Sources for data shown in DON´T PANIC

DON´T PANIC, is a one-hour documentary film produced by Wingspan Productions for This World on BBC2 and others. The film covers world population, income distribution and the use of fossil fuel. The presenter, Professor Hans Rosling, is the co-founder of Gapminder Foundation, and Gapminder also supplied the data shown in the program and the educational concepts on which the program’s graphics are based.

The video can be found here.

The film contains 12 different graphic data presentations. This document list below the sources of the data used in each of these presentations.  Where possible the link to data sources is given as well as brief summaries of how Gapminder´s  work in merging, curating and rounding-up the numbers to enable clear visualization of major global trends.

 

1. The changing size of the world population from 10 million in 10,000 BC to 7 billion in 2012

The estimates for the time period up to 1950 are mainly based on

Atlas of the World Population History. McEvedey C, Jones R. Penguin 1978, and Biraben JN, An Essay Concerning Mankind’s Evolution, Population, Selected Papers, Dec 1980, Table 2.

The estimates for the period from 1950 up to the present are mainly from “World Population Prospect: The 2012 revision”, published by UN Population Division in 2013 http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm

 

2. The average number of babies born per woman (total fertility rate) and lifespan (life expectancy at birth) in Bangladesh and in all countries of the world from 1963 up to 2012

This link take you to the interactive bubble graph called “Gapminder World” with the above indicators pre-selected:  www.bit.ly/17e5QVc

The data for each indicator are compiled from various sources, and you find information by clicking on the data sheet symbol at the beginning of each axis.

Fertility rate: //www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd008/

Life expectancy:  //www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd004/

Population: //www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd003/

 

3. UK public knowledge  about the average number of babies born per woman in Bangladesh

The source is from a web-survey – the first of its kind –  that was done by Gapminder in collaboration with two survey companies as described in the “Highlights” document published here (question 6):

//www.gapminder.org/news/highlights-from-ignorance-survey-in-the-uk/

 

4. Average number of babies born per women in the world and proportion of these babies that died before growing up to become parents themselves in 1800, 1960 and at present

The details of the surviving off-spring is based on the following:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ArtujvvFrPjVdGdFWmhqOEVXcUZha1hJWXAtWHlDSFE&gid=1

Chance of survival to 35 years of age were calculated for each country-year by selecting a model life table which matched the life expectancy for that country-year. This chance were multiplied with the total fertility rate for that country-year. The estimates utilized the following data.

Gapminder life expectancy:   //www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd004/

Gapminder total fertility rate:  //www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd008/

World population prospect Model Life table:  (UN general, females) http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Model-Life-Tables/download-page.html

 

5. Projection of the size of the world population as well as the number of children aged 0-14 in the world from 1800 to 2012 and the projection up to 2100

The estimates for the time period up to 1950 are mainly based on

Atlas of the World Population History. McEvedey C, Jones R. Penguin 1978, and Biraben JN, An Essay Concerning Mankind’s Evolution, Population, Selected Papers, Dec 1980, Table 2.

The estimates for the period from 1950 up to the present  are mainly from and and for future projections are entierly from “World Population Prospect: The 2012 revision”, published by UN Population Division in 2013 http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm

 

6. The big inevitable fill-up of adults showing present and projected age distribution of the world population in 15 years age group and rounded-up to the nearest full billion

The source is “World Population Prospect: The 2012 revision”, published by UN Population Division in 2013

http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm.

 

7. Distribution of present world population as well as projected world population for years 2050 and 2100

The countries of the world are divided into four regions:  the Americas; Europe (including Turkey, the nations in Caucasus, and the whole of Russia); Africa; and Asia; with population number rounded up to the nearest one billion.

The source is the last “World Population Prospect: The 2012 revision”, published by UN Population Division in 2013

http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm.

 

8. The range of average income per person between each of the world´s seven billions when ranked from lowest to highest income and expressed in purchasing power parity dollar.

The income distribution within countries is based on data that is yet only partly published made available by the work of:  Van Zanden JL, Foldvari P, Van Leeuwen B, Baten J. The changing shape of Global Inequality – exploring a new dataset http://ideas.repec.org/p/ucg/wpaper/0001.html .

Some additions & modifications are done by Gapminder and this is a work in progress. The rough rounded numbers are based on the population and GDP per capita in Purchasing Power Parity USD adjusted and corrected for inflation with base year 2005 from the default graph in Gapminder World  www.gapminder.org/world

GDP/capita in PPP:  //www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd001/

Population: //www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd003/

 

9. UK public knowledge in the UK about the percentage of adult literacy in the world population

The source is from a web-survey – the first of its kind –  that was done by Gapminder in collaboration with two survey companies as described in the “Highlights” document published here (question 2):

//www.gapminder.org/news/highlights-from-ignorance-survey-in-the-uk/

 

10. Life expectancy &  GDP/capita in purchasing power parity for all countries from 1800 up to 2012.

The data sources are those used in the default graph in www.gapminder.org/world

The data for each indicator compiled from various sources, and to find information on this you click on the data sheet symbol at the beginning of each axis.

 

11. Income distribution of the populations in America, Europe (countries as in presentation 7), Africa and Asia from 1963 to 2012

The main source is: Van Zanden JL, Foldvari P, Van Leeuwen B, Baten J. The changing shape of Global Inequality – exploring a new dataset  http://ideas.repec.org/p/ucg/wpaper/0001.html

 

12. The estimated percentage of the global fossil fuel consumption used by each of the world´s 7 billion when ranked according to the income of each billion.

The main source of the use of fossil fuel is from International Energy Agency;

http://data.iea.org/IEASTORE/DEFAULT.ASP

The distribution across the seven billion have been done using country data for population and GDP/capita as referred to above, except for China for which data on each of five income quintiles were used and fossil fuel consumption was distributed between these quintiles assuming that fuel use related to income level in china as it does in the world as a whole based on national data.

 

General note: At Gapminder we are continuously updating our data. Hence, some of the data you see might be based on an earlier revision of our data. We compile and curate data to make major global trends easy to understand. We strongly advice against using our compiled and curated data from different sources for analytic or official purposes. As we do considerable simplifications and gap-filling in order to gain in understanding we welcome critique, comments and advice re the data we have used.

Stockholm 6 Nov 2013  by Hans Rosling,

mail:   [email protected]