Test - Factfulness Quiz
Test - Factfulness Quiz
Test - Factfulness Quiz
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1. In all low-income countries across the world today, how many girls
finish primary school?
20%
40%
60%
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Low-income countries
Middle-income countries
High-income countries
Correct.
The majority of people live in middle-income countries. The definitions of the
three income groups are intentionally left out of the question since the aim of
Factfulness is to investigate how people interpret the term.
The World Bank divides countries into income groups based on gross national
income (GNI) per capita in current US dollars.
Low-income countries
Less than $1,005 GNI per capita
31 countries
Total population: 0.7 billion people
Middle-income countries
$1,006 to $12,235 GNI per capita
109 countries
Total population: 5.6 billion people
High-income countries
$12,236 or more GNI per capita
78 countries
Total population: 1.2 billion people
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Almost doubled
Almost halved
Correct.
The share of people living on less than $1.9/day fell from 34 percent in 1993 to
10.7 percent in 2013, according to the World Bank.
Extreme poverty is very di"cult to measure. The poorest people are mostly
subsistence farmers or destitute slum dwellers. These people have unpredictable
and constantly changing living conditions. Most live outside of the traditional
banking system so it is di"cult to gauge their earnings.
But even if the exact level of extreme poverty is uncertain, the trend direction is
not uncertain. We can trust that extreme poverty has fallen to at least half, if not
one-third.
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50 years
60 years
70 years
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5. There are 2 billion children in the world today, aged 0 to 15 years old.
How many children will there be in the year 2100, according to the
United Nations?
4 billion
3 billion
2 billion
Correct.
The UN Population Division predicts that the number of children in the year 2100
will not be higher than it is today. The UN experts (i.e. the demographers of the
UN Population Division) publish new o"cial population forecasts every second
year in their publication World Population Prospect. They work with multiple
alternative scenarios. The one they think is most probable is called the ‘medium-
fertility variant’, which falls between the highest and lowest predictions of fertility
and mortality decline worldwide.
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6. The UN predicts that by 2100 the world population will have increased by
another 4 billion people. What is the main reason?
Correct!
The correct answer is B. In their forecasts, the UN experts calculate that just 1
percent of the population increase will come from 0.37 billion more children(age
0 to 14).
69 percent from 2.5 billion more adults (age 15 to 74). And 30 percent from 1.1
billion more very old people (age 75 and older). The data comes from UN
Population statistics. See Gapminder Question 6.
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7. How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change
over the last hundred years?
Since disasters vary from year to year, Factfulness compares ten-year averages. In
the last ten years (2007–2016), on average 80,386 people were killed by natural
disasters per year.
Compare this with 100 years earlier (1907–1916), when on average 325,742 were
killed by natural disasters per year. People today have 75% less chance of being
killed by a natural disaster than their grand-parents or great grand-parents.
The huge decline in disaster deaths would be even more striking if two other
major global changes were also taken into account. First, the number of people
has increased by four, which calls for counting disaster deaths per capita. 1907–
1916, there were 181 disaster deaths per million people. 2007–2016, the number
was 11. The relative number has dropped to 6 percent of what it was 100 years
ago. Second, 100 years ago the communication technologies for reporting
disasters were very primitive, compared to the monitoring of today, which means
that many catastrophes must have gone unrecorded or been underreported.
The International Disaster Database includes death toll estimates for 8,969
disasters recorded worldwide since 1900. All known emergency events have been
categorized as follows: Animal accident, Complex disasters, Drought, Earthquake,
Epidemic, Extreme temperature, Flood, Fog, Impact, Insect infestation, Landslide,
Mass movement (dry), Storm, Volcanic activity, Wildfire. See Gapminder Question 7.
Data Sources
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8. There are roughly 7 billion people in the world today. Where do they
live?
1 billion in the Americas, 1 billion in Europe, 1 billion in Africa, 4 billion in Australia and
Asia
1 billion in the Americas, 1 billion in Europe, 2 billion in Africa, 3 billion in Australia and
Asia
2 billion in the Americas, 1 billion in Europe, 1 billion in Africa, 3 billion in Australia and
Asia
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20%
50%
80%
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9 years
6 years
3 years
Correct.
The correct answer is A. Worldwide, women aged 25 to 34 have an average of 9.09
years of schooling, and men have 10.21. This is based on Health Data estimates
from 188 countries.
Women aged 25 to 29 have an average of 8.79 years of schooling, and men 9.32
years, according to Barro and Lee (2013) estimates from 146 countries in 2010. As
always, there is uncertainty in these kinds of estimates, but there is no reason to
assume that the di#erence between genders is nearly as large as what people
think.
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11. In 1996, tigers, giant pandas, and black rhinos were all listed as
endangered. How many of these three species are more critically
endangered today?
Two of them
One of them
None of them
The tiger (Panthera tigris) was classified as Endangered (EN) in 1996, and it still is;
see IUCN Red List. According to a statement from WWF in 2016, the number of
wild tigers is increasing: “After a century of decline, tiger numbers are on the rise.
At least 3,890 tigers remain in the wild, but much more work is needed to protect
this species that’s still vulnerable to extinction.” See also Platt (2016) in Scientific
American reporting on the rising tiger numbers.
According to IUCN Red List[2], the giant panda was classified as Endangered (EN)
in 1996, but in 2015, new assessments of increasing wild populations resulted in a
change of classification to the less critical status of Vulnerable (VU).
The black rhino was classified as Critically Endangered (CR) and still is. The
International Rhino Foundation states that wild populations are slowly increasing,
estimating the population at 5,042–5,455 in their annual report for 2016. And the
slow increase remains in March 2018, according to updates from the Rhino
Foundation. See Gapminder Question 11.
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12. How many people in the world have some access to electricity?
20%
50%
80%
Correct.
A majority of the world population, 85.3 percent, had some access to the
electricity grid in their countries. The term “access” can be confusing and is not
clearly defined. In some extreme cases, households may experience an average of
60 power outages per week and still be listed as “having access to electricity.” The
question, accordingly, talks about “some” access. For the measures of access to
electricity. GTF is a collaboration between the World Bank and the International
Energy Agency; see www.gapm.io/xgtf. See Gapminder Question 12.
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13. Global climate experts believe that, over the next 100 years, the
average temperature will...
get warmer
get colder
Correct.
“Climate experts” refers to the 274 authors of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report
(AR5), published in 2014 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here
is what the panel of experts predicts:
Surface temperature is projected to rise over the 21st century under all assessed
emission scenarios. It is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last
longer, and that extreme precipitation events will become more intense and frequent
in many regions. The ocean will continue to warm and acidify, and global mean sea
level to rise.