Overall the trends are looking pretty good, the news focusses on the edge cases which don't represent even 5%. Obviously terrible things happen, but less and less people are affected. The "problem" now is that the bad stuff gets so much more attention. I think world population has a very different problem, demographics are very troubling, not enough people are born in certain economies. There will be a huge demographic crunch with the current models. The population pyramid is less and less a pyramid, in many countries it is a column and slowly going upside down. Less and less young people to do the work to pay for the pensions of the old people.
Japan is an extreme example, but even China is going to have this problem soon. A lot of this stuff is counterintuitive, we come back to education, what we learn in school is mostly stuff that was valid when our professors were being educated. That means we have roughly a 30 year world knowledge delay. I remember I was backpacking in Mozambique in 2007 and did not bring my cell phone with me because I thought it was too flashy. Imagine my surprise when in the middle of nowhere in Mozambique a Toyota Hiace bus with 7 seats and 30 people my neighbour pulled out the successor model of my phone! Things move fast, much faster than our knowledge sources unfortunately...
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A lot of stuff is counter intuitive, but that is why studying it is important :) haha. But you know, it might reflect the culture of Mozambique more than the economic situation. I have no idea, but I'm just guessing that maybe those flashy things are a status symbol there. Mobile phones used to be in many western countries also. But then again, wealth is distributed very scarcely in Africa, doesn't mean that everyone is poor there. Just that the gap is huge.
It was a good wake up call for me, there obviously is a lot of poverty but you can't make too much assumptions... I saw how for instance the road situation was changing massively, some roads the standard pothole / concrete mix and some new ones put in with EU funding, they were just starting then. But the step change with some basic infrastructure is massive.