A heartening thought from Bill Gates and some more detailed analysis of it from Quartz. We will have to find new ways of describing the world. I already struggle with what to call China. Maybe just a country rather than a developing, partly-developed, middle-income or whatever-else one?

It will be a remarkable achievement. When I was born, most countries in the world were poor. In the next two decades, desperately poor countries will become the exception rather than the rule. Billions of people will have been lifted out of extreme poverty. The idea that this will happen within my lifetime is simply amazing to me.

via 2014 Gates Annual Letter: Myths About Foreign Aid – Gates Foundation.