>>Hans Rosling: I have a confession. I love Google. It's a courageous company that makes
magic happen. Nowhere else in the world would a session on the promise of youth start with
a professor in statistics that is 72 [sic] years old. There you have it, the promise
of youth. So it's really the challenge. I had to really build myself up to do this.
Now, I'm going to talk about the world. What do you know -- you want to know about the
world, you go to Google Search. And you want to know about the world population. So many
of you do like I do, you go to image directly. You want something for a presentation. And
you write "world population." And what do you get? You get the demographic
graph. You increase it like this. This is some environmental site who wants to recycle.
And they show this fantastic thing here, which is terrifying, that world population is growing
and growing, growing, growing like this. Millions are added, we are seven billion now. And you
say, can this really be possible? Is it like this? This may be wrong, the environmentalist,
I was wrong, I shouldn't have gone to image. I have to do the serious thing. I go to Web
search. And I write world population. And what do I get? I get the little one box up
there which I can click on, and Google provides me with the graphics. And it's really true.
Look, the world population is growing, three billion all the way up, and data from The
World Bank, updated April 26th. Oh, this sounds serious. But how can that be? I asked and
saw the number of children per woman going down. So how can the population go up if the
number of children per woman goes down? So I go in here. What was it called? It was
a statistical term. I don't remember the statistical term, so I write "children per woman world."
Huh. I get another box. It's called fertility rate. I ask for children per woman world and
Google gives me fertility rate. So someone inside their server is thinking. They knew
that I wanted fertility rate and didn't know what it was called.
So I click on this one, and I see, indeed, the number of children per woman is falling.
It used in 1960 to be five, and it's all the way down to 2.5. We wanted it to go down to
2. It's down 5/6ths of the way, down to a stable two-child family. And yet the population
is growing. Now, this Google didn't help me to understand.
They gave me the information. They didn't help me to understand. And this is a next
step in search, to help you to understand. How would I be able to do this? And can I
really trust The World Bank? They are a neighbor to IMF. And these days, you know --
[ Laughter ] >>Hans Rosling: No, no. No, no, no. I won't
do that. I'll go to -- so you go to U.N. statistics,
and you find -- you find U.N. population division here, United Nations. And you see number of
births per year. Number of births per year from 1950. And this is on -- they are not
so much into graphics. They are very conventional. Number of births, 1950, 97-- 97 million. It
went down to 120 million. See, it is increasing, went up to 137 million births 1990. And then
it stopped increasing. Breaking news, the number of births per year in the world stopped
growing already 20 years ago. Can you see the gap in understanding here?
Twenty years ago, the number of births per year stopped growing. And yet the population
is growing. How come? There's place for understanding here. How could we do this?
So we decided we had to make this understandable. You bring a photo, you show Mexican families,
Bangladesh families, Vietnamese families, two children per woman. Catholic, Muslim,
Buddhist, doesn't matter. Religious leaders and political leaders are not in the bedroom.
People make their own decisions. And you have family sizes coming down.
I made a mockup what I wanted to show. And I used -- it's a program called PowerPoint.
It was very popular once. [ Laughter ]
>>Hans Rosling: And people like me use it to make mockups. Here we have -- 1960, we
had 3 billion people in the world, one billion kids, one billion youth, one billion old.
Take it or leave it. I made it simple. And then it increased, 25 years later, one
generation later, there were five billion, yes. The number of children were growing.
Remember, that was when the number of births increased, every year more and more children
were born, because women were getting five, four, three children per woman.
And then, of course, these people grow older and came up to this famous group, 60-plus,
which I belong to. And what happens then? From 1985 onwards, look, this is the big news.
From 1985, the number of children did not grow. The number of youths increased. And
they are sitting there. They are sitting there. They are out demonstrating. They want freedom.
And the number of old people increased up here. And we want walking aids and pensions.
This is the two big news in the world. The number of young people in the world are increasing
in the emerging market. The number of old people are increasing in the most wealthy
countries. This is where we are today. What will happen in the next 25 years? This
is more or less where we will go. These people will grow up. That's why the population is
still growing. It's not because the number of children are growing; it's because the
number of children are going to live their life. What's the difference between me and
those people sitting over there? Can you see the difference? Huh? It's some tragic 35,
40 years of difference. That's the time, the braking distance of population growth. The
breaking distance is what we are experiencing now. The environmentalists go too wild about
population. That's not the issue. We have to use energy in a new way. That's the issue.
So this is the good news. We have youth that are capable and that have to be made use of.
So we made another mockup, you know. And this is the one which we have here. But that's
made by Donia. Donia, stand up. You know Donia from the casino. What does -- what is the
difference? You see? Stand up. You see the difference? This man made mockup
in PowerPoint. He makes it in HTML5. That's the difference.
So now you can make quite amazing things very fast and move like this.
And here in 1960, the world looked like this. They went from zero to 15, 15 to 30, 30-45,
45-60, my group, and the even older here. There was a population pyramid structure.
And then the world changed like this. See how clear it will come.
The number of children was increasing until here. Now, the lower bar stops increasing
and we get an increase of young people. You see the group there? They are the ones being
increased. And the future will be like this. And it takes that time until the world has
really come up. Now, I have to stop, finish with some bubbles.
Otherwise, I will not be satisfied. I have to give you some bubbles here.
Look, 1963, on this axis, income per person, the bubbles are the countries, the color is
the continent. $400, $4,000, $40,000. Rich countries, poor countries. Here, percent young
people. This happens to be 20 to 39. And young people from 20% up to 40%. And it was not
-- more or less the same proportion in the populations of the world, because the number
of children per woman has been falling gradually. But look what has happened. I start the play
button here. And it goes on like this. And you can see what's happening is the number
of young goes up, the proportion of young goes up. This is China. Then they fall down.
And that's where we are today. The countries in middle income, emerging economy,
they have a high proportion of young people. The poorest countries still have mainly children,
and they have high child mortality. Whereas these ones are falling down with less and
less young people, and it's becoming boring places like Sweden and Germany down there.
[ Laughter ] >>Hans Rosling: No, no. Not funny. I can see
the point. Not funny at all. So here, instead, I put child mortality to
show you the story. Child mortality, a high child mortality, low child mortality, the
same axis here. And then I put the play button, and you will see how the world changed. It
went like this. Child mortality went down. And then proportion of young people peaked
here. It's quite interesting, isn't it? Here down, you have Germany and Sweden. Up here,
who is there on top? Who is the countries today that has the highest proportion of young
people? See if you heard about them in the news.
Bahrain, Iran, Libya, Tunisia. Aren't statistics fantastic? Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]