Want the report? Details at the end on how to get a print. (Update: All proceeds go to UNICEF towards relief effort in Haiti.
UNdata provides a catalog of 27 United Nations statistical databases and 60 million records about the past, present, and future state of the world. Topics include demographics, life expectancy, labor levels, poverty, and a lot more. What does all that data mean though? World Progress Report, the latest from FlowingPrints, offers a look into the expansive UN collection.
In whole, the report tells a story of how we live and die, and the stuff in between.
Let’s start at the beginning: birth.
The percentage of births with a skilled attendant around has increased in all regions, but more than a majority of births in several regions are still unattended. There is also still a big gap in neonatal deaths between developing and industrialized countries.
Population of course continues to grow, but at a slower rate thankfully. But hey, if it’s too full in your country, Greenland and the Pitcairn Islands have got some space.
The average life expectancy fifty years ago, worldwide was 49 years old. Nowadays it’s closer to 66. In several regions, the life expectancy is over 85 years old. There’s still a long way to go though.
Try the Netherlands if you’re not into the whole work thing.
While poverty has decreased in many areas, there are regions that haven’t changed all that much (or have increased during the past decade.
Getting everyone fed also continues to be a problem despite the billions of tons of food produced every year. Maybe Americans should eat a little less and give some food to those who are actually hungry. That way we won’t be the fattest place on earth. It’s win-win!
At least people are growing more worldly, with a healthy growth in tourism. Or is that because of a growth in population?
Speaking of growth, Turkey’s greenhouse gases has gone up up a ton since 1997. More than double.
Finally, we all the know about the boom of Internet and mobile technology during the past decade. There are nearly 60 mobile subscribers per 100 people in the world and more than 3 mobile lines for every land line.
Check out the full zoom-able version.
Orders this week…
Here’s how it’s going to work. I’ll take orders for one week, starting today. I’ll then close orders, and it’ll be off to the printers. Prints will be signed and numbered. I’ll have a small packing party. You get your print.
SO, if you’d like a print, make sure you order by next Thursday. The first 50 orders will also get a copy of Atley’s How America Learns.
If you have any questions just let me know (and if you find any dumb mistakes :).
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You mean we produce five times as much coffee and tea than cereals ? That seems difficult to believe…
thanks, guillaiume for catching that. looking at the data now, the FAO reports production of different items in different units, so i got mixed up there. i’m fixing all the units on that section. please let me know if you find anything else.
Since i’m showing the report before sending it to the printers, you guys can help me make it flawless when it goes out :)
I think this is great – clear, simple design of important (and reputable) data. The graphics are also nicely differentiated without being unnecessarily complicated – thus drawing the eye but not distracting you too much!
My one problem is the map. The scale is quite hard to read – the colours at the top and the bottom of the scale seem too similar. On closer inspection the lower ones are greenish, while the top are dark blue. Perhaps I’m just a little colourblind….
hmm, the color should range from a gray-ish green to gray. is it your screen maybe?
I would like to add to OMW’s comment. It was a little hard to distinguish between the colors. Perhaps its because of my matte screen or maybe I’m just growing old :-)
Great job on the rest of the article though!
Dear Nathan,
I think it’s easy to understand that people tend to overreact if there’s a mistake with the own country. So do I…
I don’t get it, why there is West Germany and Germany in the chart with the working hours. West Germany as a country doesn’t exist anymore for almost 20 years now. I hope you will correct that.
Greetings
Christian
@christian – thanks. oddly, the UN still uses West Germany as a region. i’m learning lots of things making this report :).
I imagine that, after the reunion the trade unions made different rates for the German federal land from east and west to strengthen the eastern lands. But as the working hours now seem to be exactly equal you should just delete West Germany from the list – Christian
Nice selection of metrics. I was not sure what the x-axis was for the gender breakdown and sixty years or older charts. Is it years, just like the population chart?
@roland – you are correct, sir
thanks for the input, all. i made a couple of updates.
Reputable data?! Really? Self-reported data collection, which is what these data are, is typically rife with errors. There are inconsistent measurements across countries (especially with birth/death statistics) and political interference with the reported stats. Nobody wants to make themselves look bad. Are we really supposed to beleive that all of the former Russian bloc countries are leading the world in lowering greenhouse gas emissions? We should not fall into the trap of blind faith in the number just because it has a UN moniker or that it has some pretty charts on top of it. Most of the analysts I know usually educate themself about the underlying assumptions before accepting the results.
@Tim – Like all data, we should of course take this with a grain of salt. I am sure there are inaccuracies in the reported data. I mean it is after all worldwide, but I think there is a lot of truth we’re seeing here too.
Tim, believe it.
It’s simple enough: these countries went from the total environmental devastation of an unbridled socialist/communist economy as members of the Soviet block, where large scale pollution was how things where done and no effort whatsoever was made to reduce environmental impact, to EU members able and willing to dip into substantial EU funding to clean up and rebuild their industrial infrastructure to modern Western standards. The gains, of course, are immense. It’s easy to be the cleanup champ when you start from zero.
I suppose there is some truth to that. But I still have a hard time trusting self-reported data (an obvious understatement). Here in the USA we’ve seen what a huge mess the self-reported economic stimulus “job creation” data has become. And that was supposed to be transparent! Unfortunately, not everyone who might read these sort of things on the front page of the NY Times will take it with a grain of salt. However, data quality is a completely separate issue. Keep up the excellent work, Nathan!
Nowadays it is better to take data of so called ‘developed countries’ with a pinch of salt.
Poverty measured in absolute dollars?
Skilled attendant available at delivery? Looks good if you cluster it by continent maybe.
Technology not reported by country?
It’s the US and wester Europe’s main economies that are creating new poverty classes these days.
Emission data are only partly self-reported. As one can hardly measure the emissions itself, these are than calculated based on production/consumption/import/export differences of petrol, gas etc.
As stated above, the reason why all these “central and eastern european countries” reduced their GHG emissions is mainly due to the breakdown of their, old and inefficient, economies. Another nice data visualization of GHG emissions one can find here.
Nathan, it would be good to have a separate web page where you list the definitions for the data used, so that interested users can have a look to better understand the data set.
I would be surprised to hear that West Germany is still holds recent data. Normally, these countries (the two Germanys, the two Yemens, the two Vietnams…) are listed with their pre-1991 or so figures, but that the “new”, reunified country is listed too, for data after 1991.
If interested, one can find lots of additional data from various fields (environment, socio-economic, health) as a unique collection at the UNEP GEO Data Portal with lots of data visualization posters too.
forgot to mention: “Poverty measured in absolute dollars?” – it’s measured using purchasing power parity (PPP) rates…
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