Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

by Hans Rosling

  A common expression of the destiny instinct is my Edinburgh gentleman’s idea that Africa will always be a basket case and will never catch up with Europe. Another is that the “Islamic world” is fundamentally different from the “Christian world.” This or that religion or continent or culture or nation will (or must) never change, because of its traditional and unchanging “values”: again and again, it’s the same idea in different costumes. At first sight there appears to be some analysis going on. On closer inspection, our instincts have often fooled us. These lofty statements are often simply feelings disguised as facts.

  FACT QUESTION 10

  Worldwide, 30-year-old men have spent 10 years in school, on average. How many years have women of the same age spent in school?

  A: 9 years

  B: 6 years

  C: 3 years

  By now I hope you have worked out that the safest thing to do in this book is to pick the most positive answer. Thirty-year-old women have on average spent nine years in school, just one year less than the men.

  Many of my fellow Europeans have a snobbish self-regard built on an illusion of a European culture that is superior, not only to African and Asian cultures, but also to American consumer culture. When it comes to drama, though, I wonder who consumes the most. Twenty-six percent of the US public picked the right answer, compared with 13 percent in Spain and Belgium, 10 percent in Finland, and just 8 percent in Norway.

  The question is about gender inequality, which is currently discussed in the Scandinavian media on a daily basis. We see constant examples of the brutal violence committed against women out there, mostly elsewhere, in the rest of the world, as well as reports from places like Afghanistan, where many, many girls are out of school. These images confirm a popular idea in Scandinavia that gender equality elsewhere has not improved—that most other cultures are stuck.

  How the Rocks Move

  Cultures, nations, religions, and people are not rocks. They are in constant transformation.

  Africa Can Catch Up

  The idea that Africa is destined to remain poor is very common but often seems to be based on no more than a feeling. If you like your opinions to be based on facts, this is what you need to know.

  Yes, Africa is lagging behind other continents, on average. The average lifespan of a newborn baby in Africa today is 65 years. That’s a staggering 17 years less than a baby born today in Western Europe.

  But, first of all, you know how misleading averages can be, and the differences within Africa are immense. Not all African countries are lagging the world. Five large African countries—Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, and Egypt—have life expectancies above the world average of 72 years. They are where Sweden was in 1970.

  Those despairing for Africa may not be convinced by this example. They may say that these are all Arab countries on the north coast of Africa and therefore not the Africa they had in mind. When I was young, these countries were certainly seen as sharing Africa’s destiny. It is only since they made progress that they have been held to be exceptional. For the sake of argument, though, let’s put these North African countries to one side and look at Africa south of the Sahara.

  In the last 60 years the African countries south of the Sahara almost all went from being colonies to being independent states. Over that time, these countries expanded their education, electricity, water, and sanitation infrastructures at the same steady speed as that achieved by the countries of Europe when they went through their own miracles. And each of the 50 countries south of the Sahara reduced its child mortality faster than Sweden ever did. How can that not be counted as incredible progress?

  Perhaps because though things are much better, they are still bad. If you look for poor people in Africa, of course you will find them.

  But there was extreme poverty in Sweden 90 years ago too. And when I was young, just 50 years ago, China, India, and South Korea were all way behind where sub-Saharan Africa is today in most ways, and Asia’s destiny was supposed then to be exactly what Africa’s destiny is supposed to be now: “They will never be able to feed 4 billion people.”

  Roughly half a billion people in Africa today are stuck in extreme poverty. If it is their destiny to stay that way, then there must be something unique about this particular group of poor people compared with the billions across the world, including in Africa, who have already escaped extreme poverty. I don’t think there is.

  I think the last to leave extreme poverty will be the poorest farmers stuck on really low-yield soils and surrounded by or close to conflicts. That probably accounts today for 200 million people, just over half of whom live in Africa. For sure they have an extraordinarily difficult time ahead of them—not because of their unchanging and unchangeable culture, but because of the soil and the conflicts.

  But I hold out hope even for these poorest and most unfortunate people in the world, because this is exactly how hopeless extreme poverty has always seemed. During their terrible famines and conflicts, progress in China, Bangladesh, and Vietnam seemed impossible. Today these countries probably produced most of the clothes in your wardrobe. Thirty-five years ago, India was where Mozambique is today. It is fully possible that within 30 years Mozambique will transform itself, as India has done, into a country on Level 2 and a reliable trade partner. Mozambique has a long, beautiful coast on the Indian Ocean, the future center of global trade. Why should it not prosper?

  Nobody can predict the future with 100 percent certainty. I’m not convinced it will happen. But I am a possibilist and these facts convince me: it is possible.

  The destiny instinct makes it difficult for us to accept that Africa can catch up with the West. Africa’s progress, if it is noticed at all, is seen as an improbable stroke of good fortune, a temporary break from its impoverished and war-torn destiny.

