20 Things That Have Changed for the Better Since 2010

Current smoking rates have declined over the last 15 years. In 2005, nearly 21 out of every 100 American adults smoked. In 2018, that figure had dropped to nearly 14 out of every 100, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Not only are fewer people starting the bad habit in general, but more people are quitting, too.

Still, smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the country, accounting for about 1 in 5 deaths every year.

Gender equality is the right to equal opportunities and resources regardless of gender. Globally, the overall gender gap stood at 32% in 2018, which was only slightly better than 2017, according to the Global Gender Gap Report of 2018. There is still a 32% average gender gap to be closed. The 2020 report estimates that it will take about 99 years to achieve equality, which is better than the estimation of 108 years made in the 2018 report.

The overall gender gap in the United States in 2020 stands at 28%, slightly wider than the previous year, causing the U.S. to drop two places in the overall rankings from 51st to 53rd. The U.S. ranking has barely changed since 2006.

Sports fans in the United States have been treated to a mixture of teams winning championships over the last decade. Several sports are no longer dominated by just a handful of teams.

In football, the Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl for the first time in 2014, beating the Denver Broncos; in baseball, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016 for the first time in more than a century; in basketball, the Dallas Mavericks beat Miami Heat in 2011 to win the NBA title for the first time in the team’s history; and in hockey, the Los Angeles Kings became Stanley Cup champions for the first time in 2012. This year, three teams won their first championship in three different sports: St. Louis Blues (hockey), Washington Nationals (baseball), and Toronto Raptors (basketball).

Consumer prices for many goods and services have significantly declined since 2010. Technology and the globalization of trade have largely driven prices down. New models of phones and other electronics are being offered for the same price as the previous model. The internet has increased competition, lowering the prices of everything from books and music to clothes and groceries.

Consumer goods, including computers, TVs, smartphones, and other devices that were within reach of only middle-class and wealthy Americans in 2006 are now cheap enough for lower-income families, according to 2016 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Annual unemployment in the United States fell to 3.9% from 9.6% between 2010 and 2018. In October 2019, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, the lowest it has been since May 1969 — over 50 years ago.

The measure that actually includes those who have stopped looking for a job and the underemployed — who are not included in the unemployment rate — fell, too, by 0.3% to 6.9%, matching its lowest in nearly two decades and just off the all-time low of 6.8%.

Globally and in the United States, fewer people are living in poverty. The U.S. poverty rate has fallen below the 2007 level just before the recession cost millions of people their jobs. In 2018, there were 2.3 million more full-time, year-round workers compared with 2017. Both the number of male and female full-time employees has increased — by 700,000 and 1.6 million, respectively.

But the poverty rate may not be declining evenly across the country. According to a Stateline analysis of U.S. Census Bureau county estimates released in December 2019, the number of people living in poverty has increased in almost a third of U.S. counties — mostly in the rural South — even though the overall poverty rate dropped between 2016 and 2018, from 13% to 12%.

With news about the growing problem of homeless people in major urban cities such as New York and San Francisco, it may be hard to believe that actually fewer people are sleeping rough. Overall in the United States, in 2010, just over 637,000 people were experiencing homelessness, 106,000 of them being chronically homeless individuals. Eight years later, the numbers are significantly lower — almost 553,000 and nearly 89,000, respectively.

In San Francisco, too, homelessness is down, even though it’s more visible. The overall homeless population, according to one-night counts done every two years, has fallen from 8,640 in 2004 to 8,011 in 2019. This may sound like barely any difference at all, but the city’s population grew by more than 100,000 residents over the same period.

The rate of global child mortality, which refers to the mortality of children under the age of 5, has been on a decline for years in all regions of the world. In 2010, the rate was 51,000 children per 1,000 live births; in 2018, that figure was 39 per 1,000 births. The most common cause of child mortality is pneumonia followed by preterm births, neonatal disorders, and diarrheal disease.

Mortality is even lower for children aged 5-14. That rate has halved since 1990, according to a report from the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.

Real personal income refers to the wages of an individual or a family after accounting for inflation. And the real personal income per capita in the United States has increased by 15.6% between 2010, when it was $42,366, and 2017, when it was $48,980, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Household income is up, too, and is currently almost $62,000, up from just over $57,000 in 2010. According to the 2018 American Community Survey, median household income rose between 2017 and 2018 in 14 states and 10 of the largest metro areas in the country.

While cancer death rates have been declining for years, new diagnoses are expected to continue to rise largely due to the ongoing growth and aging of the U.S. population. (Age is the biggest risk factor for cancer.) As of 2015, the overall cancer death rate had fallen 26% from its peak in 1991.

