The issue is the definition of 'better'. If you think access to food, medication, education, higher life expectancy, then yes.
IMHO though, a more fitting defition of 'better' for the human condition is the amount of happiness you experience while being alife (i.e. decoupled from life expectancy).
I would then conclude (and I am really happy to be proved wrong) that the developed world being/becoming better is considerably more difficult to argue for.
Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs not experienced since WWII. [1] is just from a quick googling and US-only. You won't have trouble finding much more evidence to support this though, for many other 1st world countries.
I would bet there is a direct link to this; between making GPD the driving factor for a country's governance vs. e.g. happiness of its citizens. Look no further than Scandinavian countries (Norway is the exeption, not declining but at least also not increasing)[2].
> a more fitting defition of 'better' for the human condition is the amount of happiness
So, instead of measuring the objective/empirical things that:
1. Keep people alive
2. Keep them from going hungry
3. Make them healthy and pain-free
4. Keep them warm (or cool, where appropriate)
5. Etc etc etc
You instead are suggesting that we measure some subjective mood that no one can define well, test for, or detect with instrumentation? That would be the better measure?
> Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs
I would not argue that these are insignificant, but there are methodological problems with both.
Suicide may have been traditionally undercounted for religious reasons. If you're investigating a suicide in the 1950s, it might just have been a gun-cleaning accident instead. Saves the family grief, means the deceased can be buried in the cemetery the family wants, etc.
Depression, while real, might still be subject to the sort of contagious hypochondriac panics that describe the late 20th century and early 21st so well.
Or, alternatively... it might have been undercounted until recently. We're not seeing an increase so much as that people are merely aware of it.
> Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs not experienced since WWII. [1] is just from a quick googling and US-only. You won't have trouble finding much more evidence to support this though, for many other 1st world countries.
It's difficult to compare suicide statistics over time, especially over decades, because definitions change. (For one example, in England a coroner used to need to be able to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that a person had died by suicide, and that changed to balance of probabilities in 2018).
It's also important not to use sources like media outlets for suicide statistics, because they often don't understand what's being counted or how it's being counted. Statistics are tricky, and media often get them wrong.
You say that it's easy to show that suicides are at an all time high in many first world countries, but that's not correct. In many countries rates peaked in about 2008 - 2010 because of world wide financial crash, and have been declining since then. We might see another peak because of the financial (and other) distress caused by pandemic, but so far we're not seeing a big increase.
IMHO though, a more fitting defition of 'better' for the human condition is the amount of happiness you experience while being alife (i.e. decoupled from life expectancy).
I would then conclude (and I am really happy to be proved wrong) that the developed world being/becoming better is considerably more difficult to argue for.
Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs not experienced since WWII. [1] is just from a quick googling and US-only. You won't have trouble finding much more evidence to support this though, for many other 1st world countries.
I would bet there is a direct link to this; between making GPD the driving factor for a country's governance vs. e.g. happiness of its citizens. Look no further than Scandinavian countries (Norway is the exeption, not declining but at least also not increasing)[2].
[1] https://time.com/5609124/us-suicide-rate-increase/
[2] https://tidsskriftet.no/en/2019/08/kronikk/why-suicide-rate-...