Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know
161 points by muramira 7 years ago | 67 comments- andrepd 7 years agoI think this is the most important thing to retain from reading this article:
>[...] Both are true at the same time: The world is much better than in the past and it is still awful.
>To bring this to mind I need to know both statistics: When someone says we can sit back and relax because the world is in a much better place, I point out that 11 children are still dying every minute. We cannot accept the world as it is today. And when I feel hopeless in the face of this tragedy, I remember that we reduced annual child deaths from 20 million to 5.6 million in the last fifty years.
Keeping this in mind at all times is a very important thing.
- 7 years ago
- grasshopperpurp 7 years agoI agree with you, and that's succinctly said. It reminded me of this article from a couple days ago.
>Trump administration claims only 250,000 Americans live in extreme poverty, despite UN estimates of 18m
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-extreme...
- skybrian 7 years agoThese seem to be two different measurements of "extreme poverty," each of which is different from the world-wide definition used by economists in the original article:
"The UN’s numbers come from the official Census definition which has been kept for decades by the US government, defining extreme poverty as having an income lower than half the official poverty rate."
"Citing a recent survey of American households, Heritage found only 0.08 per cent of American households (or about to 250,000) are in “deep poverty,” defined by Heritage as living on less than $4 (£3) a day. This statistic does account for government social spending programmes which help the poor – like Medicaid, food stamps, and housing assistance – while the figure cited by the UN does not."
I guess if you're going to memorize facts, you should also memorize definitions.
- skybrian 7 years ago
- 7 years ago
- bungie4 7 years agoFirst off, I stand up and applaud the Gates Foundation, and everybody, who work to improve the lives of everybody on the planet.
WRT: Extreme Poverty, a few years back, we had a political party who tackled the problem of poverty by redefining the measuring stick of what constitutes poverty. POOF much celebration and self-handshaking when they announced that during their term, their efforts dropped the number of people living in poverty by a very significant amount.
This has left a bad taste in my mouth ever since to never trust claims from politicians.
So I wonder, in the case of this article, how many of those people no longer living at the adjusted poverty line and now only marginally above it and no longer included. They're still their, but buy grace of a single digit, are now considered much better off.
- coldtea 7 years agoThat's a very important thing to keep in mind.
"Facts" and figures quoted by governments, or even by various organisations not only can be twisted seven ways till Sunday to present a nice or gloomy picture with statistics, but even the raw numbers themselves can also be very different than the truth on the ground.]
>So I wonder, in the case of this article, how many of those people no longer living at the adjusted poverty line and now only marginally above it and no longer included.
There are lots of subtleties there as well. A family with very little to no income, but living in a traditional e.g. African or Amazon community where income is not really required (even European rural communities lived perfectly well with making most of their own food and minimal actual "jobs" and money well into the 1950s), could be much better off than a family that now makes $2 a day, but has been driven out of their land and forced to live in piss poor conditions and work their bones off in some slum.
- forapurpose 7 years agoExtreme poverty, in this case, is a measure developed by economists and not by politicians, and AFAIK the definition hasn't changed significantly in many years.
As the parent says, not being in 'extreme poverty' doesn't tell us much about one individual. They could have $2.50 per day; they could be Bill Gates (of course, it tells us a lot if someone is living on less than $1.90/day; that's a much smaller range). But the aggregate measure is meaningful: The number is decreasing and has been for decades - a miracle relative to world history - bringing hundreds of millions of people of out hopeless poverty; just look at India, China, and Latin America. Yes, some are still very poor, but we can use other measures to examine that such as median income (which also has changed dramatically).
Also, 'poverty' in wealthy countries and 'extreme poverty' used in this measure are entirely different things. If you're reading this, $1.90/day probably won't pay for your electricity or water usage for the day, much less food, shelter, health care, education, transportation, etc.
- denzil_correa 7 years ago> WRT: Extreme Poverty, a few years back, we had a political party who tackled the problem of poverty by redefining the measuring stick of what constitutes poverty. POOF much celebration and self-handshaking when they announced that during their term, their efforts dropped the number of people living in poverty by a very significant amount.
In other words, Goodhart's law - "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
- babbadook 7 years agoIf you are curious here is the larger exploration of global poverty from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
It has been a while since I read it but I found it quite compelling. If i remember correctly, the measures are based on consumption of goods per day to try to avoid complications related to differing economic systems. Also while it is true that measures can be manipulated to tell the story you want, it does not appear that that has been done in a significant way here. Even if it had i doubt that, such an extreme 90% -> 10% drop could be shown even with the most crooked measuring stick if things had not been genuinely improving a lot. Incidentally, my brother used to be a full on marxist until he read this data and completely abandoned that belief system.
