The great majority of people throughout most of human history have precariously been able to subsist. (See Level 1 below.) A great divergence began just over two centuries ago. Global life expectancy at birth has more than doubled and abject poverty as a percentage of the population has declined.
The average life expectancy at birth used to be about 30 years. That doesn't mean no one lived to old age. One in four children born alive died before their first birthday, so the average life expectancy at birth was skewed downward. But life expectancy at every age has been improving, especially over the past century.
The researchers at Gapminder have constructed this informative chart showing anticipated improving economic status over the next twenty years. (These numbers attempt to account for changes in the value of "a dollar" over time and across national borders.) Each block equates to 100,000 people. As you can see, the population is larger in twenty years, but a higher percentage of people have moved rightward on the continuum to greater prosperity. Many people find these numbers too abstract. What does this mean in practical terms? Gapminder has constructed this helpful chart to describe what life is like at the four levels.
You can learn more about these four levels here.
Three truths. The world has become profoundly better in recent generations and is on an improving trajectory. There is much suffering and injustice as vast room for improving our world. We can make the world a better place.
From researchers Steven A. Altman and Phillip Bastian:
Despite recent trade turbulence, the ratio of gross exports to world GDP is still remarkably close to its all-time high. Even after falling from a peak of 32% in 2008 to 29% in 2019, this measure of global trade integration is still 20% higher than it was in 2000, twice as high as it was in 1970, and almost six times higher than in 1945. ... Globalization can go into reverse—as demonstrated by the trendlines between the 1920s and 1950s—but recent data do not depict a similar reversal. ...
[T]he world is—and will remain—only partially globalized. Globalization can rise or fall significantly without getting anywhere close to either a state where national borders become irrelevant or one where they loom so large that it is best to think of a world of disconnected national economies. All signs point to a future where international flows will remain so large that decision-makers ignore them at their peril, even as borders and cross-country differences continue to make domestic activity the default in most areas.
Economist Timothy Taylor reviews the report and offers other insights: What's Happening with Global Connectedness in the Pandemic?
In mid-April, Bill Bennett said COIVD-19 is no big deal. Projections showed 60,000 deaths, about the same as the flu. Our stringent "stay-at-home" measures were unnecessary. It is faulty reasoning on several counts. As I noted of Facebook, “We didn’t lock down the country to try to prevent 60,000 deaths; we locked down the country to limit deaths to 60,000 (or whatever the ultimate toll is).” (See The Absurd Case against the Coronavirus Lockdown)
Through March 31, the tally of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. was doubling every three days. Had that rate continued, there would have 275,000 deaths by April 21. Instead, we had 40,000. The doubling rate has stretched to nine days. We flattened the curve. We do not know the exact rate at which deaths would have multiplied had we not acted but it is certain it would have been much higher. Slowing the fatalities prevents medical facilities from becoming overwhelmed and ensures that each new hospitalized victim gets optimal care, thus dampening the fatality rate over the course of the pandemic.
Furthermore, the 60,000 flu deaths represent the total for an entire year. In the U.S., COVID-19 is barely two months old. This is like looking at a baseball player’s strikeout totals for the previous season, comparing them with his total strikeouts for his first month of the following year, and upon seeing they are about the same, conclude he is doing okay. What will the death count comparison be like a year from now?
Finally, it is invalid to compare deaths officially attributed to COVID-19 to the Center For Disease Control’s flu death total.(1) The reported flu deaths are calculated using an algorithm.(2) Over the last six years, the number of flu deaths officially coded as such (direct or comorbidity) ranged from 3,448 to 15,620 (See Jeremy Samuel Faust.) The CDC believes flu deaths are underreported for a variety of reasons. Instead of official tabulations, they take the number of flu and pneumonia hospitalizations and report a percentage of them as flu deaths. According to Faust, the result is about six times more flu deaths than the officially reported number each year. (Faust is critical of CDC methods, believing it significantly overstates the death total. I have no way of evaluating that.)
Recent analysis indicates the official COVID-19 count is a significant undercount. Using average numbers of deaths up to a particular point in the year from recent years, analysts are finding sharp rises in the number of deaths where COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred. Yet, the officially reported COVID-19 deaths are accounting for only half the increase in deaths. That suggests the true COVID-19 impact may be much higher (double?) than the official account. (See here)
As of today, May 5, we have 70,000 officially reported deaths. So if you want to make legitimate comparisons, it is 70,000 versus about 9,500 for officially reported deaths. Using algorithms to capture unreported deaths, the comparison is more likely something like 100,000+ deaths to 60,000 deaths. And this is comparing COVID-19’s first quarter to an entire flu season.
COVID-19 is not just the flu.
1 “Official.” A CDC database tracks COVID-19 deaths reported through official channels. Their provisional death count in the National Vital Statistics System shows almost 40,000 COVID-19 deaths. They note that it can take weeks for deaths to make it into the NVSS. The numbers for past weeks are revised as the data is received. The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System is the source for the numbers we typically see in the media and an up to date report of confirmed and probable deaths. That total stands at about 70,000 today. I am using this number as the “official” count. (Source: Did the CDC Significantly ‘Readjust COVID-19 Death Numbers’?)
2 Center for Disease Control, Frequently Asked Questions about Estimated Flu Burden. "How many adults die from flu each year?: Flu deaths in adults are not nationally notifiable. In order to monitor influenza related deaths in all age groups, CDC tracks pneumonia and influenza (P&I)–attributed deaths through the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Mortality Reporting System. This system tracks the proportion of death certificates processed that list pneumonia or influenza as the underlying or contributing cause of death. This system provides an overall indication of whether flu-associated deaths are elevated, but does not provide an exact number of how many people died from flu. As it does for the numbers of flu cases, doctor’s visits and hospitalizations, CDC also estimates deaths in the United States using mathematical modeling. CDC estimates that from 2010-2011 to 2017-2018, influenza-associated deaths in the United States ranged from a low of 12,000 (during 2011-2012) to a high of 79,000 (during 2017-2018). The model used to estimate flu-associated deaths uses a ratio of deaths-to-hospitalizations in order to estimate the total flu-related deaths during a season." The site offers links for those wanting more detail.
