Two Hundred Years in Motion

Hans Rosling is a Swedish data genius. He works with his son and daughter-in-law (who bring technical expertise) to create amazing interactive data visualizations. You can learn a lot from watching one of his talks, such as this one from the 2011 Momentum conference at the University of Minnesota.


He's funny, too!

The main point I got from this talk is that in the West in the 19th and early 20th centuries, wealth came first and then led to health and increased life expectancy, which then led to declining family sizes. For the rest of the world (the so-called developing world), health and life expectancy increases have come first, leading to declining family size and wealth in close order.

So if you care about limiting population worldwide, then you have to care about improving child health and food security everywhere because it's the only thing that brings down population over time.