Script 6
Hello and welcome to episode one of 'Winners and Losers', and in this first episode I'm
going to be looking at countries.
This video will look at different categories of country rankings and which countries are
at the top and bottom of those lists.
The first category we're going to look at is... size.
The largest country in the world is...
Russia.
Obviously.
OK, so no surprises there, I'm sure we all know that Russia is the biggest country in
the world.
But do you know just how big Russia is?
About 17 million square kilometres.
OK... but those are just a bunch of meaningless numbers, especially if you're not familiar
with the metric system.
But here's a few things about Russia that might help give you some perspective.
Russia borders more countries than any other, sharing land borders with 14 different countries:
Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
Mongolia, China & North Korea.
Well, that's 12 of the countries it borders.
But it has 2 more borders because of its most western point: the Kaliningrad Oblast, which
is separated from the mainland, gives Russia 2 more land borders: Lithuania and Poland.
Although if we take a closer look at Georgia, a country which has 2 de facto independent
countries within it: Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which have both declared their independence
from Georgia.
These self-declared independent countries have very limited international recognition.
But one country that does recognise both of them is...
Russia.
So according to Russia at least, they border 16 countries.
And let's not forgot they also have extremely close maritime borders with the United States
and Japan.
Russia really is in a league of its own compared to other countries, with 2nd place Canada
only 58% the size of Russia.
Russia is more comparable in size with the continents of world.
Russia is bigger than 3 of the 7 continents, and only slightly smaller than South America.
Also, Russia comprises 11% of the earth's land area, and in terms of surface area Russia
is bigger than Pluto.
Russia also has 9 different timezones, although it could be 10 because GMT+5 is skipped.
OK I'm sure you get it now, Russia is big.
And as mentioned, Canada is in 2nd place.
In 3rd place is... well, it's disputed.
It's either China or the United States.
Which country is in 3rd place is dependent on 2 factors: China's disputed territories,
and the water area of the United States.
China has several disputed territories, including disputes with India, Bhutan, Vietnam, Japan,
and North Korea, as well as claims to the Spratly Islands, the most disputed territory
in the world, claimed by 6 different countries.
Of course, the easy solution is just to count none of these when calculating China's area,
which is exactly what most sources do.
The real issue is how the water area of the United States is calculated.
Water area of a country should only include inland waters.
But both the UN and the CIA World Factbook are biased towards the USA, by counting coastal
or territorial waters for the US, but not for other countries.
Coastal water is defined as 3 nautical miles from the coast, and territorial water is 12
nautical miles.
Territorial water can seriously exaggerate a country's area.
Take this hypothetical perfectly round island which is 1 square kilometre in area.
Now if we include territorial waters in its area, and by using a little bit of maths we
can calculate that the area of this island would now be over 1,600 square kilometres.
The Philippines is a great example of why territorial waters are NOT counted.
However, both the UN and CIA are guilty of being inconsistent by counting coastal or
territorial waters for the US, but not for other countries.
Take a look at the state of Hawaii, which is about 40% water by area.
Now, with a state this small, it's not so bad, but with a state like Alaska, territorial
water make an already massive state, even bigger.
Realistically, there is no dispute, China is bigger, but several sources list the United
States as the 3rd largest country in the world.
But to completely remove the issue of water area we could look at just land area.
Counting only land are China is unambiguously bigger than the US, and all source agree on
that.
However, if we're just counting land, than Canada drops all the way to 4th place, behind
the US.
This is because Canada is about 9% water by area with an estimated 3 million lakes, which
make up 60% of all the lakes in the world.
Looking at the opposite end of the spectrum.
The 3 smallest countries in the world are: Nauru, Monaco, and of course: Vatican City.
And since the Vatican is where the Pope lives and is about half a square kilometre in size,
statistically, the country has 2 Popes per square kilometre.
Comparing the largest and smallest countries, Russia is about 38 million times the size
of Vatican City.
Moving onto population now, and once again the winner of this category is pretty obvious:
it's China.
2nd is India, and 3rd is the United States.
And while this podium shows their correct places, it doesn't really show the full story.
A more accurate podium might look a little something like this.
This is because 2nd-place India is nearly 4 times as populous as the USA.
Together, China and India make up about 37% of the world's population.
And it only takes the top 6 countries to make up half the population of the entire world.
Now, looking at that podium again, it would be easy to assume that India and China's populations
are similar.
And proportionally, maybe they are, China's population is only about 9% more than India's.
In terms of sheer numbers though, not at all; the difference is huge: about 118 million,
which is about the same as the population of Mexico, the 11th most populous country
in the world.
Or if you prefer US states as a unit of measurement, that's 4.5 times the population of Texas,
or 3 Californias.
Or, um...
205 Wyomings.
Or to further emphasize the population gap, the difference is about the same as combined
total of: Los Angles, Chicago, New York, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, London,
Paris, Berlin, Rome, Cairo, Johannesburg, Moscow, Istanbul, Jakarta, Tokyo, and Sydney.
In last place is: Tuvalu, Nauru, and once again, the Vatican City.
Once again if we compare top and bottom of the list, China has about 1.7 million times
as many people as the Vatican.
But what's more amazing, is if we look at the population growth of China.
China's population grows by the population of Vatican City every single hour, with their
population increasing by more than 19,000 every day.
Although, India's population is growing much quicker, at about 42,000 people a day.
That's 29 every minute.
Or about 15 and a half million per year, which is the same as the population of Ecuador.
India is set to overtake China as the most populous country in the world by 2025 and
set to break the 1.5 billion mark by 2033.
Next we move onto population density.
Population density is basically just how many people on average live per square kilometre.