The chart below is based on maternal mortality rates, the number of women per 100,000 who die from pregnancy-related causes in a year. The first bar shows how many women die each year while the second bar shows how many would die if they had Europe’s living standards. What conclusions would you draw?
The global rate is 216, while the European rate is 8. The global rate is 27 times higher! About 290,000 women die each year because they do not have the living standards of the most affluent countries.
I would hope this would spark a sense of injustice. Something is wrong with a system that creates such a disparity in outcomes. Surely, we must upend this inequitable system and replace it with something just.
Now look at the second chart. What conclusions would you draw?
Prior to 1800, the global maternal mortality rate was 900. Today it is 216! It has dropped by 75%. By historic standards, this borders on miraculous. Something is right about a system that radically improves human well-being. How can we preserve and extend the improvement? (Note: The global rate dropped steadily from 385 in 1990, to 216 in 2015. The trajectory continues rapidly downward.)
A holistic view of human well-being will take into consideration this chart, including all three bars.
Some observations.
First, without the systems that developed over the past two centuries, we would have a more equitable maternal mortality rate. No place on earth would have a rate of 8 deaths OR of 216 deaths. We would still have a very equitable world of 900 deaths. Is that “equality” preferable to the 8 vs 216 inequality of today? I do not think many would agree. The 8 vs 216 differential is a good thing relative to the historic alternative.
Second, that some locales have a rate of 8, points to the possibility of a world where this level of well-being spans the globe. Justice requires that what we pursue this equitable outcome. We must be looking back to understand what brought us to where we are and we must be discerning about obstacles block this objective going forward.
Third, I am using maternal mortality rates as a symbol of broader improvement in human well-being in recent generations, sometimes called the Great Divergence. Appreciating this great divergence from human history neither requires us, in some consequentialist way, to a) embrace all that has developed in the past couple of centuries nor b) to refrain from asking rigorous questions about justice going forward. There have been profound injustices and inequities in the world of the past two centuries. There obviously are today. And yet, the Great Divergence happened and it continues. Lack of historical context and blindness to trajectories, can lead us to snap-shot-in-time views that inspire us to well-intentioned but destructive actions, destroying good in the process. Keep what works and adjust with discernment. Neither revolution nor complacency will do.
Population control is sometimes championed as a way to fight climate change. Bernie Sanders recently raised this idea. The world population is growing. There are 7.7 billion people today. There will be nearly 11 billion in 2100, according to United Nations estimates. Extra people mean extra CO2 emissions. While two children per woman may seem reasonable, women in the poorest countries can average five or sex. Sanders and others believe this excess fertility is why the world population is growing. Fewer children will mean less CO2. Unfortunately, this perception is decades out of date.
We are already at “peak children.” Globally, there are 680 million children under the age of five. U.N. projections show a peak of 700 million about 2060. There are projected to be 650 million children in 2100, less children than there are today. Yet the overall population will grow by nearly 50%. How can that be? It is the compounding effect of people already born that will drive population growth over the next century, not excessive birth rates.
Trends in Fertility
Assume women have two children over their lifetime. They replace themselves and one other. Population size will be stable from generation to generation. (The actual replacement fertility rate for an affluent nation is 2.1 children per woman.) Throughout history, the total fertility rate has been six or seven children. One quarter of children died before their first birthday. Another sizable percentage died before age five. Of those who made it past five, many died before marrying and having children. High fertility rates ensured a couple of children would survive to continue the family.
As affluence emerged and health practices changed (first in Europe and then spreading elsewhere) more children survived into adulthood. We needed fewer births to perpetuate a family but it took a while for customs related to fertility to adjust downward. That lag between declining death rates and declining fertility rates is what led to the population explosion that began two centuries ago. That growth accelerated into the twentieth century and continues into its final stages today. As recently as the 1960s, the global total fertility rate was as high as five children per woman.
Today, the global total fertility rate is about 2.4 and dropping, but the rate is not evenly spread throughout the world. Europe, the Americas, China, Japan, and other regions have fertility rates below the replacement rate, well below it in many nations. A handful of smaller poor countries have fertility rates of five or six, but they also have some of the highest child death rates. The world average is fast approaching the 2.1 replacement rate. However, because the global fertility rate has usually been higher than the replacement rate for most of us now living, it means the cohort of people born one year is usually larger than the cohort of people born the previous year. So let us think about what that means for the future.
The Compounding Effect in Future Fertility
To keep things simple, assume going forward that we birth the same number of children each year, the death rate stays the same, and no one lives past one hundred years. Now say there are 100,000 people age 100. By next year, all will have died. The group that was 99 will now be 100. Because more of them were born, there will now be, say, 105,000 people 100 years old. After two years have passed, the new group of 100 hundred year old people will be the people who are 98 years old today. They will be a still larger group. That will continue for one hundred years.
At the other end of the age continuum, we have the largest number of children ever born in a year and the largest age cohort alive. A year later, this youngest age cohort will replace a smaller cohort a year older than them. But keep in mind that for the next forty-five years the number of women of childbearing age will be increasing each year. Therefore, each year the total fertility rate will need to fall slightly more below the replacement rate if the population is to stabilize. It can then rise to the replacement rate after forty-five years. This will continue until 2120 when each age cohort is the largest age cohort that has ever existed for that age. This is the primary driver of population growth going forward but there is at least one other key factor. (Clearly, I am oversimplifying to illustrate my point. We are not down to replacement rate fertility, so there is still some marginal population growth due to “excess” fertility.)
Furthermore, actual global death rates are not constant. They are dropping. People are living longer. So not only is each age cohort larger than the one before, it is living slightly longer than the one before. This too contributes to population growth over coming decades.
Therefore, we would need considerably less than replacement-rate fertility to limit global population growth substantially. In fact, there are credible projections of a population peak at fewer than nine billion. Demographers once assumed transition to low fertility and death rates would stabilize at about the replacement rate. Instead, the fertility rate has dropped well below replacement rate in nearly every affluent nation, in some cases nearly one child per woman. From the narrow view of CO2 emissions, this may look like a good thing. From a holistic standpoint, many social scientists are troubled. Depopulation can be as destructive to human well-being as overpopulation.
