Which headline are you more likely to see?
PANDEMIC DEATHS APPROACH SEVEN MILLION!
Or:
NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF ALL COVID-19 VICTIMS SURVIVE
Both statistics are true, although the media tend to sensationalize threats and dangers. As a result, most people assume the world is in worse shape than the facts support. A Swedish physician, Hans Rosling, devoted his life to correcting misconceptions about the state of the world, delivering TED talks and speaking to leaders at the UN and WHO. After reading his book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, I decided that the Thanksgiving season would be an excellent time to reflect on the good news that Rosling and his team uncovered.
As he spoke to groups around the world, Dr. Rosling would ask the audience to answer a series of fact questions. Here’s a sampling to test your knowledge. How would you answer these questions?
1. In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has…
□ A. Almost doubled
□ B. Remained more or less the same
□ C. Almost halved
2. What is the average life expectancy, globally, of people alive today?
□ A. 50 years
□ B. 60 years
□ C. 70 years
3. How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the last hundred years?
□ A. More than doubled
□ B. Remained about the same
□ C. Decreased to less than half
4. How many of the world’s 1-year-old children have been vaccinated against some disease?
□ A. 20 percent
□ B. 50 percent
□ C. 80 percent
5. How many people in the world have some access to electricity?
□ A. 20 percent
□ B. 50 percent
□ C. 80 percent
How did you do on the test? To get a perfect score, you should have chosen “C”—the most optimistic, positive response—for each of the answers. If you didn’t score well, don’t feel bad: you’re in good company. Dr. Rosling has given similar tests to thousands of people in many countries, and most people do very poorly.
For example, only 11 percent of Americans answer question number 3 correctly. If the world’s population has quadrupled in the last 100 years, shouldn’t we expect deaths from natural disasters to increase, not decrease? Yet the facts show otherwise.
Or consider trends in global poverty. Rosling writes, “Over the past twenty years, the proportion of the global population living in extreme poverty has halved. This is absolutely revolutionary. I consider it to be the most important change that has happened in the world in my lifetime. It is also a pretty basic fact to know about life on Earth. But people do not know it.…When we polled in the United Sates, only 5 percent picked the right answer.”
Even more surprising, Rosling found that executives in multinational companies, journalists, activists, and even senior policy analysts got most of the answers wrong, often scoring worse than the general public. Some of the worst scores came from a group of Nobel laureates and medical researchers. No wonder Bill Gates called Factfulness, “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.”
When Rosling asked what percentage of the world population lives in low-income countries, the average guess was 59 percent; the real figure is 9 percent. The vast majority of the world’s population lives in middle-income countries, not in extreme poverty.
Worldwide, infant mortality has plummeted. Out of every 100 babies born in 1950, fifteen died before reaching their first birthday; by 2016 that number had fallen to three out of every hundred. Thanks to vaccinations, more children survive to adulthood, and as a result families are having fewer children, which slows population growth. Huge strides have been made in education: 90 percent of girls of primary school age now attend school, and 92 percent of boys (a few countries, like Afghanistan, limit girls’ education).
And despite the prominent news stories about floods, earthquakes, storms, and wildfires, the actual number of deaths from natural disasters is one-fourth of what it was 100 years ago. No, nature has not calmed down, but fewer people live in extreme poverty, and nations and NGOs are better prepared for disasters. Reinforced buildings limit damage from earthquakes and tsunamis; advance warning systems give people time to evacuate before floods and tsunamis hit.
Rosling’s book includes pages of charts that show bad things decreasing (oil spills, HIV infections, battle deaths, plane crash deaths, child labor, hunger) and good things increasing (protected nature, women’s right to vote, literacy, child cancer survival, clean water, immunization). He is no Panglossian optimist, and has visited war zones, famine areas, and hospitals during disease outbreaks. Yet he makes a strong case that all the recent efforts toward improving the lot of humanity have had a remarkable effect.
(Sadly, Hans Rosling died of pancreatic cancer just before his book was published. His son and daughter-in-law carry on the work and run the website www.gapminder.org.)
As a journalist, I’ve visited places where mission organizations educate children, run hospitals and clinics, fight sexual trafficking, dig wells, feed prisoners, and respond to disasters both natural and human-caused. International Justice Mission, World Vision, The Salvation Army, Prison Fellowship International, Joni and Friends, Mennonite Central Committee, Mercy Ships, World Relief—these are just a few of the many NGOs that deploy thousands to serve on the front lines of human need.
This Thanksgiving, I paused to give thanks for them and their donors back home. They may not attract the headlines, but they have played a large part in making the world a safer, better place.
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