Death: A New Balance
You fall in love, you’re seriously in love, you spend the first night together, you whisper into each other’s ears, “darling, let’s have sex tonight.” You come to like each other, you decide to live together, as my wife and I decided here in Singapore, and then you whisper, “darling, let’s make a baby tonight.” And that’s wonderful, isn’t it? You can have a baby, and then you can continue to have sex, waiting for the other baby.
And then you said, “now time has come, let’s make a sibling tonight.” And you can have two, you can have as many as you find out is proper. That is the love for each other, it’s the love for the children that decides now how many children you should have.
And we can regulate the population by that. Human beings never lived in ecological balance with nature. I hear many saying that, that’s wrong. Humans only died in ecological balance with nature. It was the sad death, it was the graveyard that kept the balance. Still today in the rainforest, the balance is maintained by death.
Now, for the first time in human history, we have a glimmering little hope of living in balance with nature. But we are really using nature too much now. The main challenge overall in the world is sustainability.
But we want to live in balance with nature. We want to live our lives when we are born.
The Distribution of Seven Billion People
Now, how do these seven billion distribute themselves over the world? I will be a little descriptive here. Gapminder Foundation is independent, so we can divide the world as we see fit. We don’t have to take political determinants. And we have decided that the Australians are Asians. They have to get used to it. And the New Zealanders, yes. And we also decided that Europe is a place with not so much people.
So in order to boost Europe a little, we decided that Turkey is European here also. It gives us a little chance in Europe. Now, where do we live? Where do these seven billion people live? We are 7.3 today, but I simplify as much as I can.
Out of these seven billion people in the world, one billion in America, one in Europe, one in Africa, and four in Asia. Remember this? The pin code of the world, 1114. But like other pin codes, it may keep changing. You have to keep track of this.
The Peak of Births
And remember now, the peak of birth have come. From here on, we have the number of births per year kept increasing like this and like this. And United Nations Population Division estimate that the maximum number of births in the world was last year. And now the number of births per year is expected to remain more or less the same or probably start declining by the end of this century. That is in the world as a whole.
Factfulness: A New Concept
We call this factfulness in Gapminder. It’s a new word that we have given as a present to the English language. We think you should go beyond that old concept of mindfulness. Now, not only mindfulness, be factful.
Factfulness is the relaxing habit of only carrying opinions that are based on facts.
The term is coined by Ulla Rosling, my director and my son, when we operate. He is the boss. And I would like to show you one of our main features that we have developed to enhance factfulness. Our beloved bubble chart here.
The Bubble Chart: Visualizing Global Change
You know, each bubble here is a country. The size shows population. China and India are the big ones, of course. This is 1948 I start to show. That’s the year when I was born. And I show on this axis income per person in the countries.
In purchasing power, dollar, constant dollar, adjusting for inflation. From 300, 3,000, 30,000 and beyond. And here, babies born per woman. Two, four, six and more. And in 1948, it’s very clear that there’s one cluster of countries down here. We call it the industrialized countries or the Western world or the developed countries.
There were different terms for it. But the taxonomy was clear. One country here that had more money and less children. And then the other big group here, which was called developing countries, and they had less money but more children. And Singapore was positioned there. Had some money, but very unevenly distributed at that time. But we’re giving birth to how many was it? Six to seven children per woman. That was in 1948.
Now the colors here show red is Asia. Yellow is Europe. Green is America. And blue is Africa. And now I will start the world for you. And we will see how countries have transformed. Look at this is China here. And India is there, the red ones. Will they first get rich and then have few children? Or will they have fewer children and then get rich?
Singapore’s Remarkable Journey
Let me start it and you will see the world. Here we go. Ready, steady, go. You see, look at China. They are shaking there on the Mao Zedong going a little up and down here. Other countries. This is Japan. Japan is moving. Here China comes down. This is Mao Zedong caused famine. But now it’s up again. It’s up again. That was the terrible leap forward which he caused.
And Singapore – look at Singapore. They’re coming down here. They are catching up with Japan. They’re overtaking. Singapore is overtaking Japan. China is now down with small families. And now Deng Xiaoping takes power and he goes for the money. See, now some mistakes there. Can’t catch up. And Singapore is overtaking the United States.
