Book #40
Factfulness
By Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, & Ola Rosling
Factfulness by Hans Rosling had been recommended to me for years, and my 52-Book Reading Challenge has been the perfect excuse to finally pull it off my “To Be Read” shelf.
This book uses data mixed with human experience to challenge misconceptions that the world is worse than we think. It soothed some negativities in my mind, and has provided a factual lattice with which to view the world.
For me, it updated some old concepts and presented new ones that I had not encountered before. This is definitely a book that belongs on my “Books that I Should Read Again” shelf.
For now, I will talk about three insights that stood out to me that have improved the accuracy with which I view the world.
Refreshing Old Concepts
Developed & Developing Countries
Reading Factfulness actually made me rewrite part of my previous post on How to Give Up Plastic. In that post, I had mentioned differences in “developed” and “developing” countries’ plastic use.
Those were the terms that I grew up using, but with a modern lens, it feels like a clunky dichotomy. Rosling instead suggests 4 income-based classifications that better represent a country’s progression towards wealth, rather than the previous “us-vs-them” model. These are, roughly:
Rosling’s 4 Levels of Global Income
Level 1: People earn less than $2 per day. They live in extreme poverty, walk to get water everyday, eat the same meal everyday (or go hungry if there is no food), and often have many children.
Level 2: People earn between $2 and $8 per day. They can begin to afford necessities like shoes, a bicycle, a gas stove, chickens, and food they don’t grow themselves.
Level 3: People earn between $8 and $32 per day. They now have access to running water, a refrigerator, and a motorbike. Life becomes more stable and their children are more likely to finish high school.
Level 4: People earn more than $32 per day. They typically have more than 12 years of education, have flown on an airplane for vacation, have hot and cold water indoors, and can save to buy a car.
This model captures the idea that countries evolve and change, rather than hold a fixed position. It also deemphasizes the extremes, since most countries fall somewhere in the middle rather than at the poles.
Rosling also encourages writers to be specific about the differences they are referring to, rather than relying on previous broad, binary labels.
I ended up rewriting my statement to say:
“… our paths to solutions (for giving up plastic) will not be one-size-fits-all. For example, getting rid of single-use plastics for liquids might be one thing for countries with reliable access to clean drinking water, but potentially very different for countries without this.”
The new version is more cumbersome than the original, but also more accurate. It is an acknowledgment of complexity and moves the needle toward greater clarity and understanding.
Beyond giving me a clearer understanding and vocabulary for describing countries’ paths to wealth, this book also gave words to something that I have long noticed but struggled to articulate.
Defining Cultural Values: Depends Who You Ask
Factfulness describes how quickly and unevenly a country’s values can change. What one generation sees as a “cultural” value might, on closer inspection, be a patriarchal or traditional value- something historically tied to power structures rather than genuine cultural identity.
I had observed this myself. When I lived in an international college, I noticed that some residents would excuse certain behaviours by saying it was just a person’s culture. But then when I interacted with others from that culture- women, for example- I noticed that they didn’t share those behaviours at all.
So, I was confused. Whose culture were the men representing if even the women from their own communities didn’t adhere to it?
Similarly, the United States has historically prioritized the cultural value of freedom. However, many African Americans might not affirm this ideal based on treatment and lived experience.
It seems that a society’s cultural values can depend on who you ask. They are shaped by many factors such as age, sex, race, income level, lived experience, and more.
Rosling’s data-driven lens helped me see that what we often call “unchangeable cultural norms” are, in fact, highly adaptable once living conditions, education, or income levels shift. People and societies are more dynamic than we realize. And narratives about “modern” or “backward” societies can flatten complex human realities.
Numbers & People
“The world cannot be understood without numbers, but the world cannot be understood with numbers alone.”
– Hans Rosling, Factfulness
My bachelor’s degree is in mathematics and my master’s degree is in a field that uses mathematical modelling to “optimize” systems. I thought those degrees would make me revere numbers, but I left feeling disenchanted. Numbers often failed to reflect reality.
During my 52-Book Reading Challenge, I have really enjoyed the abundance of words- insights, ideas, and personal narratives- over raw data. There’s still plenty of data in these books, of course. Many of them are grounded in abundant research, but it’s often conveyed through narrative and human experience, not numbers on a page. The dynamic is often reversed in data-heavy fields.
Rosling emphasizes that both data and firsthand experience are necessary for understanding. A solution for one person might be a problem for another, and vice versa.
In fact, I think numbers only have value if the people behind them are allowed to tell their story- it should be a requirement. Otherwise numbers can become woefully misleading.
This duality of both numbers and narrative might not be possible immediately, but it should be strived for.
Imperfect Measurements, Valuable Information
Rosling notes that averages are a bad unit of measurement- but then often uses averages to demonstrate progress. As long as their limitations are acknowledged, I see this as valuable. Averages don’t show the whole picture, but they can illuminate meaningful trends.
For example, the author notes that 30-year-old men have spent 10 years in school, on average worldwide. Women of the same age have spent an average of 9 years in school.
This educational gender gap varies widely across income levels and countries. However, it is encouraging that those numbers are so similar.
But this number does not address lived realities. It makes me wonder questions like:
- are girls being given equal opportunity and attention in school as boys?
- do girls ever have to leave school due to period poverty?
- do girls ever have to leave school to do domestic labor?
- do girls more commonly experience toxic social dynamics than boys, such as sexual harassment or abuse?
Those are the types of questions that averages can gloss over.
Even so, the numbers mark a valuable- and hopeful- checkpoint as long as we don’t stop there.
Imperfect Progress Toward Greater Understanding
This book embodies its own ideology that progress can be celebrated while we simultaneously seek better solutions.
I am more hopeful- and more precise- in how I see the world. Accuracy and optimism can refine each other. Reading this book was a useful step in both grounding and growing my understanding of the world.
Have you ever read Factfulness? I’d love to hear which of Rosling’s ideas challenged your worldview- or made you see the world a little more clearly.
Messy Bun Book Lover
Factfulness by Hans Rosling is available here.
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