We live in a world where change is unstoppable. Mass population migrations to new megacities filled with towering skyscrapers and sprawling slums, hunger for fuel and food, unpredictable climate change… all in a world where the population is still growing. Should we be worried, should we be afraid? How do we make sense of all this?
Seven billion people now live on our planet. Isn’t it beautiful? When some people think about the world and their future, they panic, while others prefer not to think about it at all, but in this documentary, Professor Hans Rosling shows you how things really are.
Rosling is a statistician who shows you the world in a whole new way. He’ll tell you how the world’s population is changing, and what today’s data tell us about the future of the world we live in. There is no doubt that we face enormous challenges, but the good news is that the future may not be so bleak, and humanity is already better than many of you think.
Many people think that population growth is out of control, some even call it a population bomb, but are they right? Most of the population growth in recent years has occurred in Asian countries such as Bangladesh, which tripled in Rosling’s lifetime from 50 to more than 150 million people. It is now one of the most densely populated countries in the world.
However, Bangladeshis, both urban and rural, are very concerned about family size. There has been a cultural shift away from extended families and has had real success in reducing fertility, the number of babies born to each woman. In just 40 years, the number of children per family in Bangladesh has increased from 7 to 2.2. But is it only in Bangladesh? According to Rosling’s count, the trend is global. In 1963, the world averaged 5 babies per woman… today’s average is 2.5.