- 7 years ago
- coldtea 7 years ago
- WA 7 years agoThere is a fantastic video by Hans Rosling about the global population growth and why global population might actually stall around 10 billion people:
https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_...
This relates to fact 2 in the article.
- lancebeet 7 years agoHis foundation's website also has some really nice data visualizations: https://www.gapminder.org/tools/
- amingilani 7 years agoHere's a UN chart: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/
- amingilani 7 years ago
- ForHackernews 7 years agoFor the sake of the environment and every nonhuman species, we'd better hope that population growth doesn't just stall but reverses itself.
- vjerancrnjak 7 years agoIt's going to be weird to live in an age when pyramidal schemes (pension systems, academia etc.), that have been foundation of the modern civilization, start falling apart (given that they are based on a healthy population pyramid).
- ForHackernews 7 years agoWe're going to have to adapt. New technology and higher productivity should allow us to keep enjoying higher standards of living with declining populations.
- gbear605 7 years agoThat's modern-day Japan.
- ForHackernews 7 years ago
- vjerancrnjak 7 years ago
- lancebeet 7 years ago
- amingilani 7 years agoRelevant Kurzgesagt video on overpopulation: https://youtu.be/QsBT5EQt348
I learnt about the overpopulation myth during my undergrad, but I'm continuously surprised by how many people (including Thanos) didn't know this.
Edit: Here's a chart of expected population growths. It's expected to start slowing down[1]
[1]: Select WORLD from the menu: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/
- ItsMe000001 7 years agoI don't see why you called it myth. Just because it sort of works short term does not tell you anything about long term consequences. Earth has changed drastically with all the humans on it. You need a lot of optimism about solutions for global warming and pollution. The linked short "feel good" video asks an extreme question "Will this lead to the end of our civilization?" (pretend the other side made a ridiculous claim to make them look foolish and to easily counter what nobody said), takes an incredibly tiny number of data well selected to support the desired conclusion, and of course lots of colorful animations - I'm supposed to take that seriously? I find the myth that the myth is a myth to be too mythical for my taste.
- amingilani 7 years agoI think you misunderstand, the video isn't a happy colorful animation about an optimistic conclusion to humanity's problems. It discusses one specific problem: over-population. And distills a ton of data collected over the several decades to offer the conclusion.
Historical evidence supports that a decrease in mortality rates is followed by a decrease in birth rate. Here, check out the data for yourself[1]
The theory of population growth leading to resource depletion is fairly old. Thomas Malthus published this in 1798[2], but guess what: we're all still alive, despite growing over 7 billion in size, and the empirical evidence debunked this theory. There are a fairly large number of theories why this didn't happen, but that's off topic.
My point is:
- The shortage of resource because of over-population is an old theory, but we've seen no evidence to it yet.
- Population growth eventually slows down when the mortality rate decreases.
- The population growth rate is expected to begin slowing[3]
- Colorful animations help people understand a point, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/Demographic-Transition-Mi...
[2]:https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/malthusian-theory/
[3]:https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/
- ItsMe000001 7 years ago> It discusses one specific problem: over-population
As I said, they make exactly zero effort to say anything of substance about that issue. Key word is "over". I refer back to my comment. They say something about "population" - but the vital "over-" part is not addressed at all. For good reason, that's a complex topic with mostly unknowns.
> Colorful animations help people understand a point, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong.
If there is no substance and the topic is complex and big than that alone is wrong already.
- vageli 7 years ago> My point is:
> - The shortage of resource because of over-population is an old theory, but we've seen no evidence to it yet.
There does indeed exist evidence that unrestrained population growth DOES lead to resource depletion and at least in this case [0] led to the eventual extinction of a population confined to an island.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Matthew_Island#Mammals
- baxtr 7 years agoIsn’t this prone to inductive fallacy? Just because we’ve never seen overpopulation as problem doesn’t mean it won’t become one. Ultimately, earth as planet is finite.
- hycaria 7 years ago>- Population growth eventually slows down when the mortality rate decreases.
But that worked in a world where people were reliant on children to work / take care of elders. I don't think the comparison between 40's occident and nows developing countries is of any worth. Also you can throw a lot of stuff in there : not the same social norms (occident is really individual centered, asia or africa don't seem to have suffered the same shift yet), not the same culture (child policies, cults, education access for women...). I really don't think your sentence is an universal rule. It happened once in a rather homogenical situations. Could we say the same about now ?
