Rosling Shows Why Research is so Important, Factfulness
This article shows the importance of world class quantitative and qualitative research and the importance of keeping populations educated with quality information.
Before you continue to read this piece, take this quiz that Hans Rosling created, you will be pleasantly surprised https://factfulnessquiz.com
Why is quality social and market research so important in one sentence? Research has the power to bring forward powerful insights which can help shape the world creating better social and economic conditions for populations, by improving the proficiency of social aid/healthcare/policy and enhancing economic analysis to guide investment; to increase quality of life.
Factfulness by Hans Rosling is a prime example of world class quantitative analysis. The world is full of misinformation, you only need to look at all the youtube consipracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and the cambridge analytica scandal in recent years. Bad information causes ignorance, prejeduce and even death. This book shows that by creating a clearer picture of the world around us, we can continue to help shape it into a better place. Each chapter of Rosling’s book, acts as a critique on how bad research can be conducted and highlights pitfalls of thinking that create misconceptions.
Dangers of Binary thinking, The “Developed” and “Developing” Worlds
People still see the world divided into two, split in half. The “Developed” which is “Us” and the “Developing” which is “Them”. Most people also associate the developed with the West and the developing with the East. My critique here is that Rosling doesn’t prove that people hold these notions, it would be interesting to follow his book up with qualitative analysis in the shape of interviews. However, I do think this is the case for a lot of people. This creates prejudice, Rosling quotes one of his students as saying “they can’t live like us”, it creates barriers and potentially fuels racism or unfounded criticism of culture and religion. It can also give the impression that poverty is deserved and aid is undeserved.
The world has drastically changed over the last couple of decades, people hold outdated views of the world. It may suprise you to know that 85% of the world’s population live in ‘developed’ countries and only 13 countries representing 6% of the World’s population can be considered ‘developing’, in the old fashioned sense. Most families are small these days and high child mortality rates are rare across the globe.
Rosling shows us a new model. Rather than developed vs developing, he creates a fact based model with 4 levels. It is humanities aim to reach higher levels. Level 4 being the best.
Level 1 is extreme poverty. If you are on level 1 you live on $1 per day. No access to basic healthcare or any education, you live in mud huts, you need to fetch water.
Level 2 you are on $4 per day, you can afford chickens who can lay eggs for food, you may own a bicycle, you can buy footwear to protect your feet, your children can attend school rather than work. You can obtain a salary by working in the local factory.
Level 3 you are living on $16 a day, you can have cold water running in your home, no more fetching, you have electricity perhaps a fridge to store food and you can educate your children, you can even take a holiday.
Level 4 this is what I am on and most likely what you are on too. We are living on at least $32 a day, you have 12 years education, you have plumbing, electricity and a heated home, you can afford a car and can eat out once a week and travel abroad by plane.
There is still a lot work to be done though to move people through the levels. However, great progess is being made as we speak. “In 1997 both india and China had 42% of it’s population living in extreme poverty”, on level 1. In 2017 India has dropped that down to 12%, in China it is at 0.2% which is outstanding progress. 20 years ago we were living on level 4 as we are today, so we don’t think of the world as changing, whereas billions of people across the world have been levelling up. New consumers and new markets created.
Over-population? The dangers of the ‘Straight Line Instinct’
“Humans are the biggest plague on the planet” “Overpopulation is the biggest problem” “we need to control populations”. They may have a point, you may agree particularly if your an angry commuter raging in your car every day whilst stuck in traffic. However, these thoughts can be dangerous. People can say “we need to stop sending aid to poor countries because they will have more children” “we need to control the population in poorer countries”. Dangerous thoughts like this can lead to eugenics propaganda, fuel racist ideologies or stop lives from being saved. The best way to control population is to actually increase health and education across the globe. The healthier and wealthier the population, the smaller the familes.
Women don’t want to have a lot of children, they would prefer to put their time and energy into educating fewer children as focusing energy in this way will lead to better educated children, which increases their chances of increasing the wealth of the family. Women in poor countries tend to have a lot of children as an insurance policy, they need child workers and unfortunately child mortaility is higher in poorer countries. This shows the danger of the straight line instinct in research. Just because the graph shows a line shooting upwards, doesn’t mean it will continue to do so. We need to look at the bigger picture.