Look what’s happening here at the turn of the century. Singapore is all over there. This is South Korea coming. China is catching up. China is catching up now. They are coming quite fast. And they are closing in. And here we are today. A completely new world led by Singapore.
Quite an amazing trip, isn’t it?
Why Population Will Still Grow
Now what does this mean? What does this mean for the total population in the world? The average now is 2.5 children per woman. And still the world population is expected to increase like this. How come the number of children have stopped increasing? We will have the same number of births and yet the population will increase like this.
And the reason is, it’s strange. The reason is there will be no more children but there will be much more adults. And people ask me, how can this be true? Where will they come from? Will they come from outer space? Therefore, we have developed a new very advanced teaching method which I have here on stage.
Visualizing Population Growth with Toilet Paper
I hope you will be seeing it on the first row also, yes. You know, these days digital is getting old, isn’t it? It’s almost vintage with digital. That’s why we try to go analog now in Gapminder Foundation.
And we have done this. Look here. Cellulosic material. It’s a toilet paper roll actually. One toilet paper roll is one billion people. One billion people in the world.
And we totally today have two billion children between age zero and 15. Two billion. They are here. Next age group, 15 to 30 years old, is also almost two billion. You belong. Most of you here belong to this age group. We put them on top. Here it’s 15, there’s 30.
Now next age group, that’s a little more than one billion. That’s from 30 to 45. Then 45 to 60 is almost one billion. I round up. I round up to the whole of the billion. And finally, we have my group here, 60 years and older. And we are also almost one billion because we count people who are very old.
And by having them joining us, we are almost one billion. This is the world population. Can you see sort of a population pyramid? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven billion.
Now what will happen in the future? What’s going to happen in the future? Anyone study medicine here, know what happens to old people? Yeah, they die. They die. If they live in Singapore, they die a little later. But eventually they die. So they go away.
Have you noted what happens to the rest of the people? You grow older. Year by year, you get older. And after 15 years, you belong to the next age group. And then the new children have come. Can you see? Then same thing happens. The old people here, they die. The rest grow older and older and older. And after 15 years, the new children come. Same amount of children. And then they all die.
And the rest, they grow older and older and older. And the children come, and there we are. In about 45 to 50 years from now.
Did you see how we increased with three billion people? Just by time passing by. And those already born growing older. If we also get longer life, then, and I hope for that, then there will be one more billion up here.
I have applied to belong to this one actually, because then I can follow statistics. Now this is the world population, what we expect to happen, you know, that we will be more. I will continue to show it here for you, what this will be.
Regional Population Trends
Because to understand this now, I’ve been talking about the whole world. I will break it down into the four regions. Europe started to take down the number of babies per woman early, but the fall was not so fast.
You can see Europe here, you know, started already in 1900, coming down the number of babies per woman. Today, it’s less than two. Europe is shrinking today.
Less than two children per woman. The Americas started just a little later. This is North and South America together.
You noted the baby boom here? This was just after the Second World War. Peace came back, economy turned good, and both in North and South America, there was a little extra number of babies born. Then Asia.
Asia was high for a long time there, you know, and then the change came down like this. It’s down at two now. 1.5 in China, 2.5 in India. Average is almost two. And Africa then. Is anything happening in Africa? Yes, but it’s happening a little later here.
They’re coming down. And we know that more or less this will happen. Two things we don’t know.
We don’t know how fast Africa will come down. There are some who predict it will get faster. If economic and social development is good and peace is maintained, it will be faster. Otherwise, it will be slower. And then we don’t know at what level we will end up here in the world. Will the world population start shrinking or will it be balanced? That is what is unknown.
Future Population Distribution
So looking at this, we see we don’t predict any more people in Europe and America. Perhaps a little more in Asia and more people in Africa. This is what we think will happen to 2050.
Remember the seven billions we have today. We will have no more in America and Europe, but we will have indeed one billion more in Asia. That will be adults, a fill-up effect, as I showed you, in Asia.
And by that extra billion, then the population growth, the fast population growth will be over in Asia. Asia may even start to decrease at 2050. But in Africa to 2050, we will get twice as many people.
They will increase with about 100 percent, because you remember they had about four to five children per woman now in Africa. On their way down, but still four to five. And up to the end of the century, to 2100, there will be two to three more in Africa.