The Depopulation Problem
A vibrant society needs a critical mass of productive workers relative to its dependents (primarily children and the elderly.) This is the dependency ratio (dependents divided by workers multiplied by 100). With excessively low fertility rates, it is possible to have a great imbalance with a large number of seniors and too few workers to provide for society. We have already seen that current UN projections say we will have nearly the same number of children now as in 2100 but the overall population will be nearly 50% larger at eleven billion. That growth is a consequence of a burgeoning number of elders. A smaller population of nine billion may mean fewer total people but an even worse dependency ratio.
Modest help may come from lengthening the number of years people work or a higher participation rate in the work force for working age people but at some point that will be insufficient. Then consider the possibility of medical breakthroughs that cure cancer or dramatically reduce heart disease. That means more people living longer, intensifying the dependency ratio imbalance.
As an ever shrinking number of people (potentially a minority of the population) is expected to support everyone else, improvement in living standards will begin to stall and possibly reverse, making the world ripe for any number of societal dysfunctions. It will not take eighty years for this challenge to become real. Japan is already struggling with these issues. China is already headed down this road. One can envision China opening up to immigration from the remaining regions with the highest fertility rate and investing there resources in growth economies, but if every nation is headed to fertility rates well below the replacement rates, that is only a temporary fix. The dependency ratio for a world with eleven billion people is already seen as a challenge. The only way to get a peak population under nine billion people is to achieve fertility rates well below replacement rates substantially intensifying the dependency ratio imbalance just a generation or two down the road. (For more detail see the Brookings' piece, How will we cope when there are too few young people in the world?)
Decoupled Economic Growth
At the most basic level, climate policy needs to be about economic growth decoupled from CO2 emissions. Population growth is one issue driving this need for economic growth. But also consider people are advocating for a $15 living wage for every worker in the United States. That would put nearly every US worker in the top 10% of wage earners in the world. Meanwhile, despite astonishing improvements in human well-being around the world and the dramatic reduction in extreme poverty, there are still hundreds of millions of people in extreme poverty. A couple billion more have more stable lives but still live well below standards we would consider tolerable. If it is a matter of justice that everyone in the US has a $15 an hour living standard, then it is only just that all citizens of the world have something approximating that standard. The only way that happens is through economic growth. Measures like population control are shortsighted and potentially calamitous. The principle mission is decoupling economic growth from fossil fuel consumption, along with other disruptive measures like decoupling land use from agricultural production.
Worldwide, there were 12.6 million deaths for children under five years old in 1990. As of 2017, there were 5.4 million. Keep in mind that the world population grew by 50% during this time. Had death rates continued at the 1990 rate, there would have been about 19 million childhood deaths.
(Where in the world are children dying.)
One of most important observations (among many) from the late Hans Roslings’ Factfulness:
When a population is not growing over a long period of time, and the population curve is flat, this must mean that each generation of new parents is the same size as the previous one. For thousands of years up to 1800 the population curve was almost flat. Have you heard people say that humans used to live in balance with nature?
Well, yes, there was a balance. But let’s avoid the rose-tinted glasses. Until 1800, women gave birth to six children on average. So the population should have increased with each generation. Instead, it stayed more or less stable. Remember the child skeletons in the graveyards of the past? On average four of six children died before becoming parents themselves, leaving just two surviving children to parent the next generation. There was a balance. It wasn’t because humans lived in balance with nature. Humans died in balance with nature. It was utterly brutal and tragic.
Today, humanity is once again reaching a balance. The number of parents is no longer increasing. But this balance is dramatically different from the old balance. The new balance is nice: the typical parents have two children, and neither of them dies. For the first time in history, we live in balance. (pp. 87-88)
Demographers refer to this as the Demographic Transition – the move from high fertility and mortality rates to low fertility and mortality rates. A few centuries ago, living standards in some regions began to rise via technology, specialization of labor, and extensive trade. That trend dramatically accelerated about 250 years ago with the Industrial Revolution. Fewer people died young and more people lived to old age, but the fertility rate lagged in its decline. The population explosion of recent generations was due to this lagging decrease in the fertility rate relative to the falling mortality rate.
The Demographic Transition began in Europe but we have seen it repeated in every part of the world in recent generations. The global fertility rate is now below 2.5 children per woman, down from 5.0 fifty years ago, and heading toward “balance” at 2.1 children within about twenty years.* Furthermore, life expectancy at birth in recent generations has risen from about 30 years throughout human history to 72 today – in excess of 80 in some affluent countries.
Every time I reflect on these numbers, I think of Isaiah 66:20, where Isaiah describes the new creation:
Babies in Jerusalem will no longer live only a few days. Old people will not fail to live for a very long time. Those who live to the age of 100 will be thought of as still being young when they die. Those who die before they are 100 will be considered as having been cursed by God.
We are approaching that reality. The world we live in today was positively Utopian until the past generation or two.
We did not get here by being content to die in harmony with nature. We decoupled from nature. We become radically more innovative and productive. The key to future well-being and the welfare of the planet lies in greater decoupling – climate friendly fuels, environment friendly production, more productive agriculture, and the eventual transition to endlessly recycled materials. It must be a world where everyone experiences abundance through their participation in networks of productivity and exchange. That is what "living in balance with nature" truly is.
(Note: At replacement rate fertility, the global population will grow from about 7.7 billion to between nine and eleven billion by century’s end. The children born in 2020 will likely have children at about the replacement rate. However, the population born in 2010 is larger than the coming 2020 population, and the population born in 2000 is larger than 2010’s. If all these age cohorts simply replace themselves in the next few decades, the population will continue grow but at a decelerating rate.)
Alongside life expectancy, a second measure of prosperity demographers frequently use is the child mortality rate. The child mortality rate is the number of children that die between birth and their fifth birthday, per 1,000 live births. Because the first years of life are when human beings are most vulnerable, their ability to survive the first years of life says a lot about the state of their society; thus the significance of the child mortality rate.
