Gapminder

Gapminder

Hans Rosling gave smart people a quiz about global poverty and health. They failed worse than chimps pressing random buttons.

Why? Because everyone's brain is stuck in 1975. "Rich West, poor rest" doesn't exist anymore. Vietnam is ahead of Pakistan. Thailand beats South Africa. The world moved on from the biases. Collective knowledge didn't.

Gapminder shows this with animated bubbles.

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Why this matters for IR essays:

Most foreign policy analysis operates on mental maps from 1990. The "developed West vs. developing rest" framework. The assumption that poverty is intractable. That population growth is out of control.

Gapminder shows you what actually happened.

On development aid: "Between 1990-2020, extreme poverty fell from 36% to 9% globally—but this wasn't primarily due to Western aid. China lifted 800 million people out of poverty through industrial policy. Vietnam's GDP per capita rose from $100 to $3,700. The effective development model wasn't aid dependency—it was export-led growth."

For Political Science majors:

Challenge the assumptions in your essay prompt. If it asks about "helping developing nations," show that many have already developed. If it assumes endless population growth, show the data on fertility collapse.