>- The population growth rate is expected to begin slowing
Expectations are not enough. And nothing will be inforced to provoke this. Also we're still above 2 children per women, which is too much considering the HUGE energy/consumption/overall spending cutouts we have to make to keep our planet and oceans alive.
- siruncledrew 7 years ago> The shortage of resource because of over-population is an old theory, but we've seen no evidence to it yet.
That doesn't deny that it's still happening though. This sounds like the kind of argument Exxon, Nestle, or a logging company would use to continue siphoning up resources while saying "Well, we're all still alive, so no harm done." That's very short-sighted and limited thinking. There are many other consequences of an increasing population that by proxy contribute to resource depletion, such as pollution and over-development for example.
In a non-human comparison, look at the damage that happens when an invasive species enters a new environment and over-populates. The native flora and fauna suffer and the resources they rely on begin to disappear. Then we end up with a Lorax-like scenario.
- antisthenes 7 years ago> The shortage of resource because of over-population is an old theory, but we've seen no evidence to it yet.
Malthus only has to be right once for you to see the shortage. E.g. you can always pull water out of the well, until you can't. If you can say that with a straight face and pretend it's an argument, then I can say "you can't predict that it will never be a problem as long as humanity exists" and be just as right.
The only argument here is for how we will deal with the shortage - violently or by gradually reducing the birth rates.
> Population growth eventually slows down when the mortality rate decreases.
Population numbers themselves are meaningless without estimates of resource consumption. Nor is necessarily having a high population at the level of "not starving" level of prosperity something that we should be striving towards.
> The population growth rate is expected to begin slowing
Yes, it's already slowing, but see above for why it's meaningless that it is.
> Colorful animations help people understand a point, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong.
It also doesn't necessarily mean they tell the whole picture, the correct picture or contain any relevant information whatsoever.
- maxerickson 7 years agoOne thing I wonder about is how much of a genetic component there is to the number of children people will have in a developed society.
If there is, after several generations, you can expect those genes to be much more prevalent in the society and for population growth to resume.
- mikeash 7 years agoIt doesn’t make any sense to me that overpopulation leading to resource exhaustion ha been debunked because the population has grown over 7 billion and it hasn’t happened yet. It brings to mind the image of a person falling off a skyscraper and plummeting to the ground thinking, “so far so good!”
- ItsMe000001 7 years ago
- fwdpropaganda 7 years ago> You need a lot of optimism about solutions for global warming and pollution.
I disagree. Unless you can show me a first-principle calculation for why a specific number should be "too much", then I don't think it's reasonable to assume that we're either above or below such a number. Don't get me wrong: I agree that such a number must exist. But you seem certain that we're above it, which isn't based on anything as far as I can tell.
- AnimalMuppet 7 years agoIt seems clear that, with the same level of technology, more people put more load on the environment than fewer people do. The question then becomes, are we currently putting "too much" load on the environment? I think that's where the dispute lies.
And since there is no clear definition of "too much", there is no provably correct answer to the question. One person looks around, sees what's happening to the oceans, the carbon dioxide level, and so on, and says "Of course it's too much!". Another looks around, sees things "pretty much the same as before", and says "clearly not too much".
- AnimalMuppet 7 years ago
- jpadkins 7 years ago> Earth has changed drastically with all the humans on it.
do you have earth scale measures for this? what is your threshold for drastic?
on most measures I can think of, earth is pretty much the same as it was 100k years ago. maybe you are suggesting humans have a drastic impact on other species on earth?
- ItsMe000001 7 years agoGeologically it is the same, a stone is a stone, true that. The creatures on it, both plants as well as animals, changed drastically by human intervention.
Example: https://mic.com/articles/84681/this-is-exactly-how-much-weig... (it's for this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1338/)
Then there's the pollution, for example plastics (tiny particles) everywhere, example: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-...
We change(d) the atmosphere, from pollutants to CO2 levels.
Land for agriculture: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS -- much of it is to support livestock
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/human-footprint-...
- ItsMe000001 7 years ago
- amingilani 7 years ago
- legulere 7 years agoWe're actually already overpopulated. The issue isn't so much how much people we are but how much resources these people use. We for sure cannot sustain as many people as today leading a life as resource-intensive as in Western societies.
- credit_guy 7 years agoThat video is fantastic, thanks for linking to it. Does anyone know how it was produced?
