Looking back at last year’s news stories and ahead to this year’s — nearly all crises — it is easy to get depressed. There’s nothing uplifting about homelessness, Brexit, the Apple €13bn ruling, Donald Trump or the continuing wave of terrorist attacks in Europe. Yet there are real and important reasons why, as 2017 gets under way, we should be positive.

For starters, at a global level, the number of people living in poverty has fallen sharply in recent decades. Researchers identify extreme poverty as living with less than €1.82 a day. These figures take into account non-monetary income, are corrected for different price levels in different countries and are adjusted for inflation over time.

In 1820, only a tiny elite enjoyed income levels over