It may shock you to know that the world birth rate is actually 2.5. How many children will there be in the world in 2100? The answer is roughly the same as today. The UN predicts that in 2100 the world’s population will stop growing, meaning it will cap at around 11 billion. Yes we still need to think about about the potential harm a large population can have on the planet, but this strongly highlights the case for creating a more equal global population.
Distortions around perceptions of population growth can lead to prejudice against religion. “Islam is bad because they have like 7 children per family”, “Catholics don’t use contraception, they are contributing to overpopulation” “muslim women have on average 3.1 children whereas christian women have 2.7.”. Iran is an islamic country, look at the birth rate per woman: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=IR. Surprised? Iran’s birth rate is lower than the global average.
Saudi Arabia’s birth rate per woman:
Making sound investments, understanding shifts in global markets
The West has always dominated the worlds economy. This is going to change, which means markets are going to change, new consumers are going to emerge and new models of investment need to be looked at. Currently the world’s pin code looks like this: 1-1-1-3. 1bn people in America, 1bn in Europe, 1bn in Africa and 3bn in Asia.
“By 2100 the new pin code will be 1–1–4–5", an extra 3 billion people in Africa and an extra 2 billion in Asia. The epicentre of the global economy will shift. “By 2040 60% of level 4 consumers will live outside of the West” very important to know this as there will be new consumers, more people with more money in the East, this is where the opportunity for big business lies. If you miss this point, you are losing business and potentially letting competition steal ground on you. Rosling predicts that the western dominance of the world economy will be over, will the US stand for that? (It could be worth researching the levels of bad press that China have been receiving lately)
There is constant flow and evolution in the world. As globalisation started to become more prevalent, the west started to realise that textiles could be manufactured overseas for less than half the price, outsourcing to emerging markets in countries that were on Level 2. Textile production moved from Europe to Bangladesh and Cambodia, as these countries now move up into level 3, manufacturing hubs could move to countries in Africa. As a lot of countries in Africa are moving from level 1 to level 2. How are the likes of Cambodia and Bangladesh going to adapt?
There is a danger of holding post-colonial views of Africa, these countries are mobilising and moving up. Unfortunately, these ideas of Africa are held up by the media. The vast majority of Africans are not starving, not pot-bellied and nnot living in mud-huts. Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria are hot spots for investment and opportunity now. Nigeria’s economy is growing faster than the UK’s (google it), (well, before COVID-19 it was). We all rely on investment for our pensions, what if investment companies are putting their money in the wrong place? It puts our future at risk.
Billions of people are moving up levels, billions of people have more money to spend. Instead of businesses looking for opportunity to make money by focusing on the rich, they could be focusing on the poorer catagories. Think of all these billions of people that can now afford toilet paper, sanitary towels, toothpaste and beauty products for the first time (research how advertising is adapting in these countries). The market is going to expand drastically, how are you going to ensure that they choose your products? Choose your destination for their holidays? Choose to send their children to your schools?
Wrap up
This is an incredible book. I read it a few months back and have wrote this blog based on pages I have saved. There much more to explore, particularly around global health care. My biggest criticism is that this book creates an overly opptimisstic view of the world. Telling us; “Be greatful for what you’ve got!”. His level system is slightly flawed as we are in the same category as Bill Gates, The Queen of England & Beyonce here. It kind of deflects attention from how unequal the world is. Yes people are escaping poverty which is amazing but the gap between the wealthy and the average joe has never been so big in wealthier countries. Let us not let this book distract us from that fact. The level system is great as it enables Rosling to get his points across and offers a new way of looking at the world which is more accurate and more informative.
Give it a read. As far as non-fiction goes, this is a 4.5 out of 5 for me.
This image was an eye opener, let’s hope excellent research will continue to be done!
I will leave you with my favorite quote from the book:
“What kind of evidence would convince you to change your mind…if the answer is no evidence could ever change my mind, then you are putting yourself outside evidence-based rationality…outside the very critical thinking that first brought you to this point”
- Hans Rosling
*Edit 16/03/2021 — I have since read a book called ‘The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequalities and Its Solutions’ by Economic Anthropologist Dr. Jason Hickel, which has very much changed my perception on the book ‘Factfulness’. Dr. Hickel outlines the dangers of buying into the ‘good news narrative’ and shows, amongst a lot of other eye-opening research, that it would take well over 100 years to rid the world of absolute poverty, even with all the recent advancements. That’s not factoring in any climate or ecological emergencies that may happen to poor countries along the way**
