This has been around for a while, but I thought I'd lob it out there with a few comments.
This is Hans Rosling's 4 minute look at longevity and affluence through the last 200 years. It's a slick way to show how data changes over time. I've seen people quibble over his definitions of wealth and longevity, but he does paint an extraordinary picture in a mere 4 minutes. You can see the impact of the Industrial Revolution, both World Wars, the progress made in the West and the catching up of most of the rest of the world. What's interesting to me are the countries that go against the general trend.
For instance, if you look carefully at around 1939 and you can see a mid-size European country drop to almost zero life expectancy and then bounce back up by the end of the war. I'm guessing that was Poland that got flattened. Then watch China in the late 1950's bounce like a basketball.
Post WW2, Africa (blue dots) was unsurprisingly lagging behind as most colonies just started to become independent about then, but got swept along for a couple of decades with rising world trends, and then it stopped. The rest of the world kept improving, leaving the majority of Africa languishing.
Rosling's point about regions in China having different health and wealth could, of course, apply to any country. New York and West Virginia in the US are quite different, as are Surrey and Tyne & Wear in the UK.
But overall, a fascinating way to look at history. The point is not so much what questions Rosling answers, as much as the ones it provokes us to ask ourselves and dig deeper.
