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, 4,000, and 40,000
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 South
of the Sahara blue, and the Americas yellow.
And the size of the country
bubble shows the size of the population.
And in 1810, it was pretty crowded
down there, 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 slightly
better off, but not much.
And now, I start the world!
The industrial
revolution makes countries in Europe and elsewhere move away from the rest, but
the colonized countries in Asia and Africa, they are 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 forge on towards greater
wealth and health; Japan and some others try to follow but most countries stay
down here. Now, after the tragedies 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
differences between the countries of the world was wider than ever: the United
States 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, Pakistan, Bangladesh, 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 and Latin America started to catch up with the Western countries: they
became the emerging economies. Some in Africa follow, some Africans were stuck
in civil wars, 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 at the same time between the better off countries and the
worse off countries and there are also huge inequalities within countries. These
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 is the poor inland province Guizhou, it's 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 200 years of remarkable
progress. That huge historical gap between the West and the Rest is now closing.
We have become an entirely new converging world, and I see a clear trend into
the future, with aid, trade, green technology, and peace. It's fully possible
that everyone can make it to the healthy-wealthy corner!
Well, what you've
just seen in the last few minutes is the story of 200 countries shown over 200
hundred years and beyond. It involved plotting 120,000 numbers. Pretty neat,
eh?