So what can we say about this measure of prosperity throughout human history? Here are estimates of the infant mortality rate (deaths by age one) typical of social scientists and economists who study these issues:
In the year 1000, the average infant could expect to live about 24 years. A third died in the first year of life. Hunger and epidemic disease ravaged the survivors. By 1820, life expectation had risen to 36 years in the west, with only marginal improvement elsewhere. (Angus Maddison, Contours of the World Economy, 1-2030 AD, 69)
Before industrialization, at least one out of every five children died before reaching his or her first birth day; that is infant mortality measured as the number of children dying before the age of one, typically exceeded 200 per 1,000 live births. … In the United States, as late as 1900, infant mortality was 160; …” (Indur Goklany, The Improving State of the World, 27)
Estimates are that child mortality were over 40% prior to 1800.
Let's look at the change in the child morality rate for the last 200 years:
Globally, that is drop from 40 children per 1,000 to 4 children per 1,000. This graphic compares various nations at 1800, 1950, 1990, and 2013.
Note that the 2013 child mortality rate for all but a few small lagging countries is lower than the rate for all but a few of the wealthiest countries in 1950. The worst country in 2013 has a rate half that of the best country in 1800.
This is not to say that every nation, or every region within a nation, or every subgroup within in a nation, have prospered equally well. Still, there is dramatic improvement in all regions of the world.
During the 1990s, there was a small increase in the rate for the former Soviet nations but that trend has turned positive again. There are disparities between Anglos and non-Anglos in the United States. The African AIDS epidemic has been harmful. Other regions face other challenges. Yet the overall trend is dramatically downward.
Using child mortality as measures of prosperity, the world is far more prosperous than it has ever been and the gap is narrowing between the top and bottom rungs of the global social ladder. Again, most of this change has occurred over a time when the total world population grew sixfold, from less than 1 billion in 1800 to about 6.6 billion today!
So as we look at the trajectory of change in the world, we find an unprecedented rise in prosperity. It is uneven improvement but every corner of the planet has improved and the gap between top and bottom nations is closing.
Next we we will look at economic issues.
Demographers commonly use life expectancy rates as a measure of societal well-being. Life expectancy is the number of years someone is expected to live at the time they are born based on actuarial science. Long life is a universal indicator of prosperity across cultures and time. It is an important measure to demographers because achieving it requires a complex mix of variables, like a sustained nutritious food supply, a sanitary and safe environment, relatively little disease, absence of war, and a stable society.
So what can we say about this measure of prosperity throughout human history? Here are estimates of two social scientists and economists typical of those who study these issues:
For most of its existence, homo sapiens lived in far-flung hunter-and-gathering communities, each of which was quite small and barely able to reproduce itself. Life expectancy at birth was hardly twenty-five years on average, and those persons who survived childhood often died violently, in combat with other hunters, at relatively young ages. (Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism, 48)
For much of human history, average life expectancy used to be 20-30 years. By 1900, it had climbed to about 31 years … By 2003 it was 66.8 years. (Indur Goklany, The Improving State of the World, 31)
To put the last statement by Goklany in perspective lets graph the estimated life expectancy on a chart:
If we show only the last 250 years we get a clearer picture of what has happened:
Using life expectancy as a measure of prosperity, the world is far more prosperous than it has ever been. The gap is narrowing between the top and bottomof the global community. More amazing, most of this change occurred over a time when the total world population grew sixfold, from less than 1 billion in 1800 to about 6.6 billion today!
This is not to say that every nation, or every region within a nation, or every subgroup within in a nation, has prospered equally well. AIDS has been devastating in regions of Africa. War and discord has harmed some nations. Yet over the past forty years, we see broad improvement in the world. Keep in mind that the global population nearly doubled during this time:
The trajectory of change is an unprecedented rise in prosperity. It is uneven growth but every corner of the planet has improved and the gap between top and bottom nations is closing.
Next we look at infant mortality rates.
Were Slaves Immigrants? Yes. If that answer troubles you, please hear me out.
Ben Carson touched off a firestorm this week when he referred to slaves as immigrants. (Barak Obama has done the same several times.) The uproar has been that equating slavery and immigration minimizes the horrors of slavery. I have engaged in a number of social media discussions on this topic. At the crux of the matter is volition. Are people brought to a place against their will immigrants? Merriam Webster Dictionary:
Immigrant - “a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence.”
Volition is not part of the definition. As any demographer will tell you, populations grow (or decline) via three factors: births, deaths, and migration. When looking at a particular locale, people who come to that locale are immigrants. People who go from that locale to another are emigrants. Births and immigration grow the population. Deaths and emigration shrink it. It is a closed system. Volition is not part of the equation.
I am in agreement with concerns about minimizing slavery and I worry that statements by Carson and Obama risk doing that. As Jemar Tisby writes, a generous reading of Carson’s characterization is that “African slaves endured unimaginable hardship to carve out a life for themselves and their descendants.” I think that was indeed the intent but it is challenging. Framing slaves as rough equivalents of people who bought a ticket on a boat to come to America in search of a better life minimizes slavery. Both were immigrants but with very very different stories. The desire to present African-Americans as other than simply victims while embracing the horrors of slavery is a tough needle to thread in the space of a few words as both these men were trying to do.
“Increasing mobility has left us uprooted and disconnected from communities in America.” This is a common refrain going back at least 100 years. Think of the song following World War I that asked how are you going to keep them down on the farm once they have seen gay Paree’? The lament of increasing mobility is a compelling narrative except for one minor problem: Mobility has been declining for decades.
Sociologist Claude Fischer writes:
The evidence that mobility has declined is more robust for roughly the past 65 years, thanks to annual census-bureau mass surveys. Around 1950, about 20 per cent of Americans changed homes from one year to the next. In the 1980s, under 18 per cent did. By the 2000s, under 15 per cent – and now we are approaching annual moving rates of only 10 per cent. About two-thirds of movers do not go far, relocating within the same county, and the frequency of such local moves has dropped by about half since the Second World War. The proportion of Americans who move across county and state lines is considerably lower, but that rate, too, has dropped substantially, from about 6.5 per cent in the 1950s to under 4 per cent now.
