Optimistically, we would hope for a continuation of many of the current trends. For example, many recent changes have been in improved living conditions. Infant mortality rates (IMR) has declined, illiteracy and percent of population without any schooling has declined, especially among less developed countries, and GDP per capita increased. There have also been technological changes, such as growth in radio and TV receivers per capita, growth in newspaper circulation per capita among the less developed countries, and tremendous growth in internet use throughout the world. Political freedom has also increased in the last several decades, but this growth has only been moderate.

However living conditions have improved more slowly among less developed countries, and unfortunately in several countries infant mortality rates have increased.

We can hope that most of the above trends will continue, e.g., continued decline in infant mortality rates and illiteracy, increases in GDP per capita and freedom. Most likely there will also be continued increases in technology, particularly in Internet use and global communication.

The key is to find out why improvements in living conditions have been slower in less developed countries, or even reversed in some specific countries, so that living conditions can be improved faster.

Sections of this response are from How Societies Change Over Time - Summary - Shackman, Gene, Ya-Lin Liu and Xun Wang. 2004. http://gsociology.icaap.org/report/repsum.html

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Here's Dr. Shackman's brief professional note:

We hope to provide a solid foundation for future research and estimating future trends by linking to data and providing summaries of current global social, political, demographic and economic trends. We also discuss how these trends interact.

Comments may be made directly to Dr. Shackman at gsociology at yahoo dot com  or see The Global Social Change Research Project  http://gsociology.icaap.org/