Olivia: Alright Jackson, I’m going to give you a choice. You can be born in the richest country in the world in 1900, or one of the poorest countries in the world today. Where are you placing your bet for survival? Jackson: Oh, come on. That’s not even a choice. Richest country, 1900, obviously. I’ll take the top hat and the burgeoning industrial revolution, thank you very much. Better than facing modern problems in a poor country. Olivia: And you would be making a statistically terrible decision. Your odds of surviving your first year of life are actually better in that poor country today. Jackson: Wait, what? No way. That can't be right. How? Even with all our modern medicine and knowledge? Olivia: Exactly. That single, counter-intuitive fact is the entire premise of the book we're diving into today: Getting Better by Charles Kenny. And what's fascinating is that Kenny isn't some armchair optimist. He's a former World Bank economist who spent years on the front lines of development. He wrote this book specifically to fight back against the overwhelming narrative of failure he saw everywhere. Jackson: Okay, that definitely gets my attention. Because my narrative, and I think most people's, is that things are pretty bleak. All we hear about is the income gap getting wider and crises getting worse. How can both be true? Olivia: That is the perfect question. It’s because we might be measuring "getting better" all wrong.

Olivia: Kenny’s first big argument is that we are obsessed with one single metric for progress: income. GDP per capita. We assume that if income isn't rising, then nothing is improving. Jackson: Well, yeah. I mean, money buys you things. It buys you medicine, better food, education for your kids. Isn't income the foundation for everything else? Olivia: It’s a foundation, but it's not the whole building. And sometimes, you can build the most important parts of the house without a golden foundation. Kenny tells this incredible story from recent history that perfectly illustrates this. Think about the late 20th century, from about 1975 to 2000. Jackson: Okay, I'm with you. Olivia: On one side of the world, you have the "East Asian Miracle." Countries like South Korea and Singapore are experiencing explosive economic growth, around 6% per year. They're the darlings of the development world. Economists are writing books about them, celebrating their success. Jackson: Right, the Asian Tigers. I remember hearing about that. They were the model for everyone else. Olivia: Exactly. Now, on the other side of the world, you have the Middle East and North Africa. During that same period, their economic growth was basically flat. About 0.5% per year. In the eyes of many economists, this region was a development failure. Stagnant, stuck, a problem to be solved. Jackson: So, a classic story of winners and losers. One region booming, the other busting. Olivia: That’s what everyone thought. But here’s the twist. If you stop looking at income and start looking at something else, like life expectancy, the story completely flips. During that exact same period of economic stagnation, the average life expectancy in the Middle East and North Africa shot up from 48 years to 69 years. Jackson: Whoa. Hold on. A 21-year increase in life expectancy? While their economy was going nowhere? Olivia: A faster increase, in fact, than what the booming East Asian economies saw in the same period. The supposed "failure" was getting healthier, faster, than the celebrated "success." It forces you to ask a really uncomfortable question: who was actually "getting better"? Jackson: That is a fantastic point. It’s like one person got a huge raise but their health fell apart, and the other person’s salary stayed the same but they started running marathons. We’d only celebrate the first person if we only looked at their bank account. Olivia: Precisely. Kenny argues that income is just a proxy for the things we actually want: a long, healthy life, education, security. And what the last 50 years have shown is that there are now pathways to get those things that don't necessarily require a country to become rich first. Jackson: Okay, that's a huge idea. But it still feels a bit abstract. You're saying life is improving even without more money. I need to see more proof. Show me the receipts. Olivia: I am so glad you asked. Because that brings us to the most hopeful part of the entire book.

Olivia: This leads to Kenny's central, most optimistic discovery, which he calls the "Great Convergence." It’s the idea that while incomes between rich and poor countries may be diverging, the quality of life is dramatically converging. Jackson: Converging, meaning the gap is closing? Olivia: It’s not just closing, it’s slamming shut at a historically unprecedented speed. Let's go back to that infant mortality statistic I opened with. In 1900, the United States, one of the richest countries in the world, had an infant mortality rate of nearly 15%. That means one in seven babies didn't make it to their first birthday. Jackson: One in seven. That's heartbreaking to even imagine. Olivia: Now, fast forward to today. A country like Haiti, one of the poorest in the world, which has faced unimaginable hardship, has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States did in 1900. Even Sierra Leone, which has had one of the highest rates in the modern world, is only a couple of percentage points higher than the richest country was back then. Jackson: That's... that's actually staggering. It completely reframes my mental map of the world. So you're saying a baby's chance of survival is better in modern-day Haiti than it was for a Rockefeller baby in 1900? Olivia: Statistically, yes. And this isn't just about health. It's happening in education, too. In 1970, literacy in sub-Saharan Africa was under 33%. By 1999, it had doubled to nearly 66%. The world is becoming more similar in the ways that truly matter for human flourishing. Jackson: Okay, but how? This is the part I'm stuck on. Better healthcare and better schools cost money. If the income isn't there, where is this progress coming from? Olivia: It's coming from the fact that the best things in life are getting cheaper. Radically cheaper. Jackson: Cheaper? My rent is definitely not getting cheaper. My groceries aren't getting cheaper. What on earth is getting cheaper? Olivia: The things that save your life. Let me give you a perfect example. One of the biggest killers of children in developing countries for centuries has been diarrhea. Not the illness itself, but the dehydration it causes. Jackson: Right, I've heard that. It seems so simple, but it's deadly. Olivia: For centuries, there was no effective cure. You just had to hope for the best. Today, the cure is something called Oral Rehydration Therapy, or ORT. Do you know what it is? It's a simple, pre-packaged mix of salt, sugar, and clean water. It costs pennies. It can be made in any kitchen in the world. And it has saved millions upon millions of lives. A 16th-century king with all the gold in his kingdom couldn't buy a solution that a mother in a village in Bangladesh can mix together for almost nothing today. Jackson: Wow. It’s like the fancy electrolyte drinks I buy for $4 after a workout are just a ridiculously overpriced version of this life-saving, almost-free solution. Olivia: Exactly! That's the point. The knowledge of how to solve the problem is more valuable than the money. And this is happening everywhere. Think of the Indian state of Kerala. It has a very low income per capita, on par with many of the poorest regions in the world. But its life expectancy is 72, and its literacy rate is over 90%. It outperforms much wealthier states and even some developed countries. Jackson: And how did they pull that off? Olivia: By deciding, decades ago, to focus their limited resources directly on public health and broad-based education, especially for women. They created a virtuous cycle. Educated mothers demand better healthcare for their children, and healthier children do better in school. They proved you don't have to wait to get rich to get well and get smart. Jackson: Okay, I'm sold that things are getting better. I see the convergence. But that just makes the 'why' even more mysterious and important. If it's not just money, what is the real engine driving all of this incredible progress? Olivia: It's the most powerful, and yet most overlooked, force in human history.

