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The world has changed

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Hans Rosling, a professor at the Karolinska Institute, has written an interesting column in DN today. According to him, many Swedes are not aware of the changes that have taken place in the world in recent decades. He refers to a survey in which Swedes give strikingly wrong answers.

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We are less responsive than a monkey

For example, Swedes believe that half the people in Tanzania can read (correct answer: 80 per cent), that a Vietnamese person lives for 55 years (correct answer: 75 years) and that women in Bangladesh give birth to 5 children (correct answer: 2.5 children). According to Rosling, we respond worse than a monkey (which should be able to guess 25 per cent correctly), and this can be explained by the fact that we respond with knowledge of what the world looked like 30 years ago.

Gapminder provides a map showing how long people live and how much they earn in different parts of the world.

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