Better and better? A comment on Hans Rosling

Is the world only becoming better and better? How are increases in wealth and life expectancy affected by social inequalities? Why do we hear so little about the global increase in mental illness and its development over time? These are some of the questions that Roland Paulsen, associate professor of sociology, discusses in this video, which is also a comment on some of the claims of Hans Rosling and other New Optimists.
References
Annual war casualties: Roser, Max. 2018. "War and Peace". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace
Global child mortality: Roser, Max. 2018. "Child Mortality". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. ourworldindata.org/child-mort...
Income and life expectancy 1800-2018: Free material from www.gapminder.org
Distribution of income and life expectancy, USA: Piketty, Thomas, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. 2017. 'Distributional national accounts: methods and estimates for the United States', The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133: 553-609. And Chetty, Raj, Michael Stepner, Sarah Abraham, Shelby Lin, Benjamin Scuderi, Nicholas Turner, Augustin Bergeron, and David Cutler. 2016. 'The association between income and life expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014', Jama, 315: 1750-66.
Life expectancy and correlation with level of education in Sweden: Burström, Bo. 2010. Livsvillkor, levnadsvanor och hälsa i Stockholms län: Öppna jämförelser 2010, Karolinska Institutets Folkhälsoakademi.
Life-expectancy drop in UK and USA: Ho, Jessica Y, and Arun S Hendi. 2018. 'Recent trends in life expectancy across high income countries: retrospective observational study', BMJ, 362: k2562
Rates of suicide and drug overdoses, USA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2018. 'Fatal Injury Reports, National, Regional and State, 1981-2016 WISQARS™'. www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/fa....
Death rates attributable to alcohol-induced causes to death, USA: QuickStats. 2017. 'Age-Adjusted Death Rates Attributable to Alcohol-Induced Causes, by Race/Ethnicity - United States, 1999-2015', MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep, 66.
Global distribution of depression: Bromet, E., Andrade, L., Bruffaerts, R., & Williams, D. (2018). Major Depressive Disorder. In K. Scott, P. De Jonge, D. Stein, & R. Kessler (Eds.), Mental Disorders Around the World: Facts and Figures from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys (pp. 41-56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Disability caused by mental disorders: Mnookin, S. 2016. 'Out of the Shadows: Making Mental Health a Global Development Priority', World Bank Group and World Health Organization: Report number: 105052. Washington, DC.
Global distribution of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, bipolar disorders, drug use disorders, alcohol use disorders, schizophrenia: Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network. 2017. "Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 (GBD 2016) Incidence, Prevalence, and Years Lived with Disability 1990-2016." Seattle: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). See also: Scott, Kate M, Peter de Jonge, Dan J Stein, and Ronald C Kessler. 2018. Mental Disorders Around the World: Facts and Figures From the World Mental Health Surveys (Cambridge University Press).
Antidepressant drugs consumption, OECD: OECD. 2017. 'Antidepressant drugs consumption, 2000 and 2015.' in Pharmaceutical sector (OECD Publishing: Paris).
Average happiness and GDP per capita, USA: Sachs, Jeffrey D, Richard Layard, and John F Helliwell. 2018. In "World Happiness Report 2018."
Income and life expectancy 1800-2018, dictatorships: Free material from www.gapminder.org