- amingilani 7 years agoThey did mention this a bit and I think they even did a course on some site about how they made it. The one software I remember them mentioning: Adobe After Effects
- amingilani 7 years ago
- ItsMe000001 7 years ago
- TangoTrotFox 7 years agoI'm curious about one thing. Like the article alludes to there is currently an extremely strong connection between fertility and low education, low income, and high religiosity. This [1] is a list of nations by net natural population growth. So births - deaths. From the top (according to UN predictions for 2015-2020): Uganda, Angola, Mali, Somalia, Tanzania, etc. From the bottom on nations that are collectively dying: Bulgaria, Latvia, Ukraine, Hungary, Lithuana, Romania, Portugal, Greece, Japan, Germany, Italy, etc.
One of the facts is that 137,000 people/day have been escaping 'extreme poverty'. But what happens when the part of society that is living in economically stable and educated households is not even reproducing to the point of replacing itself, while those living in low education and low income households are massively reproducing?
The natural response here is that if we can just improve the situation of places such as Africa then this situation ought resolve itself with birth rates starting to become comparable thus preventing a condemnation of the next generation. There are two problems with this view. The first is that this relies exclusively on a correlation which to date has proved less than predictive of African fertility levels. More importantly this effect is not just international but also intranational. Those who earn the most in the US have the fewest children with households earning less than $10,000 having a 50% greater fertility rate than those earning $200,000+. [2] It seems we're creating a society where each new birth is more and more likely to come into this world in some of the least appropriate households.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_i...
[2a] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
[2b] - https://www.census.gov/topics/health/fertility.html (the link to statista presents this data in a cleaner format - also adding this as just a more reliable source)
- radicalbyte 7 years agoWithin a nation this is a very good argument for taxation and wealth redistribution. You have to give those kids born to poorer parents a chance. It's better for them, it's better for you, it's better for everyone.
It's also what Gates is kind of doing - redistributing his wealth to help the people who most need it.
- TangoTrotFox 7 years agoThis seems reasonable but there are some issues here as well. For instance it seems that if you gave somebody a huge amount of money, that they'd likely be able to pull themselves out of poverty. I mean, by definition, they are immediately placed in the upper or middle upper class. Unfortunately this has shown to be ineffective. For instance of all individuals who receive large windfalls of money, or win the lottery, some 70% [1] manage to end up bankrupt!
Giving money to people is not really enough to solve problems. We can see this same problem in our education system for instance. US education has been slipping quite severely by most metrics, yet we spend much more per student than most of anywhere in the world excepting something like 3 nations (Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway IIRC).
While obviously the wealth of wealthy households is undoubtedly useful for child rearing, I think more important is the education that these households instill in their children. I grew up very poor and in an urban area. And I know that, undoubtedly, what helped me more than anything else was the 'Big Brothers and Big Sisters' program. I think the lessons and learning from there set me up for success far more so than having some money splashed my parent's way would have.
[1] - https://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2016/01/why_do_...
- TangoTrotFox 7 years ago
- acuster 7 years agoYour 'one thing' is exactly what Thomas Malthus originally wrote about in the first well-known book on population growth!
His thesis, glibly summarized, was that population growth gives the rich a structural problem: given that reproduction is inherently exponential and the poor reproduce more than the rich, the only logical consequence is that poor people will overwhelm the rich.
- Wintamute 7 years agoYou're completely correct to highlight this, it's a coming challenge to be sure. Developed nations need to fine a way to increase indigenous fertility rates without simply replacing their own populations and culture with immigration. For my part I think the solution is multi-pronged:
- Make child rearing more financially feasible (big tax cuts for families)
- Foster reliance on family and local social networks, rather than reliance on the state
- Nudge younger generations to take responsibility for the future of their nation, rather that the nihilistic individualism that currently pervades our culture
- Etc
- BerislavLopac 7 years ago> But what happens when the part of society that is living in economically stable and educated households > is not even reproducing to the point of replacing itself, while those living in low education and low > income households are massively reproducing?
Migration is what happens. Followed by integration.
- 7 years ago
- TangoTrotFox 7 years agoCan you explain how you see this as a solution?
We can view this problem on any scale as it seems to be applicable everywhere. On a world scale the fundamental issue is that people who are of low education, low income, and high religiosity are increasingly the ones primarily repopulating our planet. This means that any given child is more and more likely to be born into this sort of circumstance. And many of these characteristics tend to pass from parent to child. It matters not what chunk of land they call home.
