Genre: Opinion/Argumentation

I 'm going to talk about your mindset . Does your mindset correspond to my dataset ? ( Laughter ) If not , one or the other needs upgrading , is n't it ? When I talk to my students about global issues , and I listen to them in the coffee break , they always talk about " we " and " them . " And when they come back into the lecture room I ask them , " What do you mean with " we " and " them " ? " Oh it 's very easy . It 's the western world and it 's the developing world . " They say . " We learned it in college . " And what is the definition then ? " The definition ? Everyone knows , " they say . But then you know , I press them like this . So one girl said , very cleverly , " It 's very easy . Western world is a long life in a small family . Developing world is a short life in a large family . " And I like that definition because it enabled me to transfer their mindset into the dataset . And here you have the dataset . So you can see that what we have on this axis here is size of family . One , two , three , four , five children per woman on this axis . And here , length of life , life expectancy , 30 , 40 , 50 . Exactly what the students said was their concept about the world . And really this is about the bedroom . Whether man and woman decide to have small family , and take care of their kids , and how long they will live . It 's about the bathroom and the kitchen . If you have soap , water and food , you know , you can live long . And the students were right . It was n ' t that the world consisted -- the world consisted here , of one set of countries over here , which had large families and short life . Developing world . And we had one set of countries up there which was the western world . They had small families and long life . And you are going to see here the amazing thing that has happened in the world during my lifetime . And then the developing countries applied soap and water , vaccination . And all the developing world start to apply family planning . And partly to USA who help to provide technical advice and investment . And you see all the world moves over to a two child family , and a life with 60 to 70 years . But some countries remain back in this area here . And you can see we still have Afghanistan down here . We have Liberia . We have Congo . So we have countries living there . So the problem I had is that the worldview that my students had correspond to reality in the world the year their teachers were born . ( Laughter ) ( Applause ) And we , in fact , when we have played this over the world . I was at the Global Health Conference here in Washington , last week , and I could see that the wrong concept even active people in the United States had . That they did n't realize the improvement of Mexico there , and China , in relation to United States . Look here when I move them forward . Here we go . They catch up . There 's Mexico . It 's on par with United States in these two social dimensions . There was less than five percent of the specialists in global health that was aware of this . This great nation , Mexico , has the problem that arms are coming from north , across the borders . So they had to stop that . Because they have this strange relationship to the United States , you know . But if I would change this axis here , look , and I would instead , here , I would put income per person . Income per person . I can put that here . And we will then see a completely different picture . By the way , I 'm teaching you how to use our website , Gapminder World , while I 'm correcting this because this is a free utility on the net . And when I now finally got it right , I can go back 200 years in history . And I can find United States up there . And I can let the other countries be shown . And now I have income per person on this axis . And the United States only had someone 2,000 dollar , at that time . And the life expectancy was 35 to 40 years , on par with Afghanistan today . And what has happened in the world , I will show now . This is instead of studying history for one year at university . You can watch me for one minute now and you 'll see the whole thing . ( Laughter ) You can see how the brown bubbles , which is west Europe , and the yellow one , which is United States , they get richer and richer and also start to get healthier and healthier . And this is now 100 years ago where the as the rest of the world remains behind . Here we come . And that was the influenza . That 's why we are so scared about flu is n't it ? It 's still remembered . The fall of life expectancy . And then we come up . And not until independence started . Look here you have China over there , you have India over there , and this is what has happened . You note there , that we have Mexico up there . Mexico is not at all on par with the United States . But they are quite close . And especially it 's interesting to see China and the United States , during 200 years . Because I have my oldest son now working for Google , after Google acquired this software . Because in fact this is child labor . My son and his wife sat in a closet for many years and developed this . And my youngest son , who studied Chinese in Beijing . So they come in with the two perspectives I have . You know ? And my son , youngest son who studied in Beijing , in China , he got a long term perspective . Where as when my oldest son , who work in Google , he should develop by quarter , or by half-year . Or , Google is quite generous , so he can have one or two years to go . But in China they look generation after generation because they remember the very embarrassing period , for 100 years , where they went backwards . And then they would remember the first part of the last century , which was really bad . And we could go by this so-called great leap forward . But this was 1963 . Mao Tse-Tung eventually brought health to China . And then he died . And then Deng Xiaoping started this amazing move forward . Is n't it strange to see that United States first grew the economy , and then gradually got rich . Where as China could get healthy much early . Because they applied the knowledge of education , nutrition , and then also benefits of penicillin and vaccines , and family planning . And Asia could have social development before they got the economic development . So to me , as a public health professor , it 's not strange that all these countries grow so fast now . Because what you see here , what you see here is the flat world of Thomas Friedman . Is n't it ? It 's not really really flat . But the middle income countries , and this is where I suggest to my students , stop using the concept " developing world . " Because after all , talking about developing world is like having two chapters in the history of United States . The last chapter is about the present , and president Obama . And the other is about the past . Where you cover everything from Washington to Eisenhower . Because Washington to Eisenhower , that is what we find in developing world . We could actually go from Mayflower to Eisenhower , and that would be put together into a developing world . Which is rightly growing its cities in a very amazing way . Which have great entrepreneurs , but also have the collapsing countries , So how could we make a better sense about this ? Well one way of trying is to see whether we could look at income distribution . This is the income distribution of peoples in the world , from one dollar . This is where you have food to eat . These people go to bed hungry . And this is the number of people . This is 10 dollar , whether you have a public or a private health service system . This is where you can provide health service for your family , and school for your children . And this is OECD countries . Green , Latin America , East Europe . This is East Asia . And the light blue there is South Asia . And this is how the world changed . It changed like this . Can you see how it 's growing ? And how hundreds of millions and billions is coming out of poverty in Asia ? And it goes over here . And I come now , into projections . But I have to stop at the door of Lehman Brothers there . You know . Because ... ( Laughter ) Because there the projections are not valid any longer . Probably the world will do this . And then it will continue forward like this . But more or less this is what will happen . And we have a world which can not be looked upon as divided . We have the high income countries here , with United States as a leading power . We have the emerging economies in the middle , that provide a lot of the funding for the bailout . And we have the low income countries here . Yeah this is a fact that from where the money come . They have been saving , you know , over the last decade . And here we have the low income countries where entrepreneurs are . And here we have the countries in collapse and war , like Afghanistan , Somalia , parts of Congo , Darfur . We have all this at the same time . That 's why it 's so problematic to describe what has happened in the developing world . Because it 's so different , what has happened there . And that 's why I suggest a slightly different approach of what you would call it . And you have huge difference within countries also . I heard that your departments here were by regions . Here you have Sub-Saharan Africa , South Asia , East Asia , Arab states , East Europe , Latin America , and OECD . And on this axis GDP . And on this , heath , child survival . And it does n ' t come as a surprise that Africa , south of Sahara , is at the bottom . But when I split it , when I split it into country bubbles , the size of the bubbles here is the population . Then you see Sierra Leone and Mauritius is completely different . There is such a difference within Sub-Saharan Africa . And I can split the others . Here the South Asian , Arab world . Now all you different departments . East Europe , Latin America , and OECD countries . And here were are . We have a continuum in the world . We can not put it into two parts . It is Mayflower down here . It is Washington here , building , building countries . It 's Lincoln here , advancing them . It 's Eisenhower bringing modernity into the countries . And then it 's United States today , up here . And we have countries all this way . Now this is the important thing of understanding how the world has changed . At this point I decided to make a pause . ( Laughter ) And it is my task , on behalf of the rest of the world , to convey a thank to the U. S. taxpayers , for Demographic Health Survey . Many are not aware of -- no this is not a joke . This is very serious . It is due to USA's continuous sponsoring during 25 years of the very good methodology for measuring child mortality that we have a grasp of what 's happening in the world . ( Applause ) And it is U. S. government at its best , without advocacy , providing facts , that it 's useful for the society . And providing data free of charge , on the internet , for the world to use . Thank you very much . Quite in the opposite of the World Bank , who compiled data with government money , tax money , and then they sell it to add a little profit , in a very inefficient , Guttenberg way . ( Applause ) But the people doing that at the world bank are among the best in the world . And they are highly skilled professionals . It 's just that we would like to upgrade our international agencies to deal with the world in a modern way , as we do . And when it comes to free data and transparency , United States of America is one of the best . And that does n ' t come easy from the mouth of a Swedish public health professor . ( Laughter ) And I 'm not paid to come here , no . I would like to show you what happens with the data , what we can show with this data . Look here . This is the world . With income down there , and child mortality . And what has happened in the world ? Since 1950 , during the last 50 years we have had a fall in child mortality . And this is the DHS that makes it possible to know this . And we had an increase in income . And the blue former developing countries are mixing up with the former industrialized western world . And we have a continuum . But we still have , and that is , of course , Congo , up there . We still have as poor countries as we have had , always , in history . And that 's the bottom billion , where we 've heard , today , about a completely new approach to do it . And how fast has this happened ? Well MDG 4 . United States have not been so eager to use MDG 4 . But you have been the main sponsor that has enabled us to measure it . Because it 's the only child mortality that we can measure . And we used to say that it should fall four percent per year . Let 's see what Sweden have done . We used to boast about fast social progress . That 's where we were , 1900 . 