So we will end up with a world, when the fast population growth is over in the world, that will be 1, 1, 4, 5. That’s what we will have. And if I divide this into North America and West Europe, we get what I call the Old West. The Americans sometimes brag and they call Europe the Old Europe, but I pack it all together and call it the Old West.
They’re getting old in America also. So they will be actually, or we, I belong to this group, will be less than 10 percent of the world population. They’ll be more humble in the future, just because being less.
And Asia and Africa will be more than 80 percent of the world population. The center of the world will no longer be London and New York. It will be here between Dubai and Singapore.
That will be the center of the world. And the world trade will no longer be Atlantic nor Pacific. It will be Indian Ocean, will have most people living.
This is a change which is ongoing and we know these populations change fairly well. And what you can learn, look here, people in West Europe half a billion and four billions in Africa. That’s why I have an advice to Europeans.
I tell them start being polite to Africans already today, because they will outnumber you. They will outnumber you in the future. And you need them as customers, you need them as partners, you need them as tourists.
Did you hear? I’m talking about refugees, that in short term. I’m talking in long term, how the world will eventually change. Because when I was in school, long time ago now, people had ideas in Europe about Asia and said Asia will never succeed.
Asia will be famine, it will be horror. There’s no way they will succeed. And now it has happened.
And today many people have the same ideas of Africa, in spite of us seeing enormous progress and success in Africa, at the same time as there are difficulties, exactly as we have been seeing in Asia. So this is the world, it will be an African-Asian world that we will be living in in the future.
Population Distribution by Age Groups
Now, I go more in detail, more in detail. I will combine these different ways of showing it. Here I showed you people one billion in each role, that is 1,000 millions. I make it more detailed now and let each figure here, each doll represent 100 millions.
100 millions. And then I divide them, Europe, America, Africa, Asia. And here the same age group I was talking about, 15, 30, 45 and 60. So in Europe we have the same amount of people in all age group. I belong to this one. I’m 60 years and older, I live in Europe.
In America, almost the same. They lack a little retired people there in South America. But Africa, Africa has more children today, more or less the same number of children as all of Europe and America together.
That’s why I had to include Turkey. Remember, I had to make Europe a little bigger to have some chance down here. Asia, of course most children live in Asia, but here the number have stopped increasing.
Africa has been increasing its population from a low level. Asia have stopped this. Now instead of a population pyramid, we have spread the people out because the number of children down here will not increase.
So we opened up the population pyramid for this area to see what will happen here. People here are not lacking because they died. They are lacking because they were never born.
Because back in history, even if there were more babies born for women, there were less women giving birth. Demography is quite interesting and challenging because it’s about the core of human life and yet it’s mathematics. It’s a little like playing chess.
Seemingly easy, but there are some things you just have to grasp and we’ll try to show you this here graphically. What happens to old people you have learned already? They die, so I just take away the old group there. The rest, they grow older and then they have children.
And look, 100 million more in Africa and 100 million less in Asia. That’s in about 15 years from now. We go 15 years more, we let the old die, the rest grow older and the children are born and one more in Africa and one less in Asia.
The reason why the number of children don’t increase in the world is that they are decreasing in Asia at the same rate as they are increasing in Africa, because Asia is going to sub-replacement level. And then the old die, the rest grow older and children are born. The old die, the rest grow older and children are born.
Looking Toward the Future
And can you see the perspective? This is 2085. You really have to think in generations to understand this. Demography is quite certain to predict, but you have to have the long-term perspective to learn.
This is where we think we will be when we come to the end of this century. And that is the big fill-up of adults. The three billion I showed you there, it’s the same amount of people which is being filled up.
There’s like a breaking distance from the year when the number of children stops increasing, the population continue to increase for two and a little more three generations. That’s where we’ll be. Perhaps there will also be longer lives.
Remember that I had filed an application to be this one? They’re up, you know. And the big question mark is, of course, will Africa develop faster or will Asia start having children again to the same extent as they had in the past?
China’s One-Child Policy
Why do we have such a low number of children born in Asia? Last week, I think many of you noted that the Central Committee of the Communist Party in China decided to abolish the one-child policy. That has already happened, in fact, you know, because people in China were developing in the same way as neighboring countries.
Actually, the demographics of China is not so different from Japan, Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, and so on. But many don’t know. If you go and look carefully, you look at the fertility rate in Taiwan, you will find no one-child policy, but in reality one child per woman.