- icebraining 7 years agolow education, low income, and high religiosity
This describes much of Europe less than a century ago. None of my grandparents had more than four years of schooling. The local priest had enough power to imprison people. People were punished for homossexual acts until quite recently (e.g. Turing). In Ireland, divorce only became legal in 1995.
Low income and education is not a genetic characteristic, it can and is changeable.
- haltingthoughts 7 years agoImmigrants have nearly identical views to other citizens:
https://www.cato.org/publications/economic-development-bulle...
- BerislavLopac 7 years ago> Can you explain how you see this as a solution?
I don't. It's not a solution, it's the reality, this is what happens in the environment that GP described.
And I have no idea which problem do you think I meant it for...
- icebraining 7 years ago
- 7 years ago
- radicalbyte 7 years ago
- rubyn00bie 7 years agoIf you want more facts like this I’d highly suggest anything but Steven Pinker especially:
https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/...
- alberto_ol 7 years agoI am always confused buy the expression "anything but". I assume you want to suggest that people should read the Pinker's book, but I think it could be interpreted also as read everything except that book. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/8061/what-is-the...
- alberto_ol 7 years ago
- twoslide 7 years agoThere's an interesting link between Facts 1 and 2 that the author misses:
> Fact #1: Since 1960, child deaths have plummeted from 20 million a year to 6 million a year.
About half of this reduction (from 20 - 10 million) is because:
> Fact #2: Since 1960, the fertility rate has fallen by half.
Globally, the population of young people has decreased. Child mortality has decreased, too, but not by a factor of 3.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.0014.TO.ZS World Bank reports 0-14 years, rather than 0-5 used for infant mortality.
- meritt 7 years agoYou seem to be forgetting that during this time period the world population grew from 2.5B to 7.5B. That's faster than the fertility rate decreased.
> Globally, the population of young people has decreased.
The proportion of the population which are young people has decreased but the total population of young people has increased significantly: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.0014.TO
- crazynick4 7 years ago> You seem to be forgetting that during this time period the world population grew from 2.5B to 7.5B.
Older people were also staying alive longer - the death rate no longer offset the birth rate to the same extent as before.
- twoslide 7 years agoIndeed, I missed "% of total" on that graph, thanks
- crazynick4 7 years ago
- meritt 7 years ago
- petermcneeley 7 years agoLooks good right? but all is not so great. Whats happening is a squeezing of the middle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1oHJezqBYU
Thats why this is also front page HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17413622
- frockington 7 years agoWhat is inherently wrong with squeezing the middle? Seems like you'll get increased competition and innovation as people scramble to move to the top. Could be a net positive for mankind
- petermcneeley 7 years agoBy that logic I think you would want to squeeze the top right? I mean if you remove the middle then people will have to fill the middle before the even attempting at the top (and the top is saturated under current conditions) ;)
Beyond such myopic reasoning I think there is a great deal of economic theory around the collective economic benefits of having a strong middle class. You could try to argue against this but I think its at least a popular mainstream theory.
- frockington 7 years agoIt is a popular mainstream theory. I'm not optimistic that this can continue. With technological innovations, I am convinced that we will end up in a can and cannot society where some people will be able to keep up and some won't.
- frockington 7 years ago
- smacktoward 7 years agoLet's do an experiment then. Let's say I come down to your neighborhood and remove a sufficient volume of food so they can only feed 70% of the total number of people in the neighborhood.
Sounds good, right? I mean, you will absolutely see increased "competition and innovation" as you and your neighbors scramble to make sure you end up on the right side of that 70%!
- petermcneeley 7 years ago
- frockington 7 years ago
- incidentnormal 7 years agoThe book which Bill Gates recently gave a copy of to all 2018 college graduates - Factfulness, is a very well written and comprehensive treatment of this and more by Hans Rosling (Gapminder). Highly recommended, it's not long either - you could read it in a couple of evenings or a weekend easily.
- wslh 7 years agoThe world population has almost doubled from 1960 to 2018. I think this makes the #1 fact much stronger.
- nicolas_t 7 years agobut the fertility rate has fallen by half which compensates for the doubling of the world population
- jeffreyrogers 7 years agoThere are still more kids born now than back then, so the decline in absolute child mortality shows progress.
- jeffreyrogers 7 years ago
- nicolas_t 7 years ago
- crazynick4 7 years agoI don't think the graph regarding extreme poverty accounts for inflation. I don't know what an international dollar is, assuming its close, but 1.90 USD in 1850 is equivalent to about $55 today (according to Google), or 20,000 USD per year. That's not extreme poverty, I've lived on less than that.