Chris Ball

Allow me to enthuse about Gapminder a little, and this presentation.

Some interesting queries:

• fertility rate in Iran — Iran is the only country in the world to require couples to take a class on modern contraception before receiving a marriage license, in order to reduce the fertility rate, but they didn’t start doing that until 1986.
• GDP per capita and child survival in Malaysia and the US — they have the same child survival rate, even though the GDP per capita in Malaysia is $9k and in the US it’s $40k.
• fertility rate in Mexico — a drop from 6 children per woman in 1975 to 2.2 children per woman in 2004.
• life expectancy in Botswana — shows how massively HIV has hit.

There’s more on Gapminder’s website.