This trend toward staying in place has accelerated since 2001. … (The Great Settling Down)
Why the decline in mobility?
So what is the cause? My best guess is that the greatest single factor in the great settling down was the increasing physical and economic security of US life.
Thanks to a growing and stabilising economy, spreading affluence, vastly improved public health, the establishment of government institutions from policing to business regulation, and all sorts of ‘safety net’ programmes over several generations – from Social Security to federal disaster assistance – fewer and fewer Americans have been forced to move because of unemployment, floods, the death of a breadwinner, and so on. Greater security also helps account for an apparent shift from the 19th to 20th centuries in who was likeliest to move.
I have done extensive work on tracing my ancestors. I have traced every line back to at least my third great grandparents, most of who were born in the early 1800s. I know more about some than others but the part that has always intrigued me is how much they moved. I would estimate that the majority lived in at least three different states and in more than five counties over their lifetimes. I suspect most people who have identified American ancestors this far back have similar stories. But I have also noticed one anomaly.
My great grandmother, Augusta (Holmes) Kruse was born in Dekalb County, Missouri, in 1870, the year after her parents had moved there from Plymouth, Massachusetts. Her ancestors go back to seven of the Mayflower passengers and include many other people who arrived shortly thereafter. Her family had stayed in place for nearly 250 years. Her maternal grandfather, Ebenezer Pierce, was seaman who owned ships and sailed the world. Her mother had been to finishing school in Boston. Her grandfather Holmes was an accomplished carpenter. These were not exceptionally wealthy people but they clearly had stable comfortable lives. Her parents moved west because of her father’s health. Augusta married my great grandfather, Carl P. Kruse, who had emigrated from a small town in Denmark where his family had lived for generations and where his father had served in the Danish Parliament. Because of the population explosion in Denmark, farmland was scarce, and wanting to farm, Carl came to America.
Most of my other family lines consist primarily of farmers, miners, and laborers. Ancestors in these families seemed to be constantly on the move. This anecdotal analysis of my family history seems consistent with what the author is describing.
Demographers talk of migration in terms of push and pull factors. Push factors are those that make the status quo more unbearable to maintain. Pull factors are those that promise relatively better circumstance than the status quo. It would appear that in past generations, push factors might have played a bigger role; things like war, drought, local economies gone bad, and the like. However, as America has become more prosperous, there have been fewer pushes pushing fewer of us. Migration is more about positive pulls.
The “settling” of America is one more piece of evidence about an improving world in terms of material well-being. But as the author notes, we still have challenges to social cohesion. While improved transportation and communication may not have made us more inclined to move, it may have reshaped who we choose to interact with in our communities. And as the global economy reshapes the work we do, the trauma of regional job loss is possibly made more traumatic because we are less and less accustomed to uprooting and relocating. Focusing on increasing mobility as a cause of rootlessness takes us in an unproductive direction.
Life expectancy at birth is one of the single best indicators of societal well-being. So many things have to work well for the great majority of people to live long lives that the high life expectancy serves as proxy for holistic well-being. The measure is of particular value in that it measures something relatively concrete, as opposed to income (which has varying impacts relative to local living standards and exchange rates) or happiness (a highly subjective term.)
Throughout human history, global life expectancy at birth was about 30 years. This does not mean that everyone died before age thirty. It is an average age of death. One in four children died before their first birthday (it is less than 1% in developed nations today). Some people lived to be quite old. But on average people lived to be thirty.
Over the past two hundred years, something has changed. Global life expectancy at birth has more than doubled and it is still improving. I won't give a dissertation on why that might be but rather invite you to realize that contrary to our intuitions, news reports, and personal biases, we are living through the most astonishing improvement in human flourishing in human history.
Here is a chart showing the trend.
This chart offers an animated presentation of the improvement by nation.
The world is becoming a better place. It is not utopia. We are not without substantial challenges. But we are becoming (as in movement along a trajectory) better (as in measurably improved according to a standard.)
The Human Development Index is a United Nations measure of well-being combing data about income, literacy, education, and life expectancy. Here is the index for the nations of the world in 1980 and then in 2012. The reality is that we are living through the most astonishing transformation toward human well-being in all of history. You can find the interactive version of the chart at Our Data.
Are you smarter than a chimp? When it comes to knowledge about global socioeconomic trends, there is a good chance you are not. For years, Swedish global health expert, Hans Rosling, has been giving Ted talks and making presentations about global trends. One his favorite teaching tools is to ask people a question like this:
Globally, over the past 20 years, the rate extreme poverty has:
Now chimps will select at random, giving a 33% chance of each answer. Yet when Rosling asks audiences, at least half will say A, a sizable percentage will say B, while a few will say C. Yet C is the correct answer! This is the case on one variable after another. Audiences routinely score worse than chimps, choosing the most negative option.
As an old adage has it, "It isn't what we don't know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know that ain't so." That we routinely pick the wrong answer more often than chimps shows that we clearly we have bias.
In the Ted talk, How not to be ignorant about the world, Hans' son Rosling notes that part of the problem is our education system. Teachers go to college at a particular point in time and learn the state of the world at that time. But they tend not to learn about ongoing developments. The data has often been hard to come by and hard to interpret. So teachers are biased by what they learned years ago. (Reporter have the same problem.) But there are other factors.
During our evolutionary history, our brains became wired to notice threats. Hunters walking through the brush who were attentive to the possibility of tigers lying in wait, likely survived those who went about carelessly enjoying a beautiful day. So when we reflect on broad human trends, we are disposed to fixate on perceived threats. What was useful for us in the wild, is counter-productive for us as we try to interpret socioeconomic trends. If you want to outscore a chimp on an exam about global well-being, Ola Rosling suggests that you must drop your predispositions and adopt these four rules of thumb:
1. Assume most things are improving.
2. Assume most people are in the middle of a distribution, not a binary of rich and poor.
3. Assume social development precedes becoming wealthy. (Don’t assume that a population must be rich before meeting basic social needs.)
