A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!

Back in 2022, sunglasses-wearing U2 frontman and rock star philanthropist Bono gave one of those long interviews to the New York Times Magazine. In between talking about his band’s new albums and the challenge of staying relevant after nearly 50 years in the music business, Bono mused on what he’s learned in his decades as an activist for the global poor:

I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism.

The statement “ugh, commerce,” coming from a rock star with an estimated net worth of $700 million is a little, what’s the word, rich. But whatever you think about Bono — and personally I’m still ride or die for Achtung, Baby — he’s right that trade and capitalism have been perhaps the most important factor behind the sharp historical decline in global poverty.

With the world now on the brink of an unprecedented trade war thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, it’s more important than ever before to appreciate the progress we’ve made — and just what drove it.

The second-most important number in the world

If the remarkable decline of child mortality is the most important number in the world, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, then the sharp decline in extreme poverty might be the second-most important.

There are a few lessons in this chart. One, extreme, grinding poverty — here defined as living on the equivalent of $1.90 a day or less — was not just more common in the not too distant past. It was the lot of most human beings.

As recently as 1950, more than half the world’s population lived in a state of extreme poverty. Go back further, to the early 19th century, and it was closer to four out of every five people. Until the last few decades, in those regions outside the developed world (like most of Africa, South Asia, and East Asia), it was nearly everyone.

Today, the picture looks entirely different. As this chart below shows, the number of people living in extreme poverty in the present day, when the global population is 8.2 billion, is lower than it was than in 1820, back when the entire population of the world was barely more than 1 billion people.

Zoom in on this chart, and you see another part of the story. Even as the industrial revolution and everything that followed brought more and more people in the developed world out of extreme poverty, the overall number of people in extreme poverty did keep growing, albeit more slowly.

Then, beginning around 1990, the world experienced an unprecedented and drastic decline in extreme poverty, which fell from 38 percent of the global population to approximately 8.5 percent in 2024 (based on current figures that go beyond these charts).

How did it happen? There were many factors: increased spending on social and anti-poverty programs,

© Vox