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2 Fighting the Diseases of PovertyFigure 1 Global economic development, AD 1–2003Per capita GDP (1990 Int.$)35,00030,00025,00020,00015,00010,0005,000Western EuropeUnited StatesUSSR/Ex-USSRLatin AmericaChinaIndiaJapanAfricaWorld00 400 800 1200 1600 2000Source: Maddison (2005a); GGDC&CB (2005)Yet today anxiety about the future continues. Calls to restructureour economy to avoid the pending insurmountable problems aretypical. “The challenge facing the entire world is to design aneconomy that can satisfy the basic needs of people everywherewithout self-destructing,” said Lester Brown, president of WorldWatch Institute, in 1998 (Brown, 1998).This chapter is a conscious effort to emulate, build upon, andupdate the work of Julian Simon and to provide empirical data tohelp evaluate the heated rhetoric of Lester Brown and other Neo-Malthusian alarmists. While no one can confidently predict thefuture, it is possible to scrutinize the past and present to determinethe current state of humanity and identify which factors havehelped, and which hindered progress.Thus, the goal of this much smaller chapter is to collect in a convenientand portable volume the historical trends for indicators thatare widely used to illustrate human welfare. These trends are presentednot only across time, but, where data are available, across