His testament to the world is a monument of rationality and hopeful thinking. When he fell ill in 2017, he started to write this book, together with his son and daughter-in-law. When he discovered that public health was the product of society and economics, he became a researcher and later a Professor of International Health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Hans Rosling started out as a medical doctor, treating epidemics in poor countries. ‘In the US, the risk that your loved one will be killed by a drunk driver is nearly 50 times higher than the risk that he or she will be killed by a terrorist.’ ‘In fact,’ writes Rosling, ‘it is hard to think of a cause of death that kills fewer people in countries at Level 4 than terrorism.’ Now compare that to the number of terrorism-related news items. Of the 159,000 deaths by terrorism between 2007-2016, only 1% fell in rich countries. Let’s take our fear of terrorism as an example. Instead, we should become aware of our innate mental pitfalls, and use data to provide context and reveal trends. We should become aware of our innate mental pitfallsīut in our complex world, instincts obscure rational judgement, argues Rosling. Fear, generalisation or blaming may have been useful in the past to quickly form judgements as preparation for action. Instincts are intuitive ways of thinking that originated during the evolution of our species. The gap is the first of 10 instincts that make up the chapters of the book. People instinctively think in opposite extremes, neglecting the ‘gap’ in between where the real development takes place. And guess what: 5 billion people are on these levels, in between the 1 billion in poverty and the 1 billion rich. Between level 1 (poverty with a daily income of USD 2/day or less) and level 4 (rich with a daily income of USD 32/day or more) are the intermediate levels 2 and 3. Rosling nuances this view by introducing four levels of economic development instead of two. So, Rosling asks, what makes people so ignorant? An outdated worldview and biased news reporting are the main causes.įor example, people still talk about ‘the west & the rest’ as the developed world versus developing countries. The world really fares a lot better than most people think. Astonishingly, 80% of the people score worse than chimps that would fill in answers at random. Rosling has presented the book to government leaders, the business elite and ordinary folks like you and me all over the world.

It starts out with a short questionnaire. The book covers all the major topics like economic development, public health, population growth, education and climate change. I couldn’t agree more and I’ll explain why.

‘A brilliant book that everyone should read,’ wrote New Scientist. Factfulness is a remarkable book because of its wide scope and the consistency of its analyses of our misunderstanding of what’s going on in the world.

Hans rosling book