Jackson: Alright, don't leave me hanging. What's the secret sauce? Olivia: It's the spread of ideas and technologies. That's it. That's the engine. Kenny argues that the greatest driver of human progress isn't top-down aid programs or complex economic policies; it's the diffusion of simple, powerful, and often very cheap innovations. Jackson: So, it's less about shipping bags of money and more about shipping bags of knowledge? Olivia: Precisely. And there is no better story to illustrate this than the eradication of smallpox. For centuries, smallpox was a monster. It was one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse made real. It killed up to 45% of its victims and left survivors horribly scarred and often blind. It was a global terror. Jackson: I've seen pictures. It's the stuff of nightmares. Olivia: Then, in the late 18th century, an idea emerges: vaccination. A simple, brilliant concept. And for the next 180 years, that idea slowly spreads. Finally, in 1967, the World Health Organization launches a global campaign to wipe it out for good. They didn't do it by making every country rich. They did it by spreading the technology—a heat-stable vaccine and a simple, two-pronged needle. Jackson: And it worked. It's gone. Olivia: It's the only human disease we've ever completely eradicated. And here's the most incredible part. The total cost of that final, ten-year global push was about $300 million. That works out to about thirty-two cents per person in the countries that were infected at the time. Jackson: Thirty-two cents. To defeat a monster that had plagued humanity for millennia. That is unbelievable. It's probably the best return on investment in the history of the world. Olivia: It has to be. And it proves Kenny's point perfectly. The value wasn't in money; it was in the idea of the vaccine and the system to deliver it. This is the great news. We have a growing arsenal of these "32-cent solutions" for the world's biggest problems—bed nets for malaria, basic sanitation, female education, democratic principles. Jackson: This all sounds amazing, but it also feels a bit too simple. If it's just about spreading good ideas, why is there still so much suffering? This is where the book's critics chime in, right? They argue that this level of optimism can feel like it's downplaying the very real, very brutal challenges that still exist. Olivia: That's a fair and crucial point. And Kenny does address it. Spreading ideas is simple in concept, but incredibly difficult in practice. It's not a magic wand. Ideas face powerful enemies: corruption, misinformation, political instability, and deeply ingrained cultural norms. He tells the story of the governor in Kano, Nigeria, who in 2003 blocked the polio vaccination campaign because of a conspiracy theory that it was a plot to sterilize women. Jackson: Oh man. So one person's bad idea can halt the spread of a life-saving good one. Olivia: Exactly. The polio virus that escaped from that one region went on to re-infect nine neighboring countries and even caused an outbreak as far away as Indonesia. So, the optimism has to be a "realistic optimism." The tools are there, they are cheap, and they are powerful. But getting them into the hands of the people who need them requires overcoming immense human and political friction. Progress isn't inevitable, it has to be fought for.

Jackson: So, when you put it all together, it feels like the book is a fundamental reframing of what we should even be looking at. Olivia: That's the perfect way to put it. The whole journey of the book is about a shift in perspective. First, it tells us to stop obsessing over the flawed metric of income, because it’s making us miss the real story. Jackson: Right, that was the Middle East example. The 'failure' that was actually getting healthier. Olivia: Then, it shows us the real story: this incredible, hidden 'Great Convergence' in quality of life. The gap in health, education, and basic rights is closing faster than ever before. Jackson: Which is the idea that the best things in life are getting cheaper. Like that salt-and-sugar drink that saves millions. Olivia: And finally, it tells us what’s driving it all: not giant, top-down economic plans, but the simple, viral spread of powerful ideas and technologies, like the vaccine that beat smallpox. The biggest success of development hasn't been making poor countries rich; it's been making the essential ingredients of a good life—health, knowledge, safety—cheap and accessible to all. Jackson: It really makes you wonder, what other 'problems' are we looking at all wrong, just because we're measuring the wrong thing? In our own lives, in our societies... what are the 'income' metrics we're chasing, while we ignore the 'life expectancy' that's actually improving, or declining, right under our noses? Olivia: That's a fantastic question. And it's one we'd love to hear your thoughts on. What's a metric you think we overvalue in our own lives or in the world today? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels. We're always curious to hear what you think. Jackson: It's a powerful thought to end on. A reminder to look beyond the headlines. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.