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

by Hans Rosling

Over the past twenty years, the proportion of the global population living in extreme poverty has halved.

Our brains often jump to swift conclusions without much thinking, which used to help us to avoid immediate dangers. We are interested in gossip and dramatic stories, which used to be the only source of news and useful information. We crave sugar and fat, which used to be life-saving sources of energy when food was scarce. We have many instincts that used to be useful thousands of years ago, but we live in a very different world now.

This is data as you have never known it: it is data as therapy. It is understanding as a source of mental peace. Because the world is not as dramatic as it seems.

I explain that “poor developing countries” no longer exist as a distinct group. That there is no gap. Today, most people, 75 percent, live in middle-income countries.

Only 9 percent of the world lives in low-income countries.

The majority of people live neither in low-income countries nor in high-income countries, but in middle-income countries.

Combining middle- and high-income countries, that makes 91 percent of humanity,

Just 200 years ago, 85 percent of the world population was still on Level 1, in extreme poverty. Today the vast majority of people are spread out in the middle, across Levels 2 and 3, with the same range of standards of living as people had in Western Europe and North America in the 1950s. And this has been the case for many years.

We love to dichotomize. Good versus bad. Heroes versus villains. My country versus the rest. Dividing the world into two distinct sides is simple and intuitive, and also dramatic because it implies conflict, and we do it without thinking, all the time.

When you live on Level 4, everyone on Levels 3, 2, and 1 can look equally poor, and the word poor can lose any specific meaning.

Level 1 is where all of humanity started. It’s where the majority always lived, until 1966. Until then, extreme poverty was the rule, not the exception.

In large part, it is because of our negativity instinct: our instinct to notice the bad more than the good.

our surveillance of suffering has improved tremendously. This improved reporting is itself a sign of human progress, but it creates the impression of the exact opposite.

Factfulness is … recognizing when we get negative news, and remembering that information about bad events is much more likely to reach us.

Good news is almost never reported. So news is almost always bad.

Gradual improvement is not news.

People often glorify their early experiences, and nations often glorify their histories.

When I was born in 1948, women on average gave birth to five children each. After 1965 the number started dropping like it never had done before. Over the last 50 years it dropped all the way to the amazingly low world average of just below 2.5.

The poorest 10 percent combined still have five children on average. And on average, every second family living in extreme poverty loses one of their children before he or she reaches the age of five.

When we are afraid, we do not see clearly.

There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.

Of all our dramatic instincts, it seems to be the fear instinct that most strongly influences what information gets selected by news producers and presented to us consumers.

the image of a dangerous world has never been broadcast more effectively than it is now, while the world has never been less violent and more safe.

Factfulness is … recognizing when frightening things get our attention, and remembering that these are not necessarily the most risky.

When you are afraid, you see the world differently. Make as few decisions as possible until the panic has subsided.

to know how to act, and how to prioritize resources, nothing can be more important than doing the cool-headed math and realizing what works and what doesn’t.

A lonely number always makes me suspicious that I will misinterpret it. A number that I have compared and divided can instead fill me with hope.

Factfulness is … recognizing when a lonely number seems impressive (small or large), and remembering that you could get the opposite impression if it were compared with or divided by some other relevant number.

The extreme deprivation we see on the news ends up stereotyping the majority of mankind.

Sweeping generalizations can easily hide behind good intentions.

But when presented with new evidence, we must always be ready to question our previous assumptions and reevaluate and admit if we were wrong.

Today a stunning 15 percent of the Earth’s surface is protected, and the number is still climbing.

To control the destiny instinct, don’t confuse slow change with no change.

Forming your worldview by relying on the media would be like forming your view about me by looking only at a picture of my foot.

Out of the failure of this attempt to eradicate one single disease came the insight that, instead of fighting this disease or that disease, it is wiser to provide and gradually improve primary health care for all.

if I were to choose where to live, I would choose based not on ideology but on what a country delivers to its people.

The United States spends more per capita on health care than any other country in the world, but 39 countries have longer life expectancies.

The challenge is to find the right balance between regulation and freedom.

In went the laundry, and out came books.

Look for causes, not villains.

We are the offspring of those who decided and acted quickly with insufficient information.

Factfulness is … recognizing when a decision feels urgent and remembering that it rarely is.

It is quite relaxing being humble, because it means you can stop feeling pressured to have a view about everything, and stop feeling you must be ready to defend your views all the time.

What you learn about the world at school will become outdated within 10 or 20 years of graduating.

When we have a fact-based worldview, we can see that the world is not as bad as it seems—and we can see what we have to do to keep making it better.