Gates 2017 Annual letter

I was surprised at this:

In a recent survey, just 1 percent knew we had cut extreme poverty in half, and 99 percent underestimated the progress. That survey wasn’t just testing knowledge; it was testing optimism—and the world didn’t score so well.

The survey seems to be the one described here: http://www.glocalities.com/news/press-release-global-povert-survey.html

It reveals that 87% of people around the world believe that global poverty has either stayed the same or gotten worse over the past 20 years, when the exact opposite is true – it has more than halved.

People’s opinions and understanding vary hugely both between and inside countries. In China for instance, 50% of those surveyed think correctly that poverty has decreased, compared to only 8% in Germany and the US. “Chinese people can actually witness the success in tackling extreme poverty in their own country. It is instructive that people in richer nations cannot,” Lampert said.

I would be curious to see the question as asked, looks like https://www.motivaction.nl/en/ actually ran the survey, but could not find any details on the results on the full report from glocalities (I presume they sell it)

It seems extraordinary that fully 92% of people in the US think that poverty is unchanged or worse since 1990 for example.

Not all of this is right - for instance, they're not putting a lot of work into causal attribution - but they are getting one key thing right: focusing on outcomes rather than inputs. Benefits, rather than costs.