  The same destiny instinct also seems to make us take continuing Western progress for granted, with the West’s current economic stagnation portrayed as a temporary accident from which it will soon recover. For years after the global crash of 2008, the International Monetary Fund continued to forecast 3 percent annual economic growth for countries on Level 4. Each year, for five years, countries on Level 4 failed to meet this forecast. Each year, for five years, the IMF said, “Next year it will get back on track.” Finally, the IMF realized that there was no “normal” to go back to, and it downgraded its future growth expectations to 2 percent. At the same time the IMF acknowledged that the fast growth (above 5 percent) during those years had instead happened in countries on Level 2, like Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya in Africa, and Bangladesh in Asia.

  Why does this matter? One reason is this: the IMF forecasters’ worldview had a strong influence on where your retirement funds were invested. Countries in Europe and North America were expected to experience fast and reliable growth, which made them attractive to investors. When these forecasts turned out to be wrong, and when these countries did not in fact grow fast, the retirement funds did not grow either. Supposedly low-risk/high-return countries turned out to be high-risk/low-return countries. And at the same time African countries with great growth potential were being starved of investment.

  Another reason it matters, if you work for a company based in the old “West,” is that you are probably missing opportunities in the largest expansion of the middle-income consumer market in history, which is taking place right now in Africa and Asia. Other, local brands are already establishing a foothold, gaining brand recognition, and spreading throughout these continents, while you are still waking up to what is going on. The Western consumer market was just a teaser for what is coming next.

  Babies and Religions

  At the end of my opening lecture in my 1998 course on global health, most students headed for the coffee machine but one remained behind. I saw her wander slowly toward the front of the room with tears in her eyes, then, when she understood that I had noticed her, she stopped, flipped her face away, and looked out the window. She was obviously m
oved. I expected her to share with me a sad personal problem that was going to impede her participation in the course. Before I could say anything comforting she turned around, gained control over her emotions, and in a steady voice said something completely unexpected:

  “My family is from Iran. What you just said about the fast improvements in health and education in Iran was the first positive thing I’ve heard anyone from Sweden ever say about the Iranian people.”

  My student said this to me in perfect Swedish with a clear Stockholm accent: she had obviously lived in Sweden her whole life. I was stunned. All I had done was to briefly show UN data for Iran on the increase in life expectancy and decrease in babies per woman. I had mentioned too that it was quite an achievement—actually the fastest drop ever, from more than six babies per woman in 1984 down to fewer than three babies per woman just 15 years later.

  It was one of several little-known examples I had shown of fast changes in middle-income countries in the 1990s.

  “That can’t be true,” I said.

  “It is. You said that the fast fall in the number of babies per woman in Iran is a reflection of improvements in health and education, especially for Iranian women. You also rightly said that most young Iranians now have modern values about family size and use contraception. I have never heard anyone in Sweden say anything even close to that. Even highly educated Swedes seem completely unaware of the changes that have taken place. The improvements. The modernity. They think Iran is on the same level as Afghanistan.”

  The fastest drop in babies per woman in world history went completely unreported in the free Western media. Iran—home in the 1990s to the biggest condom factory in the world, and boasting a compulsory pre-marriage sex education course for both brides and grooms—has a highly educated population with excellent access to an advanced public health-care system. Couples use contraception to achieve small families and have access to infertility clinics if they struggle to conceive. At least that was the case when I visited such a clinic in Tehran in 1990, hosted by the enthusiastic Professor Malek-Afzali, who designed Iran’s family planning miracle.

  How many people in the West would guess that women in Iran today decide to have fewer babies than women in either the United States or Sweden? Do we Westerners love free speech so much that it makes us blind to any progress in a country whose regime does not share our love? It is, at least, clear that a free media is no guarantee that the world’s fastest cultural changes will be reported.

  Almost every religious tradition has rules about sex, so it is easy to understand why so many people assume that women in some religions give birth to more children. But the link between religion and the number of babies per woman is often overstated. There is, though, a strong link between income and number of babies per woman.

  Back in 1960 this didn’t seem so obvious. In 1960, there were 40 countries where women had fewer than 3.5 babies on average, and they were all Christian-majority countries, except Japan. It appeared that to have few babies, you had either to be Christian or Japanese. (A bit more reflection even at this stage would have suggested some problems with this line of thought: in many Christian-majority countries, like Mexico and Ethiopia, women also had big families.)

  How does it look today? In the bubble graphs on the next page, I have divided the world into three groups based on religion: Christian, Muslim, or other. I have then shown babies per woman and income for each group. As usual the size of the bubble reflects the size of the population. Look how Christian populations are spread out on all income levels. Look how the Christian populations on Level 1 have many more babies. Now look at the other two graphs. The pattern is very similar: regardless of religion, women have more children if they live in extreme poverty on Level 1.

  Today, Muslim women have on average 3.1 children. Christian women have 2.7. There is no major difference between the birth rates of the great world religions.

