Factfulness

by Hans Rosling

In this article, I would like to talk about the book called Factfulness, which Bill Gates mentioned in his blog. Gates especially recommends that recent graduates should read this book because it will greatly affect our perception of the world. It is possible to download the English version electronically from Gates’ blog. I followed the advice and read the book. In this context, I would like to indicate parts of the “facts” mentioned in the book that interest me. It looks like it will be a bit of a long article, you can take your tea or coffee with you :)

First of all, we encounter a test in the book, and this test has been applied to both chimpanzees and various humans. The answers to the questions in this test give clues about how we perceive the world. The test is also done on chimpanzees to get a random result to compare.

We can say that the basis of this systematic error is the current perception of the world.

Within the scope of this book, I will talk about the facts that we know wrong, but it is not possible to talk about all of them. You will need to read the book for that. I just want to convey the parts that interest me and I hope that I can contribute to our “correct” perception of the world.

• Half of the people living in the “extremely poor” worldwide have decreased. However, according to test results, many people think that this figure has doubled. A large proportion of the world’s population does not live as extremely poor, but rather at the middle level.
• In this context, four levels are mentioned.
• Level 1: In this scenario, there is a profit of $1 per day. Your five children have to walk barefoot with a single plastic bucket to get water from a dirty mud hole. You collect firewood on the way home. You start preparing the porridge that you eat every day, except when you go to bed hungry during the scanty months when the soil does not produce any crops. One day your youngest child will develop a bad cough. Antibiotics cannot be afforded, and the child dies a month later. This is extreme poverty. If he’s lucky and his crops from the ground are good, he can sell those extra crops and start making more than $2 a day. This takes you to the next level. (About 1 billion people live this way today)
• Level 2: You did it and now you make $4 a day. What will you do with all this money? You can now buy food that you did not raise yourself and give money to the chickens. That means eggs. You save some money, buy sandals, bikes and more plastic buckets for your kids. Now it only takes half an hour a day to get water. You can buy a gas stove so that your children can attend school. When there is electricity, children can do their homework under a light bulb. But there is no fridge as there is no regular electricity. You sleep on a mattress instead of a mud floor. Life is much better now, but still very uncertain. In the event of a single illness, you will have to sell most of your possessions to buy medicine. This will bring you back to Level 1. If you can start a job in a factory, you will be the first member of your family to earn a salary. (About 3 billion people live this way today)
• Level 3: You finally made it and you are on the third level. You work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, multi-task and your income is $16 a day. Your savings are effective and you install a cold water tap. No more transport water. With a constant supply of electricity, children’s homework improves, and you can buy a refrigerator that will allow you to store food. You save money to buy a motorcycle, which means you can get a better paid job at a city factory. Two of your children start high school. If they manage to finish it, they may get jobs that pay better than what you have. (About 2 billion people live this way today)
• Level 4: You earn more than $64 per day. You are a wealthy consumer and three dollars a day makes little difference in your daily life. The education you have received is more than twelve years. You are using a plane to go on vacation. Once a month you can dine out and get a car. Of course, there is hot and cold water in the house. (Approximately 1 billion people live this way today)

Since you are reading this article, you are most likely at Level 4. Therefore, the poverty that we see mostly in daily life is “relative poverty” and is different from “extreme poverty”. Levels 1,2 and 3 are probably completely alien to those at Level 4, and while poverty at these levels may sound the same to Level 4, the differences are hard to discern. Even a level 4 person can appear as poor. The reason for this is my personal opinion, the consumption frenzy imposed by the capitalist system and the “need” for the luxury it creates.

The extremely poor people at level 1 know very well the difference from the previous level when their earnings are even increased to 4 dollars a day. Just 20 years ago, 29 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Now that number is 9 percent. Billions of people escaped misery and became consumers and producers for the world market. Billions of people have managed to slip from level 1 to level 2 and 3 without people at level 4 noticing.

I would like to mention a case in the book, as it particularly interested me. In 1960 (not so old) in China, between 15 and 40 million people — exact numbers unknown — died of starvation. The Chinese harvest in 1960 yielded few crops due to poor government recommendations on how to grow the crops and seasonal conditions. Local governments did not want to show bad results. So they took all the food and sent it to the central government. As a result, millions of people lost their lives due to the lack of food. The government denied that central planning had failed and that the disaster had remained hidden by the government for 36 years. Can a government keep the deaths of 15 million people a global secret today?

Not everything is rosy, of course. We are still very worried. Plane crashes, preventable child deaths, endangered species, crazy dictators, toxic waste, starving people (along with all this luxury consumption, there are too many survivors at Levels 1, 2 and 3 despite progress) journalists in prison and girls in prison because of their gender. Without education, we cannot relax as long as such terrible things happen. But ignoring current progress is just as absurd as ignoring these dire situations. If we lose hope, there is no way we can eradicate these terrible events.

The solution is not to balance all the negative news with more positive news. This carries the risk of self-deception and misleading bias in another way. Things can be both bad and better. We don’t usually hear about them as things get better. This causes us to systematically perceive the world around us negatively. The solution is to realize that there are developments and to try to eliminate the evil by not losing hope for this cause.

Just as he mentions in the book, there is still too much evil in the world, too much violence and injustice. It is certainly not necessary to ignore them. On the contrary, it is necessary to make them visible, to address them and to seek solutions. However, the key is not to ignore the progress we have made and not to lose hope while doing this.

Happy reading :)