Gapminder World is an amazing tool. It lets you plot nearly every awesome economic, environmental, health and development related figures and factor against time and compare countries. The statistics that one can plot and view as they changed over time are amazing and it gives a good feel to all the boring statistics that we hear everyday. The best thing is that it is great when one needs to prepare for a debate and to put an end to stupid statistical claims from people across forums and blogs.
Operated by a Non-Profit Gapminder organization, whose goal is to promote development for achieving UN Millennium Development Goals. The statistics software called Trendanalyzer was acquired by Google in 2006.
Listed after the jump are a couple of great examples including life expectancy over the years, state health spending vs private health spending across countries and CO2 emissions compared to wood cutting.
Amazing Examples
Besides allowing comparison across countries, it also allows comparison across provinces/states withing a country as well (limited to a few countries), like this amazing example of unemployment vs per capita income across US states.
Another amazing thing is the number of children per women vs life expectancy in the world. Life expectancy is inevitably associated with better economic conditions and developed nations have a much higher life expectancy than developing nations. War also has a big toll on life expectancy. In the US, the story is quite unique (see here). In the 1900, its 3.85 children per women and life expectancy is 48 years. As science progressed, the human race saw a rising life expectancy and population control was not a big concern back then. In 1917, the life expectancy is 54 years and children per women is 3.33 but 1917 saw the start of US intervention in World War I and in 1918 the figures were dramatically different, life expectancy was down to 47 years. The next year as the World War I had ended, the life expectancy was back to 55 years.
United States and Russia - Year 1900 to Present
Children per women kept decreasing until around 1936 when there were 2.15 children per women but then the figure started rising sharply and in 1942 it stood at 2.72 after which World War II had its toll. By 1957 the figure was at a record high of 3.72 children per women (starting in 1900, in the year 1800 there were 7.03 children per women). Decrease in child birth saw the figure go down to 1.81 in 1982 and but by 1996 it had again risen to 2.01 children per women. In 2007, the figures stood at a life expectancy of 78 years and 2.1 children per women
Follow this link, and hit play to watch the statistics in action.
Health Spending
Keeping in mind the on going debate on health reforms in the US, I have plotted a graph between Total spending on health as a %age of GDP and share of private spending on health. The results aren’t surprising to the say the least. Countries with amazing health coverage like Finland, United Kingdom and Cuba have structures where the government spends nearly everything on health through their national health insurance schemes while the US is a fallacy in the world of developed countries. (You can see it here)
Environmental Toll
Another interesting plot was between Annual Wood Cutting and CO2 emissions per person (in tonnes). Sadly, the US seems to be on a route to destruction as it is cutting more wood than any country and emitting a lot of CO2 as well. The US has definitely cut annual wood cutting over the years but it needs to do more. (The data is updated till 2005 after which there might have been significant drop). You can see it here
Bangladesh’s Achievement
The Video Section has a lot of good videos and I’ve attached one here which shows Bangladesh’s achievement in infant mortality rate reduction.
