What is the most surprising thing about viewing global progress through Trendalyzer software, as compared with looking at the more familiar charts and tables of economic data?
Western Europe and the United States have a stagnant view of the rest of the world. It’s like the view England used to have of the United States when it was a colony. But the United States emerged as the world’s power. Now Asia is regaining its position as the world’s power. The world will be normal again; it will be an Asian world, as it always was except for these last thousand years. They are working like hell to make that happen, whereas we are consuming like hell. But because of our preconceived ideas, we don’t fully understand these global trends until we look at the data.
The concept of the Western world and the developing world is the main obstacle to understanding. Most people know only two types of countries, Western and third world, whereas I know 200 types of countries. I know each country’s gross national product, educational level, child mortality, main export products, and so on. We have a continuum of life conditions in the world. The life expectancy in Vietnam today is the same as it was in the United States in 1975. That made Al Gore jump onto the stage and say: “I didn’t know that. I didn’t have the slightest idea.” And that was Al Gore—you can imagine other politicians.
Now that Google has taken over the development of Trendalyzer, what is your next project?
An initiative called Beyond MDG (Beyond the Millennium Development Goals). We want to know: How can we better measure and communicate the conditions of the poorest 1 to 2 billion people in the world? Instead of talking about the third world or developing countries, we’re talking about these specific fellow human beings. Compared with the burden of disease, disasters are a minor health problem. The tsunami in the Indian Ocean caused the equivalent of one month of children’s pneumonia deaths in the world. There is a tsunami every month that could be cured by penicillin, for which there are no images and no reporting.
What are the biggest challenges in global health and poverty right now?
The 1 to 2 billion poorest in the world, who don’t have food for the day, suffer from the worst disease: globalization deficiency. The way globalization is occurring could be much better, but the worst thing is not being part of it. For those people, we need to support good civil societies and governments. We need to make public investments and private markets work together. We also need fair trade. You can’t have one country subsidize produce that is a matter of life and death for another country. If Niger can export its cotton and grow its economy, that’s much better than giving it aid.
But when we give economic aid, what is the best way to do it?
First, it must be steady. Listen to serious politicians from the poorest countries, and they say that they cannot implement necessary programs with aid because it is so unpredictable. Suddenly and without warning, it would be taken away. Second, it must be oriented toward the needs of the poor, not the perceptions of the rich. Jeffrey Sachs did a calculation that basic health care in Africa costs $30. You have a person there with $10, you give him $2, and then you ask why it doesn’t work. We have to be realistic.
You also talk about developing clear goals and means for development. Can you explain that concept?
The goals are paradise. Get the means in order, and the goals will follow. We know kids should go to school—make it possible. Subsidize teacher salaries steadily. I asked a child in Africa, “How do you stay so healthy?” She replied, “Grandmother can read.” Getting girls into school—we think that makes a girl healthier five years later. What really matters is that it makes her a better grandmother 45 years later. Support governments that want to put law and order in their countries. If they aren’t brutal, support them. We can’t get into nitty-gritty detail with the policies of other countries. Focus on the means, and let the goals come when they come.
When it comes to eliminating poverty, you say, “The seemingly impossible is possible.” What makes you so optimistic?
Length of life is improving. Today we take for granted that death belongs to old age. We have controlled the major diseases, and now life expectancy is up to 70 or 80 years in Asia, the Arab world, and most of Latin America. There are places where you still have low life expectancy, but overall there has been a major change. And people of all religions accept family planning. They have two to three children per family. Twenty-five years ago, the global agenda was the population explosion. Now it’s solved. Education is there. We have a higher and higher proportion of children who go to school and become a part of the modern world. And we have economic growth in the world, on average, so we can supply our material needs much better than in the past. A good world for everyone is not a given, but it’s within our reach.
