BACK ON NOVEMBER 15, the 8 billionth person on the planet was born. Well, more or less. That was the date selected by United Nations demog-raphers as the moment the world crossed the population milestone. It's undoubtedly wrong-perhaps off by months or more-but there are roughly a billion more humans alive today than there were 11 years ago. Milestones make good headlines, but concentrating on a few big numbers can obscure other trends that really explain how the world has changed in the past decade. Just two examples: The proportion of people living in extreme poverty has steadily declined. (In 2010,16.3 percent of the world lived on less than $2.15 a day; today only 9 percent of people live on the inflation-adjusted equivalent of such apittance.) In India and China, which contributed the most new births in the past decade, GDP per capita and life expectancy have risen even while their populations boomed. To put it simply, more people are living better lives today than at any point in human history.
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