4. Assume you are exaggerating the threat if the topic is something about which you personally have great fear.
Additionally, Hans, Ola, and others have been working to build the Gapminder website to provide you with data that can be presented in meaningful ways. But one of the most important contributions the Roslings have made is their collection of entertaining and informative videos. In this post I am including every video I can find with a brief annotation. (I'll add more as I find any.) Many of the videos overlap or cover similar data but they are all well worth viewing. So here is your resource for becoming smarter than a chimp. Don't say I never gave you anything.
(This link also has links to most of these videos including some shorts not listed here: Gapminder Video)
Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes (2010)
If you are just getting acquainted with Rosling, I'd begin here. This 4 minute presentation gives you a quick sense of what he is talking about.
Hans and Ola Rosling: How not to be ignorant about the world. TED June 2014
This is the second video to watch. The front half is Hans making his case that the world is improving and the back half is Ola explaining, as I recounted above, why are so disinclined to see positive change.
Hans Rosling: The magic washing machine. TED December 2010
This is the third one to watch. This one of my favorites. While fully embracing the concern about environmental impacts of economic growth, Rosling shows the importance of economic growth through the story of the washing machine.
THE REST ARE IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
Hans Rosling: The best stats you've ever seen. TED February 2006
The TED presentation that kicked it all off. He focuses on the positive changes underway in world and points to his efforts to liberate, integrate, and animate data, and to find ways to present data the public finds understandable.
Hans Rosling: New Insights on Poverty. TED March 2007
Rosling shows that social development tends to precede economic development. He addresses the issue that unfortunately to date, economic development has always been based on fossil fuels. Higher yields, technology, and markets are key to ending poverty but there are more dimensions that need our attention like human rights, environment, governance, economic growth, education, health, and culture. The ending has a great surprise!
Human Rights and Democracy Statistics- Gapminder c. 2008
Rosling describes why human rights are so hard describe and evaluate.
Yes they can! - Gapminder c. 2008
Rosling explains that poor nations will one day become prosperous and we should welcome that.
Poor Beats Rich in MDG Race - Gapminder c. 2008
Rosling shows that countries that have developed from poverty to well-being have done so at far faster rates that Western nations did. Poor countries today can make the transition much quicker because of what previous countries have learned.
What stops population growth? - Gapminder c. 2008
The key to ending population is small families, and the key to small families is childhood survival.
Hans Rosling: Insights on HIV, in stunning data visuals. TED February 2009
Uses Gapminder data to show nuances in how AIDS has spread and what it takes to defeat it.
Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset. TED June 2009
This is the third video should watch. Rosling deconstructs the dichotomy of wealthy and developing nations, and challenges the idea of thinking in sweeping terms like "Africa."
The Joy of Stats with Professor Hans Rosling - Gapminder c. 2010
Rosling shows how making data available and animating is empowering people to make better decisions, sometimes without really realizing they are using statistics.
Hans Rosling: Asia's rise -- how and when. TED Nov 2009
Rosling forecasts when China and India catches up with the USA and UK.
Hans Rosling: Global population growth, box by box. TED June 2010
Rosling says that child survival is the new green. This video explains why.
Hans Rosling: The good news of the decade? We're winning the war against child mortality. TED September 2010
Rosling breaks down the remarkable trends in child mortality. Education of women accounts for at least 50% of the drop.
Hans Rosling: Religions and babies. TED April 2012
Religion is not a factor in family size. No significant difference between Islamic and Christian countries when it comes to births per woman. The defining difference is economic well-being.
DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population. BBC November 2013
A one hour investigation into the dynamics of population growth using stories about real live families interspersed with Rosling's entertaining presentation of data.
Don't Panic - How to End Poverty in 15 Years. BBC September 2015
No embed is available.
Here is a link to a series of short videos on how to use development data visually.
An introduction to visualising development data
Hans Rosling and Ola Rosling are truly brilliant and entertaining. The first part of this video highlights how poorly we assess what is happening in the world. The back half gives some simple tips on how to avoid developing false perceptions and suggests why it is important that we do so. Enjoy!
Atlantic Cities: White People Aren't Driving Growth in the Suburbs
"The decline of white suburbia has already begun. ...
... For the Brookings Institution, Frey explains that white populations accounted for just 9 percent of the population growth of the suburbs (in the 100 largest metro areas) between 2000 and 2010. The Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings just launched a fascinating map that shows where white cities and suburbs gained and lost populations. It shows that some metro areas are already breaking from the population pattern that has fueled the last half-century of growth: white losses in cities, white gains in suburbs."
Wall Street Journal: Global Life Expectancy Increases by About Six Years
Study in Lancet Says Rise Is Result of Dramatic Health-Care Advances
... The rise in global life expectancy is mainly the result of dramatic advances in health care. In richer countries longer lifespans are spurred by a big drop in deaths related to heart disease, while poorer countries have seen big declines in the death of children from ailments such as pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria. ...
Business Insider: OK, Haters, It's Time To Admit It: The World Is Becoming A Better Place
The article includes this graph:
Then this one about poverty:
There are many other graphs that could be shown about a host of important social indicators but the article closes with the most important one: life expectancy. Improvements in life expectancy require that a wide range of variables move in a positive direction and for that reason an improvement in life expectancy is often a proxy for overall well-being.
The author closes with:
So complain all you want about how horrible everything is. There's certainly a lot left to fix. But as you complain, remember:
The world is getting better all the time.
Preach it!
Business Insider: Dying Young Is Quickly Becoming A Thing Of The Past
It shows the risk of dying at any given age, with the lighter-colored line representing the risk in 1970 and the darker line representing the risk in 2010. In 1970, people had a 28% chance of dying before they turned 50. By 2010, that risk had been cut in half. For children under five, the news is even better: mortality dropped from 14% in 1970 all the way down to 5% in 2010.
