[davidmanheim]

...but progress was slower. Exponential growth means it grows faster now than it did then.

And yes, relative poverty matters greatly, but absolute poverty is a real thing even in the US. In 1964, the US launched the war on poverty, and poverty declined. Since the 1980s, some of that progress was reversed, but it's still far better than 1964. (And poverty now is relative, and includes very little literal starvation. That certainly wasn't true in the US in 1964, much less earlier - especially before WWII.