10 reasons 2016 is the best time to be alive, according to an economic globalisation expert

If you closely follow the global news cycle, you would be forgiven for believing that we are diving head first into an apocalypse. Crises in Syria, Iraq, and Ukraine; terrorist attacks across Europe and the Middle East; mass shootings and police violence in the US; and frequent natural disasters everywhere else have left many calm, rational people in a state of fear.

Only 4% of Brits and 6% of Americans believe that the world is getting better, according to polling by YouGov.

But despite this universal sense of dread, humans are actually more safe, wealthier, healthier, more free, less hungry, and more literate than ever before, Johan Norberg argues in his book Progress, which is published on September 1.

Norberg, an author and lecturer in economic globalisation, says that the key reason we are so anxious about the state of the world is that we are sharing information so much more quickly through 24 hour news channels and the internet.

When a natural disaster or a mass murder happened in a foreign country in the past, we would not read about it in a newspaper until a week later. "By then it would be solved, it would be over," Norberg told Business Insider. "We would be sad about it, but then we would turn to the next page."

"Now we can see what is happening live, we don't know how things will end. " he added. "That triggers our fight or flight instincts - it gives us the sense that everything is falling apart in the world right now."

Norberg explained that this sense of doom is misplaced. He gave 10 reasons for why 2016 is actually the best time to be alive.