  In almost every bedroom, across continents, cultures, and religions—in the United States, Iran, Mexico, Malaysia, Brazil, Italy, China, Indonesia, India, Colombia, Bangladesh, South Africa, Libya, you name it—couples are whispering into each other’s ears their dreams for their future happy families.

  Everyone’s Talking About Sex

  Exaggerated claims that people from this religion or that religion have bigger families are one example of how people tend to claim that certain values or behaviors are culture-specific, unchanging and unchangeable.

  It’s just not true. Values change all the time.

  Take my lovely home country, Sweden. We Swedes are known for being quite liberal and open about sex and contraception, aren’t we? Yet this hasn’t always been our culture. These haven’t always been our values.

  In my own living memory, Swedish values around sex were extremely conservative. My father’s father, Gustav, for example, was born as Sweden was leaving Level 2 and was, I believe, a quite typical Swedish man of his generation. He was extremely proud of his large family of seven children; he never changed a diaper, cooked food, or cleaned the house; and he absolutely would not talk about sex or contraception. His oldest daughter supported the brave feminists who illegally started advocating the use of condoms in the 1930s. But when she approached her father after the birth of his seventh child, wanting to discuss contraception, this kind, calm man got very angry and refused to talk. His values were traditional and patriarchal. But they were not adopted by the next generation. Swedish culture changed. (By the way, he also disliked books and refused to use a telephone.)

  A woman’s right to an abortion is supported by just about everyone in Sweden today. Strong support for women’s rights in general has become part of our culture. My students’ jaws drop when I tell them how different things were when I was a student in the 1960s. Abortion in Sweden was still, except on very limited grounds, illegal. At the university, we ran a secret fund to pay for women to travel abroad to get safe abortions. Jaws drop even further when I tell the students where these young pregnant students traveled to: Poland. Catholic Poland. Five years later, Poland banned abortion and Sweden legalized it. The flow of young women started to go the other way. The point is, it was not always so. The cultures changed.

  I come across the values of stubborn old men like my grandfather Gustav all the time when I travel in Asia. For example, in South Korea and Japan, many wives are still expected to take care of their husband’s parents, as well as taking full responsibility for the care of any children. I have encountered many men who are proud of these “Asian values,” as they call them. I have had conversations with many women too, who see it differently. They find this culture unbearable and tell me these values make them less interested in getting married.

  The Idea of a Husband

  At a banking conference in Hong Kong, I was seated at dinner next to a brilliant young banker. She was 37 years old and enjoying a very successful career, and she taught me many things over dinner about current issues and trends in Asia. Then we started talking about our personal lives. “Do you plan to have a family?” I asked. I didn’t mean to be rude: we Swedes (nowadays) like to talk about these things. And she had no problem with my honest question. She smiled and looked over my shoulder at the sun setting over the bay. She said, “I am thinking about children every day.” Then she looked me straight in the eye. “It’s the idea of a husband I can’t stand.”

  I try to comfort these women, to convince them that things will change. I recently gave a lecture to 400 young women at the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh. I told them about how and why cultures are always transforming, how escape from extreme poverty and women’s access to education and contraception have led to more pillow talk and fewer children. It was a very emotional lecture. The young women in colorful hijabs smiled with their whole faces.

  Afterward, the Afghan students wanted to tell me about their country. They told me these changes were already slowly happening even in Afghanistan. “Despite the war, despite the poverty,” they told me, “man
y of us young people are planning a modern life. We are Afghans, we are Muslim women. And we want a man just like you describe, a man who listens and plans together with us, and then we want two children who go to school.”

  The macho values that are found today in many Asian and African countries, these are not Asian values, or African values. They are not Muslim values. They are not Eastern values. They are patriarchal values like those found in Sweden only 60 years ago, and with social and economic progress they will vanish, just as they did in Sweden. They are not unchangeable.

  How to Control the Destiny Instinct

  How can we help our brains to see that rocks move; that the way things are now is neither how they have always been nor how they are always meant to be?

  Slow Change Is Not No Change

  Societies and cultures are in constant movement. Even changes that seem small and slow add up over time: 1 percent growth each year seems slow but it adds up to a doubling in 70 years; 2 percent growth each year means doubling in 35 years; 3 percent growth each year means doubling in 24 years.

  In the third century BC, the world’s first nature reserve was created by King Devanampiya Tissa in Sri Lanka when he declared a piece of forest to be officially protected. It took more than 2,000 years for a European, in West Yorkshire, to get a similar idea, and another 50 years before Yellowstone National Park was established in the United States. By the year 1900, 0.03 percent of the Earth’s land surface was protected. By 1930 it was 0.2 percent. Slowly, slowly, decade by decade, one forest at a time, the number climbed. The annual increase was absolutely tiny, almost imperceptible. Today a stunning 15 percent of the Earth’s surface is protected, and the number is still climbing.