Health, Money & Sex in Sweden
About this GapCastIn the first GapCast from Gapminder, Professor Hans Rosling shows how economic growth, public health and sexual rights have changed in Sweden during 300 years. In only 6 minutes he shows life expectancy and GDP per capita of Sweden from 1709 to 2004. With trendalyzer graphics he compares historic Sweden with countries of today. 300 years of Swedish progress covers today’s disparity from Sierra Leone to Japan. Wheras education of midwives started in 1709 it was only in the 1970′es that family planning was included in their training. Sexual rights came late in Sweden compared to progress in health and wealth. |
It’s interesting when he attempts to make out how everyone is equal that he uses stats displaying inequality! E.g. on this one he talks about how Sweden in 1800 was like Mozambique today - very poor etc. His graph shows massive inequalities, in this case, in GDP per capita. However, skip it to the videos where he talks about ‘equality’ and he will ‘out-contextualise’ some information so his graph makes everything look nice and equal.
Unfortunately, the correlation he tries to make between sex education/family planning and increased life expectancy is not born out by his data. In fact, the greatest gains in life expectancy were made in the 19th century, and correlate identically with most other countries in Western Europe. If we accept his premise that sex education and family planning are necessary concomitants for high incomes and long life, then the data flatly contradict him, since life expectancy increases in Sweden are relatively flat throughout the 20th century, and almost absolutely flat for the period from the 1930s through today. Swedish income increases considerably, particularly after Sweden’s free market economic reforms of the 1980s, but Swedes aren’t living that much longer. And, worse in the long run, there are far fewer Swedes.