It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years. (Reviews).

It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years. By Stephen Moore and Julian Simon (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2000. xviii plus 294 pp. $29.95/cloth $14.95/paper).

Mark Twain attributed to Benjamin Disraeli the remark, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

This is a book of statistics. It consists of brief discussions of one hundred trends of the past century, each accompanied by full color charts, which purport to show "that there has been more improvement in the human condition in the past 100 years than in all of the previous centuries combined." Each "trend" is summarized with a headline; a random selection gives the flavor of the book:

Fewer Mothers Die Giving Birth
Better Dental Care, More Teeth
The Declining Cost of Food
Declining Rates of Teen Pregnancy
Better Work for Better Pay
The Modern Home Has Every Convenience
Safer Highways and Airways
The Age of Cheap and Abundant Energy
Economic Equality in the Workplace
Huge Economic Gains for Black Americans
The Relentless March Toward Freedom

The book provides a useful compilation of statistics. Although much of the data come from readily available sources like Historical Statistics of the United States, Moore and Simon have pulled together some interesting and less readily accessible numbers--the dramatic, almost thousand-fold, drop in the cost of a three-minute phone call from New York to San Francisco between 1915 and 2000, for example. Few would deny, moreover, that the past century has seen some remarkable gains in such areas as health and nutrition.

Still, the book's broader claim that progress is relentless, inevitable, and everywhere is not sustained by the selection of charts and tables that fill its pages. "Selection" is the key word since showing that some things have gotten better for some people in some places at some times is not the same as proving that everything is getting better for everyone all the time and will continue to do so.

Moore and Simon repeatedly make selective use of evidence. For example, they prefer certain "trends." They carefully chart an increase in the numbers of televisions, VCRs, and remote controls. But they don't provide similar graphs showing the thinning of the ozone layer, increases in global mean surface temperatures due to global warming, the horrifying growth in AIDS around the world, or growing wealth or income inequality since the 1980s.

They also prefer certain data sets to others. Although the book begins by describing today as "the greatest moment on earth," the data are overwhelmingly about the United States. Repeatedly, Moore and Simon engage in a "bait and switch" strategy between the headlines and the actual data. Thus, one headline celebrates "Lengthening Human Life," but the two charts and most of the prose talk about American life expectancies. Their brief mention of poorer nations simply observes cheerfully: "as recently as 1950, the life expectancy of a citizen of a less developed country like China or India was about 40 years. Today it is 63 years." Yes, but life expectancy is still about 40 years in a number of less developed countries (38 in Zambia) and life expectancies in Sub-Saharan Africa have actually dropped in the past two decades.

Moore and Simon are also selective in their choice of sources. To show that "Americans Have More Leisure Time," they cite the work of sociologist John Robinson but don't seriously consider the data assembled by economist Juliet Schor for her book, The Overworked American. They use questionable poll data showing an increase in volunteerism as evidence of an increasing "sense of community and altruism," but ignore the massive data assembled by Robert Putnam on the decline in "social capital." Such examples do not necessarily mean that Moore and Simon are always wrong, but experts in particular areas would dispute many of their numbers and conclusions. Unfortunately, the existence of those disputes is not indicated in the book's references, which do not stand up to serious scholarly scrutiny.

Moore and Simon also select time periods that most support their perspective. Thus, they write that "steel workers, secretaries, and factory workers ... fare substantially better financially than their counterparts did 40 years ago." Yes, but those gains came in the 1960s and average wages for service and blue-collar workers have dropped since 1973.

Of course, the largest problem is that numbers alone cannot tell the story of our lives. Remote controls are surely one of the great advances of human civilization, but not if they only allow us to switch between "Ricki Lake" and "Jerry Springer." To document the upward curve in Barbie Dolls, crushed ice, and dishwashers is not to prove this is "the greatest moment on earth."

The fallacies in Moore and Simon's arguments are so obvious that Simon's widow apparently felt obligated to acknowledge them in the book's foreword, where she admits her "reservations about describing the 20th century in the positive terms used in this book." (Simon died before the completion of the book by Moore, his former student.) Jews, Gypsies, and Armenians, she notes, might not share her late husband's enthusiasm for this century as a "golden age." "So, Julian," she writes, "please, please exercise some moderation."

It is strange to find a book of "facts" that begins with advice to the dead. But, this is more a declaration of (libertarian) faith than a work of scholarship. Moore and Simon's explanation for the remarkable progress they claim to have documented is "the unique American formula of individual liberty and free enterprise," and the book is peppered with complaints about government intervention and regulation. This individualist and free market gospel ignores the crucial role of government and collective action in many of the trends they tout--cleaner air, water, and rivers; declining disease rates; decreasing numbers of smokers; increasingly safe cars; more recycling; gains by female athletes; the growing economic equality of women; declines in lynching; and economic gains for black Americans.

Moore and Simon convincingly show--in their favorite phrase--that there is "good news" to report about our current condition. But this selective assemblage of charts and graphs falls far short of demonstrating that the good news is spread evenly among the world's peoples or that the source of most positive developments lies where they think.