Gee, I don't know. Let's compare the 90s to today.

Today, the majority of people in this world live in underdeveloped countries and must endure poverty and low standards of living.

In the 90s, the majority of people in this world lived in underdeveloped countries and endured poverty and low standards of living.

If you had the capability to measure human welfare outside your ethnocentric, Western sphere, you would be morally appalled at the sheer volume of suffering that is allowed to exist in the world. According to the United Nations, two children starved to death in the time it took me to type this sentence. If you think the economy is hard nowadays, just be lucky that you live in a country where being poor means not being able to buy a big house. In other countries, being poor means you're very likely to starve to death.

There are people out there that are living worse off than Europeans lived during the dark ages, and you have the audacity to ask if "everyone" was happier in the 90s!? Open your eyes.