And is simply population divided by area.
Unsurprisingly, the 3 city-states of the world are at the top of the list.
However, if we include the Special Administrative Regions of China, both of them make the top
5.
Although not sovereign states, they're basically treated as separate countries, and their population
and area are never counted within China's figures.
Macau is so densely populated, that if the population of the whole world lived as densely
as Macau, all 7.1 billion of us could live within the country of Germany.
And if every country in the world were as densely populated as Macau, the population
of the world would be nearly 3 trillion!
Of course, these countries are only so densely populated because they're so small.
If we use an arbitrary cut-off and only include countries more than 100,000 square kilometres,
Bangladesh is the most densely populated.
The least densely populated country in the world is Mongolia.
However, if we include constituent countries, then it's Greenland, with a population density
of 0.026, meaning that there's enough room in Greenland for every person in the country
to have 38 square kilometres to themselves.
If the whole world were as sparsely populated as Greenland, the population of world would
be about 3.8 million.
That's about the same as the population of Los Angles.
If we swap the population densities of the Macau and Greenland, Greenland's population
would be over 43 billion, while Macau's population would be zero.
Now we move onto something a bit different: Homicide Rate.
Now, there's two ways to rank the countries, by rate and by count.
Rate is number per 100,000 people, while count is just the raw number itself, not taking
into consideration how populated the country is.
Ranking by rate gives the most accurate picture.
The top 2 are the 2 bordering countries from Central America: Honduras and El Salvador.
And in 3rd place is Ivory Coast.
If the world had a homicide rate of Honduras, there would be over 6.5 million homicides
every year.
That's 17,900 a day, or about 1 every 5 seconds.
Now if we rank the countries in terms of just the number of homicides, in which obviously
the more populous countries have a disadvantage.
The top 3 are: India, Brazil, and Mexico.
And while India and Brazil both have around 43,000 homicides per year, this is actually
a relatively low rate for India, lower than the US actually, while Brazil's rate is very
high since India is 6 times as populous as Brazil, yet only has 138 more homicides.
Of course, this is one list in which being at the bottom of the list is best.
2 countries are the clear winners of this category, with absolutely no murders in the
year of the study.
And those are: Monaco and Palau.
Then again, it would be pretty hard to get away with murdering someone in Monaco given
that there's on average 18,000 people per square kilometre.
If we use another arbitrary cut-off and only include the 50 most populous countries in
the world, the countries that come out on top are: Japan, Spain and Germany.
And while on the subject of death, let's look at suicide rate.
The 3 countries with the highest suicide rates, are: Greenland, Lithuania, and South Korea.
Interestingly, suicide is far more prevalent among males, across all countries and cultures.
One country that's worth mentioning is Japan, with a fairly high suicide rate of 21.7.
Combine this with their extremely low homicide rate of 0.3, means that statistically Japanese
people are 72 times more likely to kill themselves, than be killed by someone else...
OK that's enough about death now, onto age.
The youngest country in the world is South Sudan, which declared its independence from
Sudan in 2011.
Sudan was the largest country in Africa until then, but dropped to 3rd place with Algeria
now the largest country on the continent.
Interestingly, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th newest countries in the world, all used to be part
of the same country.
In the early 90's, Yugoslavia split into 5 different countries: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, and Macedonia.
Serbia and Montenegro then split into 2 separate countries called...
well, Serbia and Montenegro.
Although technically it was other way around, Montenrgro declared its independence.
Then in 2008, Kosovo also declared its independence from Serbia.
Although it's worth mentioning that Kosovo isn't a member of the UN, but is recognised
by the majority of the its members.
The oldest countries in the world are significantly more difficult, if not impossible, because
of different definitions of the word 'country'.
While countries like Egypt and Iran may be good candidates to call the oldest countries,
having been around for more the 5,000 years!
Although they bear little or no resemblance to their modern-day counter-parts.
If we use just the date at which the country in its current form was founded, then the
oldest countries are: Japan, China and San Marino.
Although, even that's debatable, as it's such a complex issue it could easily be a video
in itself.
And finally, we move onto minimum wage.
Top of the list are: Luxembourg, Australia, and Monaco.
But these are just nominal values, and don't show any real value.
Cost of living varies significantly by country, so money isn't worth the same in every country.
To get a clearer picture, a hypothetical currency, the International Dollar was invented, which
uses the United States as a comparison and takes cost of living into consideration.
Therefore, countries like Mexico and Poland, which have lower cost of living, money is
worth more.
But in countries such as Norway and Switzerland, money isn't worth as much.
For example, the federal minimum wage in the US is $7.25, which is worth $7.25 in America,
but it's worth different amounts in different countries.
Of course, that's just the federal minimum wage and the average cost of living.
For example, San Francisco has a minimum wage of $10.74, because it's the most expensive
city in the country.
So if we use this international currency, Luxembourg is still top, but with France and
Belgium in 2nd and 3rd place, with Australia dropping to 4th.
This is due to a very high cost of living in Australia, about 45% more expensive than
America.
The countries with the lowest minimum wages in the world are Cuba at 225 Cuban Pesos per
month, although it's worth mentioning that the government also provide free education,
health care, housing and food for their workers.
Then there's Sierra Leone with 21,000 of their awkwardly named Sierra Leonean Leon per month,
which is about 3 cents per hour.
And the lowest is Uganda, at 6,000 Ugandan Shillings per month, about 1 cent an hour.
Of course, there's plenty of countries around the world that don't have any minimum wage
at all.
Well, that's all for episode 1 of 'Winners and Losers', and in episode 2 I'll be looking
at the 50 states of America, thanks for watching.