Numbers are boring, people are interesting | Hans Rosling | TEDxSingapore

forty-three years ago I came with my teenage love to Singapore for the first time and she is sitting there on the front row we had been studying in India we had traveled through Asia we took a rest in Penang and then we came down to Singapore and we were amazed we felt partly like coming home a modern city being built up already that and we were really happy here and in fact it was here we decided to have children and to get married and to stay together for the rest of the life and this is the first time we are back together so I can really speak about Singapore in a global perspective I speak now from Gapminder foundation where I work Gapminder foundation is something I started together with my son and his wife and we have as our our mission is to fight devastating ignorant about the world with a fact-based worldview that everyone can understand so what is the big change what is the biggest change of our time well I think it's this babies born per woman it sounds like a boring statistic but it's not you know it's about sex and birth so I will start with the most exciting here I think I have yes look what I found here I have my stick I start in 1800 moving to 1900 2000 up to the present and this is number of babies born per woman one three five six the world was up there in 1800 and it had been at around six babies born per woman back through history it's sort of the humans do it like that if you have a normal breastfeeding length which is about two to three years women do get children with three to four years interval and it will be around six we find that if we study old censuses from China all this historical archive if we go to the rainforest today we find around 6 babies born per woman and that didn't change much all the way up to when I was in college 1965 it's only fallen to five and at that time there were many people especially in America and Europe starting to be scared that there would be too many people in the world that you had to reduce it and some even today talk about population explosion and other ugly type of expressions you know but do they know what has happened I will show you what has happened in my lifetime we are down to 2.5 it's done we made an enormous transformation imagine imagine what this means this means that suddenly in the 1960 1970 the world modernized partly socially importantly because we got these wonderful contraceptives which enable us as humans to separate perhaps the two most important things in life sexuality and reproduction before that they were linked together and there was no way when you had sex that you could avoid getting children or there was no way you know you could have children without having sex either now we can do both things you know it's quite thing we can have sex without having children we even can start having children without having sex you know it's amazing what we can learn but the most important to me is that this changed human life I will spend this this talk about this and we know what has happened now I love what will happen it means even up somewhere around 2 babies born per woman and and this big change you know changed the whole character of the world let me review this very clearly the two parents father and mother in the old balance from 1800 and backwards in history when there were quite few people in this world in fact it was agriculture that started population to grow but thousands of years of agriculture up to 1800 has only given us about 1 billion people and the world population was not growing fast why how come that the population was not growing when we in fact were having 6 babies like this this should trickle in one generation 2 parents have 6 children why didn't the population grow fast why are there so few children or put so few people in the rainforest because you know tragically one two three four children died before growing up to become parents themselves the human pass was utterly tragic the life in the rainforest today is also tragic in this sense you know and if only to survive to grow up you see the population will not grow what does it end that's happened with the Industrial Revolution which is that people started to have more children no continue to have on average 6 the thing was that less died and more survived that was industrially produced soap tapped water a little better food the medical advances that came and now you can see when four children was growing up from two parents the population would double in one generation and so if did you know the population Oh who benefited from Industrial Revolution they grew like this 25% of the Swedish population had to emigrate across the Atlantic and filled up the whole of Minnesota that's what we can call and grab people talk about land grab these days and the whole world population increased like this up to 7 billion here no but today today I showed you the fertility rate the number of babies per woman has fallen and we are about to come to the new balance where you get on average or the most common in the world is two children and both survived see the balance here was kept by death by the sadness in the graveyard now the balance is maintained by love that wonderful love that pillow talk in the bedroom you fall in love you're seriously loved 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 no 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 on 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 now what does this mean what does this mean for the total population in the world the average now 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 birth and yet the population will increase like this and and and the reason is is strange you know it is 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 when they come from outer space therefore therefore we have developed a new very advanced teaching method which I have here on stage I hope you will be seeing it on the first row also yes and 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 selalu signature it's a toilet paper roll actually one toilet paper roll is 1 billion people 1 billion people in the world and we totally today have 2 billion children between age 0 and 15 2 billion they are here next age group 15 to 30 years old is also almost 2 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 1 billion that's from 30 to 45 then 45 to 60 is almost 1 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 1 1 billion because we count people are very old you know and by having them joining us we are almost mumble this is the world population can you see like sort of a population pyramid 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 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 if they live in Singapore they die a little later but eventually they die no 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 increase with 3 billion people yes by time passing by and they 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 bigger then I can follow statistic now this is this is the world population what we expect to happen you know that we will be more there's like a braking distance from the year when the number of children stops increasing the population continued to increase for two and a little more three generations so 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 about families and so on and I Oster 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 smiling 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 from from from Singapore all the way to Japan it's not about government policy it's something else why this big gap what is it that is different in these in these two countries what happened in Sweden well I had 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 you know healthy and we were so happy and we had agreed that my wife hadn't finished her studies then should stay home and take her over for six months and then I should make a break I was a union doctor having my first 1 year work at the University Hospital and then I should take care of the child for 6 months we were like the modern ideas or in Sweden however the boss at my department he said me no don't even think about it you won't get any leave of absence for staying home and take care of children this was the year before the low of us passed so I came home in the evening and and told my wife no it was not possible I don't get an a leave of absence you know so we had to fix it in another way and yet next day I resigned and I stayed home for 6 month no no Bobo Bobo you don't know how why you are uploading yet why did I stay home what was it to make me change my idea that evening in about 10 minutes my wife yeah my wife what did she do no she took a suitcase and packed my clothes at the door and say out of my life you know and this is serious is very she's not the sort of person who shouten and make scenes or anything like that but yet 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 upload now you can upload at that time it was already fully accepted in Sweden that a woman can bring up a child or low and we had swapped over from regarding such women as failures you know and being stigma to admire women who did like that was that 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 we also had economic features that supported single mothers and we accepted divorce we accept the divorce and we started to focus on the violence which exist within marriages the whole gender balance changed and that's why she could force me to stay home and I'm very happy now we have three children we have 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 you know 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 you when they get to know that you want your job in the future now we had the reunion last year you know we are retired now we're the reunion I walked up to that guy and say 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 above that and we have the same almost the same strong economic growth as luath there's no failure of that we match Germany very well in spite of difference with this because it it becomes a better capacity you you may lose out in one way but you gain other things instead 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 know you can do a lot changing gender role takes time it's really struggle look what has happen in Sweden paid parental leave you have four months here we have 18 month aha what is called here Asian values hahaha those are not Asian they are patriarchal values it's not your graphical values it's old values we had them basura we had the same thing it's not that we don't value families you hear him we were teenage love we came here before being married we stay together we have kids now we have eight grandchildren we honor family very much to the extent that even men get involved in value in that that's what we call Family Values to take care of the other generation 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 our numbers no I think numbers are boring I think people are wonderful people are interesting lives of interest 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 between behind the numbers we can never understand the country or the world without numbers nor can we understand it with only numbers good luck with that numbers you can get from cap minder other places you have to look for the understanding thank you very much you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 141,673

Rating: 4.94382 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Singapore, Global Issues, Development, Economics, Health

Id: nh94kK05l-M

Length: 19min 34sec (1174 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 06 2016