Whereas on mainland China, you find one-child policy from the government, but 1.5 children born. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Governments say you shall have one child, governments say nothing. Where governments say nothing, one child is born.
Where governments give order to the bedroom, 1.5 is born. My conclusion is that governments don’t have so much power in the bedroom. They may exercise their power on the squares and in the streets, you know, but in the bedroom is another thing.
Changing Family Patterns in Asia
So why are they one child per woman in Taiwan and in Hong Kong? Well, I understood that, of course, I’ve read the demographic studies and anthropological studies, but I was at the banking conference in Hong Kong and ended up at the dinner in the end to sit beside one of the most brilliant young bankers in Hong Kong. She was 37 years, leading a branch of a bank there, and she told me lots of things about the financial trends in Asia. It was five years ago.
And we came to talk about, became personal and talked about families and so on, and I asked her, do you have a family? No, I never had time. I work really hard. Don’t you plan to have a family? And she smiled and she looked out of the window, that was the Bay of Hong Kong, sun was setting, you know, smile on her face, and she said, yes, I’m thinking about children every day.
It’s the idea of a husband I can’t stand. So what is it happening in Asia? What is it that happens from Singapore all the way to Japan? It’s not about government policy. It’s something else which is happening.
Can’t the clever, enormously capable, young, highly educated Asian women stand husbands? What is the problem? It’s very interesting for a foreign observer.
Population Structure Comparisons
Here I have the age from zero up to 80 for Singapore, and then the number in each age group here, the number of people in each age group, and we start in 1950. It’s 1950, and this was the Swedish composition.
We had a period in the 1930s with very low fertility rates in Sweden, so we had a little variation of people in different age groups, and then what happened in Singapore was the following. You see, the number of babies born got less here in the, this is year 2000, this is 2015 where we are today, and in Sweden the following happens. We got a more stable base there.
This is 2015 in Sweden, and by the end of the century, Sweden is expected to be like this, and Singapore is expected to be like this. Can you see? With this low fertility rate, the population will look like this. There will be a lot of old people to take care of, people like me and older, you know, and less down here, whereas Sweden has a quite even, balanced population.
This is not due to immigration. When we have immigration to Sweden, within a year or two they adapt to our fertility rates, if they had any different when they can. Yeah, people do that.
There’s no major difference between religions and fertility rate in the world. I want to make a comparison directly between Sweden and Singapore. I choose 1988, because in 1988 Sweden gave birth to 1.97 children per woman, and Singapore 1.96. Amazingly similar in 1988.
And then, if we move forward, the following has happened. There also it was quite similar, and then Sweden caught up. Sweden had a bad economic period there.
Sweden caught up, and Singapore came down there, and there we are today. Sweden managed to produce about 1.9, and we have in Singapore 1.3. The last year it increased from 1.2 to 1.3 more or less, and this is the prediction for this year. Why this big gap? What is it that is different in these two countries?
Personal Experience with Parental Leave
What happened in Sweden? Well, I have to tell you what happened to me and my wife.
We got our first child in 1974. She was born in April. Wonderful little baby girl, healthy, and we were so happy.
And we had agreed that my wife, who hadn’t finished her studies then, should stay home and take care of her for six months, and then I should make a break. I was a junior doctor, having my first one-year work at the University Hospital, and then I should take care of the child for six months. We were like the modern ideas in Sweden.
However, the boss at my department, he said to me, no, don’t even think about it. You won’t get any leave of absence for staying home and taking care of children. This was the year before the law was passed.
So I came home in the evening and told my wife, no, it was not possible. I don’t get any leave of absence, you know, so we have to fix it in another way. And yet, next day, I resigned and I stayed home for six months.
The Importance of Family Involvement
HANS ROSLING: No, no, no, no, no, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You don’t know why you are applauding yet. Why did I stay home? What was it to make me change my idea that evening? In about ten minutes.
My wife, yeah, my wife, what did she do? She took a suitcase and packed my clothes and put it at the door and said, “Out of my life.” And this is serious. She’s not the sort of person who will shout and make scenes or anything like that.
It was just that we had agreed and I didn’t stick to it. And she helped me. Empowerment of women works and it makes a better life for men.
Now you can applaud. Now you can applaud. At that time, it was already fully accepted in Sweden that a woman can bring up a child alone and we had swapped over from regarding such women as failures. We had moved from stigmatizing single mothers to admiring women who did this.
