Getting Better Why Global Development Is Succeeding--And How We Can Improve the World Even More

by Kenny, Charles

• ISBN13: 9780465031030
• ISBN10: 046503103X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-12-04
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

As the income gap between developed and developing nations grows, so grows the cacophony of voices claiming that the quest to find a simple recipe for economic growth has failed. Getting Better, in sharp contrast, reports the good news about global progress. Economist Charles Kenny argues against development naysayers by pointing to the evidence of widespread improvements in health, education, peace, liberty--and even happiness. Kenny shows how the spread of cheap technologies, such as vaccines and bed nets, and ideas, such as political rights, has transformed the world. He also shows that by understanding this transformation, we can make the world an even better place to live. That's not to say that life is grand for everyone, or that we don't have a long way to go. But improvements have spread far, and, according to Kenny, they can spread even further.

Author Biography

Charles Kenny is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, and on leave as a Senior Economist at the World Bank. Kenny is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy and has written for Time, Businessweek, Washington Monthly, The Guardian and the Globalist, among others. He lives in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the Paperback Edition	p. ix
Prologue	p. xiii
Abandoning Hope	p. 1
The Bad News: Diverging Incomes	p. 15
The Worse News: It's Hard to Raise Growth Rates	p. 25
The Good News: The End of the Malthusian Trap	p. 53
The Better News: The Great Convergence in Quality of Life	p. 71
The Great News: The Best Things in Life Are Cheap	p. 93
Drivers of the Better Life: Innovation and Ideas	p. 113
Policies for Quality of Life	p. 149
The Global Agenda	p. 175
Conclusion: Realistic Optimism	p. 201
Acknowledgments	p. 207
Notes	p. 209
Bibliography	p. 219
Index	p. 235
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