Pictures of wounded and homeless children in Lebanon dominate our TV screens. Stories of suicide bombers in Iraq, tsunamis in Asia and murders in American cities fill our newspapers. We are tempted to believe William Butler Yeats’ lines, written years ago: “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed.”

Yet there is another reality, though much less publicized, that is as important as the reality of disaster. This other reality is a quiet tide of progress, a tide that has brought advances in technology and worker productivity, resulting in a long-term rise in living standards of ordinary people in Maine, the United States and most of the world and widespread improve-ment in people’s health.

If we fail to recognize the reality of progress as well as the reality of disaster, we may form a mistaken judgment of our past and an unbalanced view of our present world. And these distorted views could lead us to adopt unwise, ineffective national policies.

First, the facts about our progress in living standards. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis prepares data on disposable personal income per person, after eliminating the effects of inflation. This is our best single indicator of the average person’s ability to buy goods and services. In 1947, the average income in constant dollars (of the year 2000) was $7,700; by 1973 it was $15,200; and in mid-2006 it was $27,600. That’s nearly a four-fold increase in 60 years.

Over the same time period, inflation-adjusted (or “real”) income per person in Maine more than tripled.

Even low-income Americans are better off. Since 1947, real incomes of families in the 20th percentile – families with lower incomes than 80 percent of all families – have more than doubled, according to the Census Bureau. Though, unfortunately, income inequality also rose over these years (because incomes of wealthy people rose faster) low-income families now are distinctly better off than similarly situated families in 1947.

Average living standards are also rising in the developing world. World Bank studies document higher living standards in all developing regions except sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1981, average household consumption or household income has increased in 29 out of 41 countries in Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America, and in all of the six most populous countries in the developing world, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Brazil.

Never before in human history has there been such widespread, sustained improvement. The economist Angus Maddison, in a study for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, found that the world average of gross domestic product per person doubled over the nineteen centuries from the year 0 to 1870. But since 1870 – less than 1 1/2 centuries ago – world GDP per person has risen seven-fold, from $875 per person to $6,049.

Progress in health has been equally remarkable. In the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, life expectancy at birth has increased from between 46 and 48 years in 1900 to between 77 and 80 years now. In Egypt, life expectancy increased from 42 years in 1950 to 70 years in 2004. Similar progress has been achieved in India and China,

the two largest countries in the world.

Mortality rates for infants and for children under five have dropped dramatically in every region of the developing world since 1960. In China, the drop in under-five mortality was an astounding 86 percent, from 225 per 1,000 to 31.

Scientists and public health agencies have fought and won major battles against infectious diseases, as noted recently in these pages. Immunization campaigns have eliminated or drastically reduced illness and death from smallpox, measles, neonatal tetanus, polio, whooping cough and diphtheria.

The progress in living standards and public health rests on better technology and higher worker productivity. In 1900, telephones and cars had just been invented and were still rare, and air flight, computers, and television were either only imagined or simply unimaginable. Rapid advances in production technology have yielded higher productivity: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics studies show a quadrupling of worker productivity since 1947. Because our national output is higher, we have found it possible to devote more resources to medical care and to the research that has yielded, even in just the last two decades, major advances in medical technology and many new, effective drugs.

Admittedly, the media focus on bad news has a constructive side, highlighting urgent problems, arousing us to tackle them, and prompting us to replace those political leaders responsible for them.

It remains true, however, that an almost exclusive emphasis on bad news may foster a distorted view of history, leading us to the mistaken judgment that our present institutional arrangements have failed, when in fact some have been immensely successful. Awareness of our progress, as well as the reality of disaster, prepares us to understand more fully the world around us, to draw the correct lessons from history, and to formulate effective national policies.

Edwin Dean, a seasonal resident of Vinalhaven, writes monthly about economic issues.