Forbes: Air Pollution Replaces Poor Diet As World's Largest Preventable Health Risk
Dirty air killed an alarming 7 million people – or, one of every eight human lives lost – in 2012, according to new estimates released today by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The new data shows that air pollution has become the world’s largest single environmental health risk.
n 2010, air pollution ranked as the fourth leading preventable health risk, behind poor diet, high blood pressure and tobacco smoke, according to a major study funded by the Gates Foundation.
Indoor air pollution, primarily caused by burning solid fuels for heating and cooking, accounted for slightly more than half – 4.3 million – of those deaths in 2012.
Outdoor air pollution accounted for the remaining 3.7 million deaths. ...
2014 Gates Annual Letter: 3 Myths the Block Progress for the Poor
"By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been. People are living longer, healthier lives. Many nations that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient. You might think that such striking progress would be widely celebrated, but in fact, Melinda and I are struck by how many people think the world is getting worse. The belief that the world can’t solve extreme poverty and disease isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful. That’s why in this year’s letter we take apart some of the myths that slow down the work. The next time you hear these myths, we hope you will do the same." - Bill Gates
I sometimes have issues with Gates' optimism about aid but I think he does a fairly balanced job in this piece. There were also two graphs that I really liked. They demonstrate once again how misugided so many doomsayers are. There is reason for hope. How can we get more of this good stuff to happen better and faster, in sustainable ways is the big question.
Pew Research: Global Population Estimates by Age, 1950-2050
These are screen captures. The graphs at the site are interactive.
Washington Post: 40 charts that explain the world
Our friend and colleague Max Fisher over at Worldviews has posted another 40 maps that explain the world, building on his original classic of the genre. But this is Wonkblog. We're about charts. And one of the great things about charts is that they show not just how things are -- but how they're changing.
So we searched for charts that would tell not just the story of how the world is -- but where it's going. Some of these charts are optimistic, like the ones showing huge gains in life expectancy in poorer nations. Some are more worryisome -- wait till you see the one on endangered species. But together they tell a story of a world that's changing faster than at arguably any other time in human history. ...
As the author notes, we have challenges but we hardly descending into some global dystopia. I think these charts give a pretty holistic view. Here are a three examples.
It was commonly believed that primitive societies were more peaceful and that modern civilization gave rise to unprecedented violence. This chart compares death rates by war in primitive societies as calculated by anthropologists to the death rates for Europe/USA in the 20th century.
And then there is this:
The graphs point to environmental protection and adaptation as the biggest problems in the days ahead. Those challenges are not insurmountable. Energy sources like natural gas and nuclear power can be used in the interim on the way to practical renewable technologies. Genetically modified crops can help to reduce water consumption, increase yield, and improve hardiness. Innovations in fields like biotechnology, nanotechnology, and 3-D printing hold the promise of revolutionizing the world economy into a less wasteful and more affordable human existence for everyone. There is work to do but there is also much reason for hope of a better world.
Atlantic Cities: Charting the Life Expectancies of the World's Countries
What's the best nation in the world to live in if you enjoy, ya know, staying alive?
That would be Monaco, where a person born in 2013 can expect to live on average up to age 90. Conversely, the worst place to be born last year in terms of suffering an early death is Chad, where the typical life stops a year before one's 50th birthday.
These insights are crammed with dozens of others into "Life Expectancy at Birth," a fascinating new visualization from data artist Marcelo Duhalde. ...
Upworthy: 7 Deadly Sins Map — How Does Your State Stack Up?
These maps are four years old but for some reason Upworthy decided to resurrect them. Interesting stuff. And it is from my graduate alma mater Kansas State University.
On of the things I noticed was a strong streak of morality running from the upper Great Plains southeastward toward the Mid-Atlantic states. Looks to me like there is a wealth of social science research in the making based on these maps. Here is the one for greed.
1. American ethnicity map shows melting pot of ethnicities that make up the USA today.
2. Test your geograhy knowledge of European countires. I got a perfect score with some lucky guesses about the Balkan countrie: Europe: countries quiz
3. This Map Shows How Americans Speak 24 Different English Dialects
4. The 25 Most Segregated Cities In America
5. Two Maps That Show How American Migration Patterns Have Dramatically Changed
5. Mapping redheads: which country has the most?
6. Changes in America's Family Structure
As as starting point, here's a graph showing changes in households by type. Married households with children were 40.3% of all US households in 1970; in 2012, that share had fallen by more than half to 19.6%. Interestingly, the share of households that were married without children has stayed at about 30%. Other Family Households, usually meaning single-parent families with children, has risen. Overall, the share of U.S. households that involve a family (either married or with children) was 81% back in 1970, but down to 66% in 2012. The share of households which are men or women living alone has risen. The figures are not the same across gender in part because of differences in older age brackets: "Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of men aged 65 and over lived with their spouse compared with less than half (45 percent) of women."
7. The Rise Of Income Segregated Neighborhoods In The US
8. The 33 Whitest Jobs in America
Every occupation that's more than 90 percent white, according to the BLS, including vets, CEOs, and private detectives.
9. The Workforce Is Even More Divided by Race Than You Think
10. 5 Reasons Why People Are Getting Married Later And Later In Life
11. The U.S. Lags in Life Expectancy Gains
12. U.S. preterm birth rate falls again but remains high
The percentage of babies born prematurely in the United States fell for the sixth straight year, but the problem remains more common than in most other industrialized nations, says an annual report card out Friday.
The nation's preterm birth rate in 2012 was 11.5%, which is a 15-year low, according to the report from the March of Dimes. But the non-profit organization says it could be as low as 9.6% if known prevention efforts were fully embraced. ...
13. Teen pregnancy rate in developing world high despite decline
Teen pregnancies in the developing world are declining, however 7 million girls under the age of 18 still give birth each year, 2 million young moms are under the age of 14, according to a UN report.
