On average only 39% know that the mortality of children is falling. The survey once more shows that most people are not aware of this. The child mortality rate in both the less- and least-developed countries has halved in the last 20 years. In the same survey people were asked: “In the last 20 years, has the child mortality rate in developing regions increased, decreased or stayed about the same?” We are not just wrong about global poverty. People in richer countries on the other hand – in which the majority of the population escaped extreme poverty some generations ago – have a very wrong perception about what is happening to global poverty. In these poorer countries more people understand how global poverty has changed. The countries I marked with a star are those that were a low-income or lower-middle-income countries a generation ago (in 1990). But it’s interesting that the share of correct answers differs substantially across countries. There are some people who answered the question correctly: every fifth person knows that poverty is falling. For the recent era it doesn’t even matter what poverty line you choose, the share of people below any poverty line has fallen (see here). In fact, the share of people living in extreme poverty across the world has been declining for two centuries and in the last 20 years this positive development has been faster than ever before (see our work on Poverty). The majority of people – 52% – believe that the share of people in extreme poverty is rising.
The first chart shows how the surveyed people answered the following question: “In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has decreased, increased, or remained the same?”
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