How We're Dying: A Sign of Progress

It's easy to follow the news and feel like we're living in the most extreme times in history. Democracies are devolving into right wing authoritarian regimes. Another gang, drug cartel, or run-of-the-mill psychopath has just gone on a killing spree. There's ongoing violence and unrest in the Middle East. Still. Some militaristic dictator has just killed a bunch of dissenters. Three people were murdered in a neighborhood near you. Politicians can't agree on an issue and people are upset. The planet is melting. And the Muslims... well I'm sure they're up to no good. I don't wish to trivialize any of those stories (the ones based in reality, anyway) which are tragic and almost always feature grave injustice. Even in mock form those headlines give the impression that things are generally terrible and probably couldn't get worse

But I wanted to see if there was any data to support or refute that idea. So I decided to look up some data on how people are actually dying. So join me for a couple of minutes, take a break from the news, and let's look at the bigger picture for a couple of minutes. When we do, we will see that things can get worse for humanity, and in fact they used to be much worse. Which might, I mean it's possible, that it could maybe indicate, that things are getting... better?

This next statement might not appear like a positive piece of news, but it is: More and more people these days are dying of good old fashioned age-related illness¹. That's is good news because it means that they aren't dying from other more discouraging things like violence and war, easily preventable diseases, or malnutrition. People are still dying from those things, but as a percentage of the world's population it is much less than it used to be. Here is a breakdown of how we collectively died in 2016 as a percentage of the total 54.7 million global deaths:

There's a lot of fascinating information in this one chart (there are many more charts by the way from the folks who compiled it at ourworldindata.org). I'll say that I was surprised to see how high both diabetes and HIV/AIDS rank. More interesting, however, is that natural disasters, terrorism, and conflict are three of the four lowest ranking causes of death, collectively amounting to less than 0.3% of deaths, and yet they seem to generate the most news coverage. I suppose it's because these stories make spectacular news pieces, often with captivating visuals, but it appears they don't fully tell the human story.

Now, in order for me to assert something as crazy as “things are getting better” we need to look at deaths over time.

   

Above is a table showing causes of death from the 27 year period of 1990-2016 grouped into three categories. Yes, overall more people are dying each year as one would expect with an expanding population, but the number of people dying from 'accidents' is holding steady, communicable disease deaths are going down, and all the growth is coming from non-communicable disease category. This next chart below also shows that people are dying at an older age.

From this graph we learn that nearly half of the 2016 deaths were among people at least 70 years old, which is up from roughly one third of in 1990. More and more, people are living to a ripe old age so to speak. Moreover, deaths of children under 5 years old are down 55% over that same relatively short period. As a species we have been making huge strides in medicine and sanitation over the last 30 or so years which has resulted in millions of saved or extended lives.

Death's From Military Conflict

But what about the military? So much of history is just military conflict after military conflict. With the exception of some writers, philosophers, and the occasional savior or buddha mixed in, most of the people we know about from world history are known for their military leadership and prowess: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, etc. The past basically seemed like constant war. The history of most cities in Europe and Asia largely involved various empires winning battles which killed, raped, pillaged, and leveled cities and societies. Humanity's past was a bloody affair. And that's just the parts that were recorded. I was curious if things are more or less violent than they used to be.

It appears an interesting turn has taken place since the end of the second world war (WWII) in 1945 and even more so after the conclusion of the Korean war in 1953. The number of totals deaths caused by military activity is down drastically, not just compared to deaths during the wars but to any other time in estimable history. This is even more remarkable considering how much the world's population has grown in the last century. This was the most comprehensive data I could find on the matter:

I point to this data as a sign that despite the stories we hear in the media, which are often the worst and most extreme events of the day (I'll save the conversation on what media outlets choose to report and their hyperbolic reporting style for another day), things are actually getting better. The ability to refrain from violence, particularly from the top of the social hierarchy is a huge step forward. From the research I've done, the highest estimates for violent deaths as a percentage of total deaths was around 10%, and that was for a period thousands of years ago. Rates have been trending downward since then arriving at 0.21% in 2016 as shown in the first graph presented.