This short video gives a wonderful presentation of declining fertility rates over the past fifty years and explains what falling fertility rates mean for the world. Go to the website here: The Baby Bust
Tufts Magazine: Up in Arms
... What’s less well appreciated is how much the incidence of violence, like so many salient issues in American life, varies by region. Beyond a vague awareness that supporters of violent retaliation and easy access to guns are concentrated in the states of the former Confederacy and, to a lesser extent, the western interior, most people cannot tell you much about regional differences on such matters. Our conventional way of defining regions—dividing the country along state boundaries into a Northeast, Midwest, Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest—masks the cultural lines along which attitudes toward violence fall. These lines don’t respect state boundaries. To understand violence or practically any other divisive issue, you need to understand historical settlement patterns and the lasting cultural fissures they established.
The original North American colonies were settled by people from distinct regions of the British Isles—and from France, the Netherlands, and Spain—each with its own religious, political, and ethnographic traits. For generations, these Euro-American cultures developed in isolation from one another, consolidating their cherished religious and political principles and fundamental values, and expanding across the eastern half of the continent in nearly exclusive settlement bands. Throughout the colonial period and the Early Republic, they saw themselves as competitors—for land, capital, and other settlers—and even as enemies, taking opposing sides in the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War.
There’s never been an America, but rather several Americas—each a distinct nation. There are eleven nations today. Each looks at violence, as well as everything else, in its own way.
The precise delineation of the eleven nations—which I have explored at length in my latest book, American Nations—is original to me, but I’m certainly not the first person to observe that such national divisions exist. ...
I just ordered the book. Looks fascinating!
1. A look at global population trends in the Christian Science Monitor.
"Too many people is a big problem, but too few is a concern as well." "The story of the 21st century has been one of falling birthrates, rising standards of living, and a revolution in food production. But the global picture is uneven: As populations decline in wealthier nations, in other countries – particularly in Africa, says a new report – they are rising at rates that may mire their people in poverty."
2. The end of global population growth may be almost here — and a lot sooner than the UN thinks
3. 232 Million People Left Their Countries for New Ones—Where Did They Go?
4. World Immigration Called 'Win-Win' For Rich Nations, And Poor
The number of people who leave their countries to work abroad is soaring, according to the United Nations. More than 200 million people now live outside their country of origin, up from 150 million a decade ago.
5. Two interesting articles about Japan and fertility: Want To See A 'Demographic Death Spiral?' Look At Japan, Not Russia and Almost Half Of Young Japanese Women Are Not Interested In Sex. From the second story:
"... Even though casual sex is becoming more common in Japan, a 2011 survey found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of relationship — a rise of 10% from five years earlier, according to Haworth.
One of the reasons for the decline in dating and sex among young Japanese adults seems to stem from the fact that men and women have different long-term values — while men have become less career-driven, women are valuing their careers more than romantic relationships, and don't want to give up their fulfilling (and time-intensive) jobs. ..."
6. Mapping 22 Different Latino Populations Across the U.S.A.
Where do America's Latino and Hispanic populations live? Let's start with where they're not living: in Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and a whopping chunk of the Midwest that probably hears a sí as often as the cry of an Amazonian toucan. ...
7. U.S. Women Are Dying Younger Than Their Mothers, and No One Knows Why
... In March, a study published by the University of Wisconsin researchers David Kindig and Erika Cheng found that in nearly half of U.S. counties, female mortality rates actually increased between 1992 and 2006, compared to just 3 percent of counties that saw male mortality increase over the same period. ...
8. Several articles about the most popular baby names in recent days. For example Here's The Most Popular Baby Name In Each State. I esepcially liked these two gifs: America's Most Popular Boys' Names Since 1960, in 1 Spectacular GIF and A Wondrous GIF Shows the Most Popular Baby Names for Girls Since 1960.
9. Census: Americans are moving again
Those on the move are once again setting their sights on their favorite Sun Belt places, like Florida, Arizona and Nevada, a demographer says.
10. U.S. obesity rate levels off, but still an epidemic
"More than a third of adults are obese, which is roughly 35 pounds over a healthy weight."
11. Where Are The Boomers Headed? Not Back To The City
... Indeed, our number-crunching shows that rather than flocking into cities, there were roughly a million fewer boomers in 2010 within a five-mile radius of the centers of the nation’s 51 largest metro areas compared to a decade earlier. If boomers change residences, they tend to move further from the core, and particularly to less dense places outside metropolitan areas. Looking at the 51 metropolitan areas with more than a million residents, areas within five miles of the center lost 17% of their boomers over the past decade, while the balance of the metropolitan areas, predominately suburbs, only lost 2%. In contrast places outside the 51 metro areas actually gained boomers. ...
12. The Myers Briggs States of America
Sunbelt, Rustbelt, Energy Belt – geographers, economists and urbanists have long endeavored to map the economic, political and cultural structures of America's regions. But to what extent do these places have their own distinctive personalities?
We all have our handy stereotypes for regional personalities, of course. Stolid Midwesterners, indolent but mercurial Southerners, and nervous, fast-talking New Yorkers make repeat appearances in pop culture. But can we identify the actual psychology, the deep personality traits that define regional distinctiveness?
Those questions are at the center of a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. ...
13. The Difference Between Democratic Congressional Districts And Republican Ones In 1 Chart. In short, as population density increases, so does a preference for Democrats.
Calculated Risk: Animated Graph on U.S. Population Distribution by Age, 1900 through 2060
Click on the graph to start the animation.
Atlantic Cities: The Geography of Hunger in America
"The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food-insecure homes as those households that don't regularly have access to enough to eat for an active, healthy life, and the problem is more pervasive in rural America than in cities. ..."
Food Insecurity Rates
As the disclaimer says at the bottom of the chart, this data is imprecise but it give us some idea. (Source)
This chart explains why many demographers worry about a population bust, not a population bomb. Replacement rate fertility is 2.1. In country after country, economic development has led to declining fertility rates but the rates drop right past 2.1 into population decline. Some countries in Europe have rates in the 1.0-1.5 range. Assuming there are not reversals in low fertility countries, and assuming the global trend follows the lead of developed nations, about thirty years from now there are going to be significant economic problems. Some are already becoming evident in countries that have had prolonged low fertility.
Source: Carpe Diem
