Why can’t we look past the misery?

Gayle Smith, t he outgoing head of the U. S. Agency for International Development, gave a remarkable speech one recent day in Washington. “I think everyone in the room knows that this is a moment of extraordinary progress,” she declared. “Over the last 30 years, extreme poverty has been cut in half.”

Most of t hose in t he room, being themselves already part of the effort to make global progress, were not surprised. Nor were t hey unaccustomed to a certain amount of self- congratulations from government officials.

But others were astonished at this piece of news. Between those who study the true story of the world today, and those who don’t, there’s a wide chasm. Most of us remain ignorant of truly astounding, and nearmiraculous events.

In the year 2000 the UN set a goal of eradicating poverty by 2030. With 13 years left to go, the number of totally destitute people in world has been reduced by 50 per cent. About 1 billion people rose out of extreme poverty. Millions of children who were unlikely to survive their fifth birthday passed that milestone and went on to school in ever greater numbers. The incidence of preventable diseases such as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis continues to fall.

The World Bank considers those living on $ 1.90 or less a day the poorest of the poor. In recent years those living beneath that level has steadily decreased.

A couple of years ago an opinion survey demonstrated that more than eight Americans out of 10 didn’t know that global poverty had been drastically reduced in the last three decades.

More t han t wo- t hirds of them, in fact, thought poverty had risen i n the same period.

The same poll reported that half of adults believed — or, more likely, assumed — that child deaths have increased since 1990, and more than a third think deaths from HIV/AIDS have increased in the past five years.

In fact, both child deaths and deaths caused by HIV/ AIDS have decreased worldwide. There’s no evidence f or assuming Canadians hold different views or that Americans have changed theirs.

The survey agency, Barnagroup, headed its report on its finding: Global Poverty Is on the Decline, But Almost No One Believes It.

Can this be, as we say so often, the age of information, when news is more easily available than ever before?

Yet many of us don’ t know about t his major change affecting the whole world — a change that, far from being secret, is often set forth in reports from the World Bank, the UN, and other agencies.

James R. Rogers, a professor of political science at Texas A& M University, comments in a current article that the reality of this remarkable decline seems largely settled. It’s undisputed. “And the world has seen nothing on its scale before.”

“Epochal” is a term used occasionally to depict the change. One UN r eport reads: “The world is witnessing an epochal ‘ global rebalancing’ with higher growth in at least 40 poor countries helping lift hundreds of millions out of poverty and i nto a new ‘ global middle class.’ Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast.”

A study by Oxford University’s poverty and human development initiative i dentifies nations where progress is unusually fast — Rwanda, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Close behind them are Ghana, Tanzania, Cambodia and Bolivia. Regions lagging behind include subSaharan Africa and South Asia.

Economic growth has created much of the reduction in poverty, improving prospects for the poor. Governments and private organizations have increased education, improved health services and i nvested in roads, all developments t hat make it easier f or people to work their way out of poverty.

Of course that’s no reason to abandon the government and private- charity projects. Billions of others live in desperation.

But why is it that such a hopeful trend remains so little known?

Why are we not celebrating the triumph of generosity and shrewd management?

Perhaps we’ve heard so often of misery in the poor countries that we’ve come to believe their desperation will remain forever.

Perhaps we’ve known so many failures of government projects that we routinely assume that not even one of them can work.

Perhaps a world accustomed to bad news — violence, political anger, the breaking of treaties — can no longer find it possible to absorb the good kind.

If so, we should set aside our tired old imagination and look again at the real, and greatly more encouraging, state of the world.

ECONOMIC GROWTH HAS CREATED MUCH OF THE REDUCTION IN POVERTY, IMPROVING PROSPECTS FOR THE POOR.