So why has there been such relative peace since the end of WWII? There are surely many, but I will point four main reasons:

1. Globalization – A term I hear more often as a pejorative these days, but in this case, even though humans are destroying minority cultures, severely polluting the environment, and exploiting cheap labor, it does seem that apparently within this framework of increased international interaction nations are sharing some good things with each other. Technology has brought nations closer together and increased the speed at which news travels around the world. Economic cooperation has created mutually beneficial relationships between nations, which creates a network of interdependence, meaning that nations are less able to turn on each other and must instead learn to work together. Globalization has also increased international cooperation and international intervention when situations look to be going sour. Global organizations like the United Nations, the European Union and various peace treaties have opened up new avenues for foreign nations to resolve problems without war and violence.

2. Education – On a per capita basis citizens are more educated than they ever have been. Worldwide literacy rates are the highest they've been in history. How does knowing how to read and write make the world better? Well, it allows more voices and more opinions to join the conversation on the benefits of war versus peace, and it allows more opportunities for us to teach each other how to solve problems without violence. Any problem solved without violence is an improvement. Education has helped philosophical revolutions like humanitarianism find their footing.

3. Spread of Democracy – This could also be attributed to an increase in education as well. But generally speaking, the more democratic a government the less power any one individual has. Historically there has been a strong correlation between democratic governments and reduced military activity.

4. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) – My personal favorite from this list, MAD is the military strategy concept that engaging in a conflict with nuclear weapons with an enemy, who also has nuclear weapons, will result in complete destruction of both sides. That being the case, neither military has incentive to engage in this type of warfare as complete annihilation is generally considered a worse state of being than any other. The recent period of relative global peace does nicely line up with the invention and first military deployment of nuclear weapons (in 1945). Prior to their invention there were incentives for military combat which we've seen play out over the centuries. However, in this case, the development of military technology has reached such a high level of destructive capability that there is an effective global military stalemate and nations are unable to gain any advantage from those capabilities, which is a great thing. Several countries possess nuclear capabilities (USA, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea is the full list), including four of the world's five largest nations by population. Yet I believe the likelihood of weapons of mass destruction being used in future conflicts is at the lowest it has been, and present day military conflicts are largely demilitarized affairs compared to pre-weapons of mass destruction era.

Despite the tension and threats of nuclear war which often loomed over the 1950s through the 1980s we collectively have managed to refrain, and the concept of MAD as a deterrent to large scale global military conflict, in my view, is a reality. Especially factoring in global military alliances, engaging in warfare which deploys the strongest military capabilities available would likely cause the destruction of the entire world not just the nations directly associated with the conflict, something no global leader has quite been ready to commit to. This has helped me learn to love the bomb, more than any Peter Sellers movie ever did.

Is this the most peaceful period in human history? Based on the information available on how we're dying, I think so. So regardless of whether you hate or love the current President and think things are more divisive than they've ever been, look at some of the big picture data for perspective. We could all still be wiped out by an impending World War III and we're still on pace to destroy humanity via climate destruction.

So none of this is to say that now is a time to claim victory, that humanity has achieved its goal. But it, like any passing moment, is a chance for reflection, and to try to remember that collectively, as a society, some things are, ever so slowly, getting better.

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Thanks again to ourworldindata.org for their wonderful data and to Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, London: The Penguin Group, 2011) whose work was used for some of data presented here.

1Dying from “Age-Related” reasons is a little problematic from a statistical and medical perspective. There isn't an established age where one is 'aged' or 'old enough that it is acceptable to die now' and their death would technically fall in an 'age-related death' category. For example, to die of heart disease at 95 might seem like dying of old age, but dying at 35 from heart disease probably wouldn't be, yet it is the same cause of death. Technically speaking everyone dies from one disease/bodily disorder or another, never from 'age' generally. However, I'm using the blanket adjective 'age-related' in this case for simplicity though I realize it is technically incorrect to do so.