On Tuesday, September 18, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation released its second Goalkeepers report highlighting global data to show the progress of humanity.
The report featured what many refer to as the greatest news story of our young century: the massive reduction in people living in extreme poverty. Since 1990, the percentage of people living on less than $1.90 a day has decreased from 36% to 9%.
However, the report also outlines the danger of falling into complacency:
To put it bluntly, decades of stunning progress in the fight against poverty and disease may be on the verge of stalling. This is because the poorest parts of the world are growing faster than everywhere else; more babies are being born in the places where it’s hardest to lead a healthy and productive life. If current trends continue, the number of poor people in the world will stop falling—and could even start to rise.
To promote the release of the report, Bill and Melinda Gates sat down to talk with National Geographic Magazine’s editor in chief, Susan Goldberg. During the interview, Goldberg asked what problem they would fix if they had a magic wand to wave.
Melinda Gates said she’d make contraceptives available to women everywhere.
“Family planning is crucial anywhere, in any community around the world, because if a woman can decide if and when to have a child, she’s going to be healthier and her child is going to be healthier,” Melinda Gates said.
She also said that contraceptives give people the chance to lift their families out of poverty. “Because if they can space the births of those children, they can then feed them, they can educate them, the woman can work and contribute her income to the family,” she continued. “It changes everything in the family dynamic, and it changes the community, and ultimately you get these country-level effects where it’s good for everybody.”
Bill Gates said that he’d eliminate malnutrition.
Over 50% of children in Africa suffer from malnutrition which affects their mental and physical development.
“I’m super excited that by the end of the decade we expect to have cheap interventions so those kids will fully develop,” Bill Gates said. “That means all the investments you make in their education, wanting to benefit from their productivity, will work far better. So if there was just one thing, it’s the intervention to stop malnutrition.”
To inspire conversation about the Goalkeeper’s report, Melinda Gates took over National Geographic’s Instagram account for a day. With over 90 million followers, National Geographic is the most popular non-celebrity Instagram account in the world.
