Fact based worldview has been put forth in the excellent book by Hans rosling - Factfulness. It changes the perceptions about current world scenario and you actually feel good about living in better world. Though all is not well, data analysis surely tells positive stories.
Factfulness by Hans is the last book written by him before getting nature's call to rest in peace. Surely he must be in peace after doing wonderful work for so many years.
Factfulness puts a valid point to stop discrimination between nations as developed and developing countries. Neither everyone in developing countries is poor nor everyone in developed countries rich. In fact world population has been divided into four levels L1 to L4. Percentage of extremely poor people is very less now. Most of the world population live among L2 and L3 levels. So dire pverty percentage is very less. As more opportunities of economic development opened up people are able to earn living easily.
One of the most characteristic of Hans writing has been inclusion of real life incidences. Hans met president of Mozambique to discuss about his country's progress. The president gives him an interesting perspective, "I do not merely look at data to check progress. I also observe people to check how well they are doing. We have an annual festival in which all the people come on the roads to participate in March. I look at how many people are without shoes and what kind of shoes they are wearing. I am glad that over the years people are wearing good shoes. Number of people without shoes is getting less. That's the indication of less of dire poverty. "
Factfulness tells the connection between Population growth and women empowerment. As more women gain the power of education, they become decisive in family matters. Educated woman unlikely goes beyond two or three child births. Even in Muslim countries population growth can be retarded as women get education and power.
Environment degradation, climate change are surely real threats. Surely there are negatives in the world, but world is getting better. More and more people are getting connected. Technology gets spread to the other side of the World pretty quickly.
Facts can be misinterpreted with data analysis. Hence Hans suggest that data shouldn't be looked at in isolation, but it should be looked at with other changing variables. Then we get clear picture.
Surely there are negatives in the world, but positives are no less. In this coronavirus crisis, the Nation's economic growth is getting hampered. Millions of people will again be pushed towards the bottom of the pyramid. But things will get better eventually. It always does...
At last,
Do take a look at Factfulness : develop fact based world view.
