Theophano,

Thanks for your response. It highlights the problem with statistics: they hide all the actual human suffering behind numbers. The other point it illustrates is that progress is not always forward: occasionally we take steps — even large steps — backward, but on a long enough time scale, we have overall been moving forward.

I would like to point out the poverty talked about in the article: “9,576 euros per household” is well above the $1.90 per day considered extreme poverty by most of the sources I cite. This is not to marginalize the real human suffering, just to say that “extreme poverty” is much more severe than that experienced in Greece. I wish the best for the people in Greece and for all the families around the world suffering from poverty. It is my hope that by writing about the world as it really is, I can encourage more people to work to make it better for everyone.