HANS ROSLING'S 200 COUNTRIES, 200 YEARS, 4 MINUTES - THE JOY OF STATS - BBC FOUR
Visualization is right at the heart of my own work too. I teach global health and I know having the data is not enough. I have to show it in ways people both enjoy and understand. Now I'm going to try something I've never done before: animating the data in real space with a bit of technical assistance from the crew.
So, here we go.
First an axis for health: life expectancy, from 25 years to 75 years. And down here, an axis for wealth: income per person: 400, 4000, 40000 dollars. So down here is poor and sick, and up here is rich and healthy. Now I'm going to show you the world 200 years ago, in 1810. Here come all the countries: Europe brown, Asia red, Middle East green, Africa and Southern Sahara blue and America yellow. The size of the country bubble shows the size of the population. In 1810 it was quite crowded down here, wasn't it? All countries were sick and poor. Life expectancy was below 40 in all countries, and only the UK and the Netherlands were better, but not much. And now I'll start the world.
The industrial revolution makes countries in Europe and elsewhere move away from the rest, but the colonized countries in Africa and Asia, they stuck down there. And eventually, the western countries get healthier and healthier. And now, we slow down to show the impact of the first world war and the Spanish flu epidemic: what a catastrophe!
And now I speed up through the 1920s and the 1930s and in spite of the great depression western countries ... towards greater wealth and health. Japan and some others tried to follow, but most countries stayed down here.
After the tragedy of the second world war, we stop a bit to look at the world in 1948. 1948 was a great year: the war was over, Sweden topped the medal table at the winter Olympics and I was born. But the difference between the countries of the world was wider than ever: USA was in the front, Japan was catching up, Brazil was way behind, Iran was getting a little richer from oil, but still had short lives. And the Asian giants, China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Indonesia, they were still poor and sick down here. But look what is about to happen! Here we go again.
In my lifetime, former colonies gained independence and then finally they started to get healthier, and healthier, and healthier, and in the 1970s then countries in Asia, Latin America started to catch up with the western countries: they became the emerging economies. Some in Africa followed, some Africans were stuck in civil wars and others hit by HIV. And now, we can see the world today, in the most up to date statistics.
Most people today live in the middle, but there are huge differences in the same time between the best of countries and the worst of countries. And there are also huge differences inequalities within countries. This bubbles show country averages, but I can split them. Take China: I can split it into provinces. There goes Shanghai; it has the same wealth and health as Italy today. And there it is the poor inland province Guizhou; it is like Pakistan; and if I split it further, the rural parts are like Ghana in Africa.
And yet, despite the enormous disparities today we have seen two hundred years of remarkable progress: that huge historical gap between the west and the rest is now closing, we have became an entirely new converging world. And I see a clear trend into the future, with aid, trade, green technology and peace, it is fully possible that everyone can make it to the healthy-wealthy corner.
Well, what you've just seen in the last few minutes is a story of two hundred countries shown over two hundred years and beyond. It involved plotting a one hundred and twenty thousand numbers. Pretty neat, eh?