Unlocking Data Insights
What Data Reveals about Education, Hunger, and Climate Challenges
Understanding Global Trends: Insights from Our World In Data
Although the world has been advancing at a fast pace in the last 30 years, thanks to the transition from the analog to the digital and the foundation of the internet in the late 90s, in terms of inclusive rights and quality of life, we still have a lot to improve. Yes, now it feels like everyone has a computer on the palm of their hands, but is the technology being used as a pavement to enhance human condition, or is it just a new product to sell us more layers of ads? Recently, I discover an amazing website, called Our World in Data, that may help answer some of these questions.
Let’s take access to quality education, for example. Globally, in the 90s, 71% of the world’s population had at least basic education. This number has risen to 86%. In terms of years of schooling, the global average is 8.8 years, but if we compare richer and poorer countries, there is a huge gap (e.g. the USA has a 13.3 years average vs Brazil’s 8 years average). So globally we have got better, but the discrepancy is relevant, because richer countries may mask the real deficits in education.
Secondly, global hunger has been reduced in recent decades. Besides that, the historical data tells us that almost one in ten people do not get enough to eat. If we consider undernourishment as a metric, which focuses only on energy intake, globally, 9.2% of people have insufficient daily food consumption. In general, most parts of the world have less than 5% of undernourished people. On the other hand, a great part of African countries suffer between 16% to 51% on this metric. This also makes the point that in some areas a lot of work still needs to be done, because some countries haven’t made any progress whatsoever.
At the same time, we’re facing issues with the environment. Our entire beef production, that could help feed the hungry, emits almost 100 kg of carbon dioxide-equivalents per kilogram of food, of which 80% stands for land use change and farm. In total, food production is responsible for one quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Sadly, up to this time, we don’t have the final solution for diminishing the threats of climate change. However, most people support political climate action, which can be a huge help.
To conclude, despite the facts shared in this article, it seems the world is getting better overall. Even so, if countries don’t focus on a proper solution to the environment in the next decades, maybe we won’t have a world to improve whatsoever, so the education and hunger metrics won’t have data anymore.
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