Who had better odds in life — you or your grandmother?

Is life better now? The moment you read that question, you probably start listing all the things that still don’t work. The traffic. The pollution. The prices. The pressure, the obligations, the expectations. All fair. Those problems are real. But stretch the timeline a bit — not in years but decades — and the arc bends unmistakably upward.

Does that show up in any way you can actually feel right now? Yes, in how much more can now be packed into one ordinary lifetime. These six charts show how that long-run shift actually happened.