The world has drastically reduced rates of poverty, starvation, disease, illiteracy, keeping girls out of school, and work hours.
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
Judged as of 2018-02-13. Six items: rates of poverty, starvation (famine or undernourishment), disease (burden or mortality), illiteracy, girls kept out of school, and work hours. Each counts as drastically reduced over the long run (decades to two centuries) if global data show large declines. True: all six show large long-term global declines. Mostly true: five of six do, or all decline but one only modestly. Mixed: about half show drastic declines. Mostly false: only one or two do. False: none do, or most rates have risen.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (12)
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E1 Famines Our World in Data · 7 December 2017
“Viewed in this way, the trend is all the more notable: the famine mortality rate fell to very low levels over the second half of the 20th century.”
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E2 Spread of literacy among women highlighted in UNESCO anniversary global review UN News · 21 April 2017
“The authors note that around 1950, just over half of all the world’s people were reported as being literate. Since then, they state, the adult literacy rate has increased by five percentage points every decade on average, to 86 per cent in 2015.”
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E3 Spread of literacy among women highlighted in UNESCO anniversary global review UN News · 21 April 2017
“One of the report’s main findings is that there are now more illiterate adults compared with 50 years ago, meaning that literacy efforts have not kept pace with population growth”
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E4 UNESCO report illustrates leap forward in girls’ education over past 25 years, now threatened by Covid-19 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report · 9 October 2020
“Since 1995, the global enrolment rate for girls increased from 73% to 89%, with the biggest improvements seen in sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and especially in India.”
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E5 Famines Our World in Data · 2013
“it is nonetheless very clear that in recent decades the presence of major life-taking famines has diminished significantly compared to earlier eras.”
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E6 Famines Our World in Data · 2013
“the famine mortality rate fell to very low levels over the second half of the 20th century.”
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E7 UNESCO report illustrates leap forward in girls’ education over past 25 years, now threatened by Covid-19 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report · 2020
“Since 1995, the global enrolment rate for girls increased from 73% to 89%, with the biggest improvements seen in sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and especially in India.”
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E8 UNESCO report illustrates leap forward in girls’ education over past 25 years, now threatened by Covid-19 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report · 2020
“The legacy of past discrimination is such that women still account for almost two-thirds of illiterate adults.”
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E9 The evolution of global poverty, 1990-2030 Brookings Institution (Center for Sustainable Development), Global Working Paper #166 · February 2022
“The last 30 years have seen dramatic reductions in global poverty, spurred by strong catch-up growth in developing countries, especially in Asia.”
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E10 Annex I Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), SOFI 2025 statistical annex · 28 April 2025
“| | 2000–2002 | 2004–2006 | 2009–2011 | 2014–2016 | 2018–2020 | 2019–2021 | 2021–2023 | 2022–2024 | | World | 12.8 | 11.9 | 8.7 | 7.6 | 7.8 | 8.2 | 8.6 | 8.5 |”
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E11 Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 PubMed Central (GBD 2019 Study, published in The Lancet) · 17 October 2020
“Global health has steadily improved over the past 30 years as measured by age-standardised DALY rates.”
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E12 One in every five children, adolescents and youth is out of school UNESCO · 28 February 2018
“According to data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), about 263 million children, adolescents and youth worldwide - one in every five - are out school, a figure that has barely changed over the past five years.”
Reasoning
The evidence shows large long-term declines for poverty (E9), famine mortality (E1, E6), illiteracy (E2) and girls' non-enrolment (E4). E11 reports only a steady improvement in disease burden without giving its size, and no evidence item covers work hours. So the evidence does not establish the five drastic declines that the "mostly true" criterion requires.
Cite this claim
Steven Pinker, “The world has drastically reduced rates of poverty, starvation, disease, illiteracy, keeping girls out of school, and work hours.” (said 13 February 2018). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_c595b5d7d7b4, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_c595b5d7d7b4
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.
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