Hans Rosling: The River of Myths

Hans Rosling shows how measurement reveals incredible progress in saving the lives of children in what were once labeled "developing countries." If the few countries that still have high child mortality rates can follow the path of Ethiopia, preventable child deaths may be history by 2030. We must continue to closely measure this progress.

Video created in partnership between The Gates Notes and Gapminder. #BillsLetter. License: Creative Commons 3.0.

[StopMotionMakr]

Hans Rosling is the best public speaker I've ever seen. Hats down.

[Cronuz]

Hans rosling is a genius.
his compassion for the subject makes learning enjoyable, his skill in his subject makes it look easy.
I've been a fan since i first saw him on ted.

[spacetme]

THANK YOU DR. HANS ROLING FOR DOING AN UPDATE TO THE OLD TED TALK BEFORE. NICE TO SEE HOW IT'S PROGRESSED

[simonjennings]

how sad to have lost such a vital person

[Blessiiii]

this is an awesome way of showing a graph!

[BuddyRubino]

This is one of the most creative, informative, well executed and effective methods of educating anyone about anything, ever.

Short, simple. Solid.

[BobbyBottleservices]

Well done sir. Short, engaging, and educational. Thank you.

[danhue]

Hans Rosling showing how a divided world is converging into an affluent ctg, historically speaking. Very nice moving graphs.

[IanOsmond]

But it sure helps. They're good proxies for a lot of other things: lower birth rates happen with more opportunities and freedom for women. More freedom for women means more education, more technological progress, more equality and justice, less violence . . . sure, he's only measuring one thing, but that thing tends to connect to a lot of other things, so, as a first-pass approximation? It gives some insight.

[windsweep]

Mr. Gates, as many others have already said please take a moment to look at Athene and the work he is doing for charity at the moment. With any luck you will see this and something amazing can happen.

[joshuathomas]

Let us continue to increase the rate of development

[tantsku]

I personally see a single reason in correlation between these two variables: A modern society. The reason for low child mortality is not the amount of children or vice versa. There are many good examples of this: Religious communities in developed countries with high social wellfare such as Finland - Families have in some cases over 10 children but the child mortality does not differ from the country average. The answer is not birth control, but education and modern infrastructure.

[Alphawog]

I like the way this video frames things.

[thirtyfootclownfish]

I agree, but the fact that we inspire our 12 year olds to be more aware of outside problems is quite honorable and him damaging his own reputation will only help those that he inspires so much. I am glad Athene is such a selfless person, unlike most people.

[Rophaz]

Having less kids enables the parents to spend more resources in each child, which in its way makes the kids healtier etc. from healtcare and so on.
It also decreases the population growth, which also leads to the same problems.

[zytigon]

Amazing graphic illustrations. Thanks for video, some reason for optimism then.

[jeffcarlton]

Estmating Etiopian stats from the graph:
1990: (1 - 0.20) * 6.9 = ~5.52 surviving children per woman.
2013: (1 - 0.07) * 4.3 = ~4.00 surviving children per woman. It is wonderful that the suffering of these women is lessening, but factoring in that the 2013 result then would get multiplied by a larger number of women of childbearing age (Ethiopia's circle has of course grown larger over these 23 years) the actual increase in population attributed two these two respective years mighnt not be so dramatically different.

Hans Rosling's presentation is dramatic and does a good job disabusing us of some of our commonly held assumptions about certain developing world realities.  Just be careful that this dynamic interplay of child mortality and babies born per women does not trick you into expecting a similar dramatic improvement in population growth. It might help us move forward more hopefully, but should not in any way lead us to conclude that we do not still face a population/environmental crisis that requires our urgent interventions.

[nternity]

Interesting catch. I went over to Rosling's site where there is an interactive data analysis widget that lets you play with the data in the same style as the animation. That blip appears to be Armenia in 1987-1988. Coinciding with that time-frame in that location seems to be the Spitak earthquake and ethnic fighting between Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

[stacyclarkson]

We have 7 happy and healthy children in our family, in our western NC USA home...

[Rizzu]

I agree with you 100%. I think it's ridiculous that children are losing 20% of their bodies at birth for stem cell research in Germany. I understand the need for scientific growth but if i were born fully functional and had one of my hands removed against my will, i'd be pretty upset.

The german government definitely needs to be revisited.