Factfulness by Has Rosling

In the book, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling we get not an optimistic but a realistic view of the world through data. The world may be bad but in general it is getting better. Hans wrote this book with his daughter and son-in-law as he was dying of pancreatic cancer. It summarizes the life lessons he has learned as a public health professional using facts to evaluate the world. It may be bad, but we are making it better and we can measure our progress.

He makes a strong case for dumping the dichotomy of the developed world and the undeveloped or third world. He instead divides nations into 4 categories, 1- Extreme poverty, 2- low income, 3- moderate income and 4- high income. He also recognizes that within countries there is overlap. In general, as income levels rise birthrates drop. This is why the global population will peak and remain stable at approximately 10 - 12 billion in the year 2100. The population curve is S shaped not J shaped.  He points out that up until 200 years ago most of the world was on level one with families having 6 babies and loosing 4 before they children reach adulthood. He recalls his grandmother in Sweden watching the first load of laundry going in his parents' washing machine. She then told her grandson Hans, the machine is doing the work and now we have time to go to the library.

He polls audiences about the current state of the world offering them three choices. In all but one case the audience does worse than random selections by chimpanzees. The only question audiences do better than the chimps is on the consensus of scientists regarding the trend upwards in global temperature. Hans was pressured by Al Gore to provide graphs of the worse case scenario for climate change but Hans refused to extrapolate beyond the data. Activist are often temped to exaggerate to increase urgency and this may work in the short term but backfires when credibility is lost when the predictions do not come true. 

Why is this? We are fed a steady diet of news that is generally factual and dramatic but provides a distorted view of the world. We are treated to the unusual and atypical. We also have data that is correct for 20 or 30 years ago but has not been updated.

He also cautions about orphan numbers. These are facts that stand alone but have no comparison. He uses the example that 2 million babies in the world died before reaching age 1 at some year in the 21st Century. This is bad but in the 1950's that number was around 16 million. Considering the world's population is much greater now, the death rate per 1,000 people is much lower than it was in the 50's. There is work to be done but we are making progress.

The mindset of factfulness  Hans Rosling- 17 minutes

How to not be ignorant about the world - 19 min. 

This is why the world is getting better Anna Rosling - 24 min.