“If we’ve done it before, then we can use those same tools to do it again.”
Emma Camp, senior newsletter editor at WSJ Free Expression, on why she is optimistic about free markets and the three things she credits for the fall in extreme poverty: free markets, technological innovation, and advances in medicine.
Watch the full episode from Infinite Loops with Jim O’Shaughnessy.
https://youtu.be/Go02wAPcp30
THE DATA
• Around 1820, nearly 80% of the world lived in extreme poverty
• By 1950, about half did
• By 2019, it was below 10%
• In 2022, about 838 million people lived below the World Bank’s $3 a day line, roughly 1 in 10
SOURCES
Our World in Data, A history of global living conditions: https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts
World Bank, June 2025 update to global poverty lines: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/factsheet/2025/06/05/june-2025-update-to-global-poverty-lines
