After Hans Rosling taught me that extreme poverty and child mortality were falling and education and life expectancy were rising, I went looking for other areas where my preconceptions might be wrong. I started with data on ‘natural’ disasters. I would have bet a lot of money that more people were dying from disasters today than a century ago. I was completely wrong. Death rates from disasters have actually fallen since the first half of the 20th century. And not just by a little bit. They have fallen roughly 10-fold.3, 4 It’s at this point that I should make one thing clear: none of the above
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