I think it depends on the level one looks at. In many ways old issues remain with us on the planet still, but we tend to believe, whether with cause or not, that one generation has improved on what the previous achieved.
One trusts overall it has to be getting better as time goes by, even if the transition is not smooth; but it often seems that for every "advance" there seems to be a loss. What we gain in new technology or medicine, or increased understanding in science is accompanied by loss of decent ways to do things, socially, to be replaced by more state control, less service provided, greater employer expectations, less caring commercial enterprises, inadequate teaching to the young of socially acceptable behaviour, oh too much to state here.
On an individual basis it feels like we are in reverse and getting worse every day, too much too fast for a lifetime; but I state again I have to trust the general trend of the world has to be for the better as what would it say about human beings as a species otherwise.