Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes

Hans Rosling examines global trends in health and wealth

Tags: demography/population, globalization, health/medicine, inequality, methodology/statistics, political economy, data visualization, global development, income, life expectancy, 00 to 05 mins
Year: 2010
Length: 4:48
Access: YouTube

Summary: This clip plots the health and wealth of 200 countries over 200 years. Animating data in real space, Hans Rosling explains how global health and wealth trends have changed since 1810. Despite persistent and extreme inequalities (both across countries and within countries), Rosling's data point to a closing gap between Western and non-Western countries, fostering a "converging world" perspective. He projects that, in the future, everyone can "make it" to the healthy and wealthy plots on the graph. This clip might be useful in a statistics, demography, globalization, or health/medical sociology class, as it helps students (particularly the novice statistician) to visualize data trends and illustrates for students the very cool things that can be done with statistical data. Instructors of medical sociology, health, and inequality might also facilitate a discussion about social factors that might inhibit or foster Rosling's optimistic portrait of the future. This clip might work well with another Hans Rosling's clip, in which he uses data visualization to illustrate global changes since the 1960s related to fertility, life expectancy, child survival and poverty by nation (and region). 

Submitted By: Valerie Chepp

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