“Major portions of the world are in conflict and some, in fact, are going to hell,” President Trump said two years ago in a speech before the United Nations. Most things the president says are controversial, but the only disagreement most Americans across the political spectrum might have had with this statement was his use of “some.” As a rule, we tend to believe — mistakenly — that the world is getting worse.

... however, the bad-news bias gives us a highly inaccurate picture of the world. For example, according to a 2013 survey, 67 percent of Americans think global poverty is on the rise, and 68 percent believe it is impossible to solve extreme poverty in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, starvation-level poverty has decreased by 80 percent since 1970, according to economists at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The truth is that while there is plenty to worry about on any given day, the world is generally getting better.

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