We said, “That’s what we call a mother. She takes care of the child and that man, shame on him, who left her, who didn’t take his responsibility.” That was very important.
Changing Gender Roles in Sweden
And we also had economic features that supported single mothers and we accepted divorce. We accepted divorce and we started to focus on the violence which exists within marriages. The whole gender balance changed and that’s where she could force me to stay home and I’m very happy now.
We have three children. I’ve stayed home about six months with each of them. And the first time I did it, my friends, you know, you have these people you studied with, they came to me and said, “Did you resign from that job you got? Are you mad? You will fail in your career.”
“You won’t manage now staying at home when they get to know that you won’t get job in the future.” Now we had the reunion last year. You know, we are retired now.
We had a reunion. I walked up to that guy and I said, “Hi, did you end up on Times magazine on the 100 most influential people in the world? Did I manage to do what I did in spite of having been at home with my children for 18 months or because I stayed home with my children?” Of course it’s because.
Because it enlarged the experience of a man to be able to share that valuable part of life. Not only to play with kids in the weekend and in the evening, but really take full responsibility during the day with everything what is a child. That enriched the life.
The difference in life expectancy between men and women have decreased when men start to be involved in family life more. Men become healthier about that. And we have the same, almost the same strong economic growth as you have. There’s no failure of that.
We match Germany very well in spite of difference with this because it becomes a better capacity. You may lose out in one way, but you gain other things instead. So this change, will it happen or will it not happen here? Now let me move on to show you how this look in reality.
The New Male Identity
This is from a book called “The Swedish Dad” by Tobias Bild. It’s a blockbuster book selling around the world and it shows the identity, the male identity being a full capable person to take care of children. It’s a male identity to have this today.
You see fathers in the parks in Sweden taking care of the kids. It’s busy, you know. It’s not that easy, but you become very close to the children when you do this.
And when we had our first, when our first born daughter had her first child, she was a successful researcher and she wanted to stay in touch with her research group and she asked me and my wife, “Could you take your first grandchild one day in the week?” And during some month during the fall, I had grandpa leave of absence from my professorship for Thursday morning. My wife took Thursday afternoon. She is a child psychiatrist and she left the University Hospital to take care of her grandchild.
That was wonderful days, you know. It’s so enriching.
You don’t live to increase your GDP per capita. You live to play with your kids and grandkids. That’s the aim of life, isn’t it?
But then it’s very nice to have a high GDP per capita. I really like money, you know, because with money you can make this happen.
Parental Leave in Sweden
Look what has happened in Sweden. Paid parental leave. You have four months here. We have 18 months. You may be healthier than us. You may be richer than us, but we have much more paid leave when we have kids.
That changed in 1975. Look here. It was 100% of that paid leave for women, zero for men. This is how slow gender issues change. See how slowly but steadily, slowly by steadily, Swedish men now take 25%, women 75%. You can become rich fast.
Singapore has shown that. You can create a wonderfully beautiful city which is so enjoyable to visit and live in. You can do a lot.
Changing gender role takes time. It’s really a struggle. What is called here Asian values, ha ha ha, those are not Asian. They are patriarchal values. It’s not geographical values. It’s old values.
We had the same thing. It’s not that we don’t value families. You hear him.
Family Values Redefined
We were teenage love. We came here before being married. We stayed together. We have kids now. We have eight grandchildren. We honor family very much to the extent that even men get involved in that.
That’s what we call family values, to take care of the other generation. This was slow in coming. This was slow in coming, but it is coming. We think that we can see this happen also in other parts of the world. We don’t know about the future. It’s very difficult to know.
Look at this here. Why is Singapore down there? Well, I’m not an expert on that. I’m not going to dwell on it. I’m just seeing the numbers. And many people have said that I’m good. I can bring life to numbers.
No, no, no, no, no. Many people say I’m interested in numbers. No, I think numbers are boring. I think people are wonderful. People are interesting. Lives are interesting.
So what you need to do to understand this is not only look at numbers. You need the numbers, yes, but you need to understand the lives behind the numbers. We can never understand a country or the world without numbers, nor can we understand it with only numbers.
Good luck with that. Numbers you can get from Gapminder. Other places you have to look for the understanding.
Thank you very much.
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