More people are now able to live longer with the illness. This is largely because of improved rates of early detection, especially when it comes to breast and colon cancer — two of the most common types of the condition — as well as increasingly effective treatments.

Surveys find that Americans don’t believe that crime is down, but that’s not true. In 18 of 22 Gallup polls conducted between 1993 and 2018, at least 60% of Americans said there was more crime than the previous year, even though the national violent and property crime rates during most of that period were trending down.

The United States has become a safer place over the last decade. The violent crime rate, which includes offenses such as rape, robbery, and assault, in the country has decreased by 8.8% from 2010 to 2018, according to FBI data. (Since 1993, the violent crime rate has fallen by 51%).

RAM stands for Random Access Memory. The more you have, the quicker your computing device will work. Prices go through big fluctuations — more recently in 2018 because of demand for mobile phones using newer RAM technology. But prices have now stabilized and are at historic lows. Now may be a good time to upgrade your phone or computer.

Food insecurity is the lack of reliable access to enough affordable and nutritious food. In the United States, it is at the lowest level in a decade and last year it fell to pre-recession levels for the first time. In 2018, 11.1% of American households — or 14.3 million households — had difficulty providing enough food for everyone in the family. In 2017, that figure was 11.8%, and in 2011 it was 14.9%.

Worldwide, fewer people are hungry or undernourished, according to the 2017 Global Hunger Index. Some countries struggle with hunger more than others, especially those that are war-torn, such as Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen.

Honeybee populations are coming back from colony collapse. Animal pollinators, including bees, perform the essential task of fertilizing plants. Without bees, many plant species would decline or disappear, along with their oxygen-producing benefits and the life-sustaining food they supply. After the winter of 2006-07, reports from beekeepers documented 30%-90% losses of bee colonies. The main reason was colony collapse disorder, where worker bees disappeared from the hive.

But there are signs that the honeybee population may be recovering, or at least may be starting to. The number of honeybees in the U.S. increased 3% in 2017 from a year earlier to 2.89 million.

Since 2010, new HIV infections have declined by an estimated 16%, from 2.1 million to 1.7 million in 2018, according to UNAIDS. Overall, the number of new cases is down by 40% since the infection’s peak in 1997 when 2.9 million people were diagnosed. AIDS-related deaths worldwide are also down — from 1.2 million in 2010 to 770,000 in 2018.

Recently, a second person has been said to be in sustained remissionsince HIV was identified in the 1980s. The patient, who was treated in London, has not been given antiretroviral therapy for 18 months, and the virus has remained undetectable. The good news comes more than a decade after the “Berlin patient,” known as the first person to have been “cured” from the infection. Both patients received a stem cell transplant.

Women have taken center stage in the political sphere, especially after the 2016 presidential election when several women’s marches were organized across the country in opposition to President Donald Trump, to end violence against women, and to demand equality.

From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is becoming the face of millennials in Congress, to the six women running for president (now four, after Kamala Harris and Kristen Gillibrand suspended their campaigns), to the record number of women running for public office in general, women are leaving their mark in politics. Chicago, the third largest city in the country by population, made history by electing its first African-American female mayor, who is also gay.

Child labor — children between 5 and 17 who are working — continues to decrease. The overall number of children in employment, which includes employed children who are of legal working age, is down. In 2012, more than 260 million children were working, and 85 million of them were working in hazardous conditions that directly endangered their health, safety, and moral development, according to the International Labor Organization. In 2016, those figures were just over 218 million and 72 million, respectively.

The ability to both read and write is an invaluable skill that is needed for just about every aspect of daily life. The overall literacy trend among young people is positive. The global number of illiterate youth ages 5-24 has fallen by 25 million from 2010, when it was 125 million, to 100 million in 2018, according to UNICEF. More male youths are illiterate than female, and the illiteracy rate is highest in least developed countries.

Economic and educational gaps between white and black households in the United States persist but there has been some improvement in at least one aspect — black women are earning more college degrees, according to Brookings Institute. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that black women are the most educated demographic in the U.S. in terms of the number of associate and bachelor degrees earned.

The Ebola outbreak between 2014 and 2016 in West Africa was the worst in history — it killed more than 11,000 people and more than 28,000 fell sick. The world was appalled at the slow response by governments and international health organizations. While scientists had been working on a vaccine for decades, one was finally developed only a few years after the epidemic.

The first vaccines to prevent Ebola have been licensed in Europe but not yet for commercial use. They are being administered under a “compassionate use” protocol — which is similar to a clinical trial — because Ebola is often fatal.