In our complete Factfulness summary we elaborate more on each of the 4 levels and how countries move up the levels over generations. While people living in extreme poverty (Level 1) still suffer from high child mortality rates, malnutrition and terrible living conditions, they are now the minority, not majority of the world population.

In a nutshell, the majority of people today (5 out of 7 billion) live on Levels 2-3 and have some degree of choice and buying power. In the book Rosling presents various statistics to explain where/how our estimations go wrong, and shows that it’s much more meaningful to look at the world with 4 levels of income: This notion is at least 20-30 years outdated. In particular, most of us still mentally divide the world into 2 parts: developing non-Western countries vs developed Western countries. This is one of most damaging instincts as it creates an imagined chasm that leads to all sorts of mis-perceptions. We tend to divide things into 2 distinct groups and imagine a gap between them, e.g. We’ll now give a synopsis of the 10 dramatic instincts and zoom in on the first instinct in more detail. Do get a copy of our full 15-page summary for a detailed overview of all 10 instincts, or get the full mojo (complete with statistics, charts and examples) from the Factfulness book. When we’re operating on the wrong facts, we can’t develop sound solutions or make good decisions. Most of us don’t see the world as it is, because we sift the inputs through a mental filter that favors dramatic information. Thus, we tend to have an exaggerated and overly-negative view of the world, which creates unnecessary fear and stress. Yet, only 7% of the people surveyed got that right the majority believed that the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has remained the same, or has almost doubled. For example, in the last 20 years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has almost halved. He discovered that people generally believe that the world is getting worse, when facts and data show that the world is getting better. poverty, health, environment) to thousands of people worldwide. Over the years, Rosling has been presenting questions about global trends (e.g. In our Factfulness summary, we’ll explain the 10 key mental filters and how to recognize/manage them to develop a fact-based worldview, to avoid unnecessary stress and improve our ability to make sound decisions.įor the full details, examples and tips, do get a copy of the book, or get a detailed overview with our complete book summary bundle. In Factfulness, Hans Rosling presents 10 dramatic instincts that distort our perceptions, as well as detailed facts and statistics about the real state of our world today. When we’re asked simple questions about global trends, we systematically get the answers wrong and see the world to be much worse than it really is. Most people have grossly inaccurate views of the world we live in.

Rosling factfulness