Humans are living longer, becoming healthier, better educated and more literate, and have more leisure time.
Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
Judge as of 2018-10-09, on global long-run trends (multi-decade or century scale). The claim has five parts: (1) life expectancy is rising; (2) health is improving (for example lower disease burden or child mortality); (3) educational attainment is rising; (4) literacy rates are rising; (5) leisure time is increasing. True: authoritative data (UN, WHO, World Bank, UNESCO, Our World in Data, historical labour statistics) show that all five improved over the long run. Mostly true: four parts hold clearly and one holds only weakly or ambiguously (for example leisure-time trends that are mixed in some recent periods). Mixed: about half of the parts hold. Mostly false: only one or two parts hold. False: the data show the trends are flat or reversing for most parts.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
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E1 Two centuries ago, only 1 in 10 adults could read. Today, it’s almost 9 in 10 Our World in Data · 29 July 2024
“In 1820, only 1 in 10 people over the age of 15 could read. Today, the corresponding global literacy rate — the share of adults aged 15 and older who can read and write — is 87%.”
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E2 Global average life expectancy has more than doubled since 1900 Our World in Data · 4 February 2025
“This was a short life by today’s standards: in 2023, the average life expectancy had increased to 73 years. That’s 41 years longer.”
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E3 ‘Historic milestone’ as child mortality hits record low of 4.9 million in 2022 | United Nations United Nations (Department of Economic and Social Affairs) · 12 March 2024
“Figures released by the UN Interagency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME) reveal the global under-five mortality rate has declined by 51 per cent since 2000.”
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E4 Working hours in wealthy countries have been reduced by half over the last 150 years Our World in Data · 4 September 2024
“The chart shows that the average worker in wealthy countries now works only about half as many hours per year as in the late 19th century.”
Reasoning
The evidence supports long-run gains in literacy [E1], life expectancy [E2] and child mortality [E3]. However, no item measures educational attainment beyond literacy, and leisure is shown only indirectly by falling working hours in wealthy countries [E4]. That leaves two of the five parts unsettled, so the evidence does not establish the level the criteria set for the verdict.
Cite this claim
Steven Pinker, “Humans are living longer, becoming healthier, better educated and more literate, and have more leisure time.” (said 9 October 2018). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_2480ee1e9033, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_2480ee1e9033
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Steven Pinker
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Mostly true
“But in other kinds violence, such as homicides, the progress has definitely continued.”
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Mostly true
“I float a number of hypotheses as to why cooperation and human flourishing in general have increased.”
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Mostly true
“Those were as old as civilisation.”
Slavery and imperialism were as old as civilisation, predating the Enlightenment.
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Mixed
“Nuclear doomsday scenarios in the 1960s set off not disarmament but an arms race with the Soviets.”
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Mixed
“More countries are democratic than not, even though if it’s fewer than it was 20 years ago.”
More countries are democratic than not, though fewer than 20 years ago.
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.