Wealth, birth, life, and other fun facts

The first time I saw Hans Rosling on TED several years ago, I was hooked. It really was the coolest way I had ever seen data displayed. So what can we learn from this? Well here's the web site--Gapminder--where you can select the region, the country, and compare against other geographic regions on a number of measures.

So let's consider life expectancy and per capita income in Nigeria, Namibia, and United States.  2009.
Nigeria: Life expectancy of 48 years, income of about $2,000.
Namibia: Life expectancy of 62 years, income about $5,000.
United States: Life expectancy of 79 years, income about $41,000.

Now, we know that having smaller families are closely related to healthier and longer lives.  Let's consider number of children per woman, aka, the birth rate (given we already know the average life expectancy) in these three countries.

Nigeria: Avg # of children per woman is about 5
Namibia: Avg # of children per woman is about 3
United States: Avg # of children per woman is about 2.

What is interesting is the visual display of how these statistics have changed over time. We see that Nigeria has not made much progress on improving life expectancy compared to Namibia since 1950; a12 year improvement in the length of one's life in Nigeria versus a 22 year improvement in Namibia over the same amount of time. The number of children per woman fell dramatically in Namibia, compared to a more modest reduction in Nigeria. Nigeria still has one of the highest birth rates in the world today.

Play around with this tool and learn something about any country (or countries) you want.  It helps us understand the connection between policy (i.e. education and family planning), practice (i.e. marriage, children, work), and ultimately, results (i.e. life expectancy, child mortality, economic empowerment).
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