Today, 376,000 startled new citizens of Planet Earth will gulp their first breaths. Of the 351,000 who live to see their fifth birthday, 16,000 will owe their good fortune to rising wealth, increased vaccination, better sanitation and other improvements made over the past three decades.

For 4,000 of them, the difference between life and death will amount to having entered the world today instead of in 2000.

These are the good old days, despite stagnant incomes, a shortage of jobs, strained public finances and general malaise in America and Europe. While cable television's news-readers and pundits have spent much of the past decade reporting discord and angst, life has gotten shockingly better for most of the world's population.

Consider the latest update from the United Nations on its Millennium Development Goals. Some 920 million people will live in poverty by 2015, but that is half as many as did in 1990, despite a rise in population of more than 1.5 billion. In East Asia, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day plunged from 60% to 16% between 1990 and 2005. More than half of the world's people now have cell phones; for the poorest, they are a means to banking, education and disaster survival.

Think health care is a mess where you live? Consider the view of those who are new to it. Delivery of antiretroviral therapy to AIDS patients increased tenfold between 2003 and 2008. The number of African children who die from measles dropped from 500,000 per year to 125,000 per year between 1999 and 2005. Smallpox claimed at least 300 million lives during the 20th century. It has claimed none during this one.

"No country in the world today -- not Sierra Leone, not Haiti -- has an infant mortality rate higher [worse] than that of rich Europe in the 1900s," says Charles Kenny, a development economist and author of "Getting Better," which goes on sale in March.

Worried about the environment? You should be, but deforestation has slowed a bit and the ozone hole is shrinking. Think no one reads? Illiteracy has fallen by half since 1970. Not sure how we'll feed the world's growing population? Grain production is soaring. (So is beer production.) A billion people still have far too little to eat, but their proportion of the total population has fallen from 34% to 17% since 1970. More people are now too fat than too skinny.

Think the recent economic recession was fierce? Consider the outright depression in war. There are five of them worldwide now, the fewest since 1960, says Kenny. In 1984 there were 24. And although it will surely come as little relief to those affected, today's wars have been markedly less deadly than past ones for combatants and non-combatants alike.

The point isn't that life everywhere is rosy. It's that it's the rosiest it has ever been. And wealth isn't merely being transferred from countries that have plenty to ones that have had too little for too long. Increased buying power among the 37% of the world's population living in China and India is sure to provide opportunities to the 5% living in America.

These are the best of days, but their reign might be short lived. Forecasts for the coming decade look even better. Says Kenny, "If we've done it in the past we can continue doing it, and there's much more to be done."