration do not appear to explain the improvement across time and regions.
- Women in government. The number and share of women in parliaments and legislatures has been rising in most countries this century. Among all countries in 2023, Rwanda tops the list with 61.3% of all parliamentarians being women. Oman and Yemen are at the bottom with 0%. Mexico and the United Arab Emirates, with 50% female parliamentarian rates, have edged ahead of the ‘gender-friendly’ Nordics, including Iceland (47.6%) Sweden (46.4%), Norway (46.1%) or Finland (46%). The United States, with 29% female legislators, lags many of its developed country peers, though it easily outstrips Japan at a mere 10.3%. Nevertheless, US female legislative representation has risen sharply from just 11.7% in 1997, with the biggest jump taking place since 2017.
In short, across broad categories, including health, education, crime, the environment, and inclusion, success stories abound globally.
That is not to say that all is well. Daunting challenges remain. But when we take time to reflect on what humanity has achieved and juxtapose that with the deluge of negativity that convention considers newsworthy, we can take solace in tangible results, outcomes of positivity that nourish hope, renew faith, and fortify dreams that we, too, can make a positive difference for others.
To joy, fortune, and good works in 2025.
