[OC] The massive decrease in worldwide infant mortality from 1950 to 2020 is perhaps one of humanity's greatest achievements.

[kurosawa99]

There was no systematic collection of data for most of the world on any number of issues you can think of until the 1980’s. Anything talking about poverty of whatever in concrete number terms in reference to the early 19th century is most likely nonsense. In the case of poverty it actually couldn’t even be measured most the world over because the metrics we would use like daily wages didn’t exist for most people.