1900 , Sweden was there . Same child mortality as Bangladesh had , 1990 . Though they had lower income . They started very well . They used the aid well . They vaccinated the kids . They get better water . And they reduced child mortality , with an amazing 4.7 percent per year . They beat Sweden . I run Sweden the same 16 year period . Second round it 's Sweden 1916 , against Egypt 1990 . Here we go . Once again USA is part of the reason here . They get safe water . They get food for the poor . And they get malaria eradicated . 5.5 percent . They are faster than millennium development goal . And third chance for Sweden , against Brazil here . And Brazil here has amazing social improvement over the last 16 years . And they go faster than Sweden . This means that the world is converging . The middle income countries , the emerging economy , they are catching up . They are moving to cities , where they will also get better assistance for that . What the Swedish do is protest at this time . They say , " This is not fair . because these countries had vaccine and antibiotic that was not available for Sweden . We have to do real-time competition . " Okay . I give you Singapore , the year I was born . Singapore had twice the child mortality of Sweden . It 's the most tropical country in the world . A marshland on the equator . And here we go . It took a little time for them to get independent . But then they started to grow their economy . And they made the social investment . They got away malaria . They got a magnificent health system that beat both U. S. and Sweden . We never thought it would happen that they would win over Sweden ! ( Applause ) All these green countries are achieving millennium development goals . These yellow are just about to doing this . These red countries that does n ' t do it , and the policy has to be improved . Not simplistic extrapolation . We have to really find a way of supporting those countries in a better way . We have to respect the middle income countries on what they are doing . And we have to fact-base the whole way we look at the world . This is dollar per person . This is HIV in the countries . The blue is Africa . The size of the bubbles is how many are HIV affected . You see the tragedy in South Africa there . About 20 percent of the adult population are infected . And in spite of them having quite a high income they have a huge number of HIV infected . But you also see that there are African countries down here . There is no such thing as an HIV epidemic in Africa . There 's a number , 5 to 10 countries in Africa that has the same level as Sweden and United States . And there are others who are extremely high . And I will show you that what has happened in one of the best countries , with the most vibrant economy in Africa , and a good governance , is Botswana . They have a very high level . It 's coming down . But now it 's not falling . Because there , with help from PEPFAR it 's working with treatment . And people are not dying . And you can see it 's not that easy , that it is war which caused this . Because here , in Congo , there is war . And here , in Zambia , there is peace . And it 's not the economy . Richer country has a little higher . And if I split Tanzania in its income . The richer 20 percent in Tanzania has more HIV than the poorest one . And it 's really different within country . Look at the provinces of Kenya . They are very different . And this is the situation you see . It 's not deep poverty . It 's the special situation . Probably of concurrent sexual partnership among part of the heterosexual population in some countries , or some parts of countries , in south and eastern Africa . Do n't make it Africa . Do n't make it a race issue . Make it a local issue . And do prevention at each place , in the way it can be done there . So to just end up . There are things of suffering in the one billion poorest , which we do n't know . Those who live beyond the cellphone , those who have yet to see a computer , those who have no electricity at home . This is the disease Konzo , I spent 20 years elucidating in Africa . It 's caused by fast processing of toxic cassava root , in famine situation . It 's similar to the pellagra epidemic in Mississippi , in the '30s . It 's similar to other nutritional diseases . It will never affect a rich person We have seen it here in Mozambique . This is the epidemic in Mozambique . This is an epidemic in northern Tanzania . You never heard about the disease . But it 's much more than ebola that has been affected by this disease . Cause crippling throughout the world . And over the last two years 2,000 people has been crippled in the southern tip of Bandunda region . That used to be the illegal diamond trade , from the UNITA-dominated area in Angola . That has now disappeared . And they are now in great economical problem . And one week ago , for the first time , there were four lines on the Internet . Do n't get confused of the progress of the emerging economies , and the great capacity of people in the middle income countries , and in peaceful low income countries . There is still mystery in one billion . And we have to have more concept than just developing countries and developing world . We need a new mindset . The world is converging . But , but , but , not the bottom billion . They are still as poor as they 've ever been . It 's not sustainable . And it will not happen around one superpower . But you will remain one of the most important superpower . And the most hopeful superpower , for the time to be . And this institution will have a very crucial role , not for United States , but for the world . So you have a very bad name , State Department , this is not the State Department . It 's the World Department . And we have a high hope in you . Thank you very much . ( Applause ) </content