It’s campaign season (when isn’t it, these days?). So we hear a lot about how awful things are – and to be sure, there are real challenges in the U.S. economy, with foreign policy and in our culture.

But don’t lose sight of the good news. Two new reports show that substantial progress has been made on poverty worldwide. It shows the effectiveness of capitalism at increasing and spreading prosperity, despite what Sen. Bernie Sanders and some others are saying.

A Pew Research paper shows that since 1960, poverty has dropped in the United States, particularly in the Southern states.

Overall, the U.S. poverty rate in 1960 was 22.1 percent – nearly one in four Americans lived below the poverty line. But by 2010, that rate was down to 14.9 percent. That’s progress.

In Southern states, including Texas, the change was even more dramatic. In 1960, a full 35.6 percent were living in poverty. That’s every third person. By 2010, that rate was halved, to 16.4 percent.

“Even in some of the nation’s poorest regions, the poverty rate has declined. In Appalachia, the poverty rate remains above the national average, but has been cut nearly in half (from 30.9 percent in 1960 to 16.6 percent in 2010),” Pew reports.

What has changed? Well, the decades of 1960 to 2010 saw migration to the cities slow, and even reverse, as people moved to find new opportunities. Now, more than 1,000 people relocate to Texas every day, for example.

The persistent poverty remains in big cities (mainly in the North and Midwest), and among immigrant populations – though by the second and third generations, most immigrant families have moved into the middle class.

Another new report from the Brookings Institute shows how worldwide poverty has decreased even more dramatically.

“The rise of emerging economies has led to a dramatic fall in global poverty,” Brookings reports. “Between 2005 and 2010, the total number of poor people around the world fell by nearly half a billion, from over 1.3 billion in 2005 to under 900 million in 2010. Poverty reduction of this magnitude is unparalleled in history: never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty over such a brief period of time. And using forecasts of per capita consumption growth, they estimate that by 2015 fewer than 600 million people will remain in poverty.”

Throughout human history, poverty has been the norm, with massive famines and resource-driven wars dominating the arc of human development.

Only in the last century has that truly changed. And that’s due to capitalism.

“While these findings likely come as a surprise to many, they shouldn’t,” Brookings explains. “Growth lies at the heart of poverty reduction. As developing country growth took off in the new millennium, epitomized in the rise of emerging markets, a massive drop in poverty was surely to be expected.”

As the Democratic presidential frontrunner, Sen. Sanders has been criticizing capitalism.

Sure, there’s bad news. ISIS is gaining ground in Syria. Refugees are flooding into Europe. But there’s good news, too.

Let’s not ignore it.