Connect with us

Technology

These 6 Charts Show How the World is Improving

Published

on

View a high resolution version of this graphic
These 6 Charts Show How the World is Improving

These 6 Charts Show How the World is Improving

View the high resolution version of today’s graphic by clicking here.

It only takes a few minutes of cable news to get the feeling that the world is heading into a tailspin.

Endless images of homicide investigations, natural disasters, car crashes, and drug busts fill the airwaves on a daily basis. It’s upsetting – but also certainly captivating for the average viewer.

In fact, the news cycle thrives on fear and violence, so mainstream networks find a way to fill up 99% of programming with these singular events. It’s addicting and sometimes anger-inducing, but is it representative of what’s really going on in the world?

Good News Happens Slowly

Today’s infographic comes to us from economist Max Roser of Our World in Data, and it highlights six megatrends that show that in many important ways, our world is improving drastically.

The one commonality of these six indicators? They all happen slowly and incrementally, but are more evident with a long-term perspective.

Each family lifted out of poverty, each classroom that gets built, and each village gaining access to basic vaccinations may not seem significant on a scale of billions of people – but over decades, these gains add up to create a richer, more educated, and healthier world and a very powerful statistical story.

Six Global Trends

Here are the six big picture trends pointed out by Roser, using data collected over hundreds of years:

1. Extreme Poverty
The portion of people in extreme poverty – making less than $1.90 per day – has dropped like a rock over the years. Back in 1940, about 75% of the world was in extreme poverty – today, that number is just 10%.

The most potent recent example of this is China, where access to free markets have enabled 700 million people to be lifted out of poverty in just over 20 years.

Poverty in China

It’s also worth mentioning that statistics for this category are done using inflation-adjusted international dollars, which take into account inflation over time as well as exchange rates. Non-monetary forms of income are also included in the calculations.

2. Basic Education
In 1820, only a privileged few were able to get basic schooling. Since then, millions of classrooms and schools have been added around the globe, and the numbers are staggering. In relative terms, we’ve gone from 17% of people having a basic education to 86% today.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of this, also from Our World in Data:

Level of education of world

3. Literacy
Following a similar trend line as basic education, literacy has risen from 12% to 85% over roughly two hundred years. In absolute terms, these numbers are even more impressive. In the 1820s, there were only about 100 million people that could read that were 15 years or older. Today, the number stands at 4.6 billion.

4. Democracy
While the world has been having some short-term setbacks when it comes to freedom and democracy, the overall trend line is still impressive over the long run.

In 1900, only 1 in 100 people worldwide lived in a democracy – and today, the majority (56 in 100) can say they live in a country with free and fair elections.

5. Vaccination
Vaccinations for diseases like whopping cough, tetanus, and diphtheria were unavailable for most of the 200 year chart. However, today around 86% of people globally are vaccinated against these basic and devastating illnesses.

6. Child Mortality
Even as far back as 1920, it used to be that over 30% of infants would die before they hit their 5th birthday.

Since then, developments in housing, sanitation, science, and medicine have made it so that death is a much rarer occurrence for the youngest people in our society. Today, on a global basis, child mortality has been reduced to 4%.

Click for Comments

Technology

Visualizing Internet Usage by Global Region

In this infographic, we map out internet usage by global region based on the latest data from the World Bank.

Published

on

Map showing internet usage by region.

Visualizing Internet Usage by Global Region

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Digital technologies have become an integral part of our daily lives, transforming communications, business, health, education, and more. Yet, billions of people around the world are still offline, and digital advancement has been uneven.

Here, we map internet usage by region based on data from the World Bank’s Digital Progress and Trends Report 2023.

Digitalization Has Been Uneven

According to the World Bank, between 2018 and 2022, the world gained 1.5 billion new internet users.

In 2020 alone, the share of the global population using the internet increased by 6% (500 million people), marking the highest jump in history. India, in particular, has seen high rates of adoption. For example, in 2018, only 20% of Indians used the internet. By 2022, this percentage had grown to more than 50%.

RegionIndividuals using the internet (% of population)
East Asia & Pacific74
Europe & Central Asia87
Latin America & the Caribbean76
Middle East & North Africa77
North America92
South Asia42
Sub-Saharan Africa34

However, the progress of digitalization has been uneven both within and across countries.

In 2022, one-third of the global population remained offline, with parts of Asia and Africa still experiencing very low rates of internet usage. For instance, more than half of businesses in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Senegal reportedly lack internet connection.

According to the World Bank’s report, when fast internet becomes available, the probability of an individual being employed increases by up to 13%, and total employment per firm increases by up to 22%. Moreover, firm exports nearly quadruple with the availability of fast internet. Across Africa, 3G coverage has been associated with a reduction in extreme poverty, with reductions of 10% seen in Senegal and 4.3% in Nigeria.

Curious to learn more about the internet? Check out this animated chart that shows the most popular web browsers since 1994.

Continue Reading
MSCI Direct Indexing

Subscribe

Popular