Village of 100

Exploring rural and urban populations and our world as a village of 100

Welcome to Bryce’s Blog, a place for people who are curious, like to learn and want to grow. This Substack seeks to encourage, enlighten and entertain. I strive to help you connect to yourself, to your community and to the world around.

This week we’re going big picture and exploring the people we share this small blue planet 🌎 with. Thank you for reading. If you’re not yet subscribed, you can do that here:

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Population

The human population of planet earth🌏 reached eight billion in mid-November 2022 according to the United Nations. Someone has even built a live population counter.

Rural to Urban

Over time, more and more of us have been migrating to urban areas, though many continue to live in rural areas. In the United States, approximately 80% of the population now lives in urban areas (which comprise only 3% of the land area) per the US Census. Somewhat surprising to me, the American West is the most urban region of the US (with 88.9% of the population residing in urban areas based on the 2020 US Census). Knowing we have a global audience, I’m curious how would you characterize where you live?

Have you always lived in the type of setting you do today? If you’ve moved from one type to the other (rural to urban or urban to rural), I would love to hear your impressions.

Our World in Data has a wonderful timeseries visualization that shows how rural/urban populations have changed from 1500 to today and are forecasted to change through 2050. It’s absolutely worth a quick detour to watch (link above, then select the play ▶ icon in lower left corner of the map). Here is a snapshot for 2023:

Source: Our World in Data

The world’s largest city today, home to more than 37 million people, is Tokyo, Japan (pictured below).

Photo of Tokyo, Japan by Takashi Miyazaki on Unsplash

Village of 100

Have you ever thought about what the world would look like if it were a village of 100? For many years, I had a letter-sized piece of paper tacked to the wall above my desk at work that spoke to this. I lost it in a move somewhere along the way. While I no longer recall who first sent it to me or on what website I found it, I still remember the impact it had on me.

The facts it contained were quite striking and I looked at it often. In preparing to write this piece, I did a little research and discovered that it had first appeared in print in 1990 in an article written by a professor at Dartmouth named Donella Meadows (source). Here is a link to the original version (which I would argue is still the best version).

While others saw world development on a fatal collision course with nature, Donella stood adamantly as a force of scientifically reinforced optimism. Donella worked to shift mindsets and to help build the awareness and educate others about what an individual could do to help manage complex environmental, social and economic systems of which we are all a part. (source)

A bit like the backstory to the sunscreen song which I wrote about earlier this year, the backstory here is fascinating, too. I can’t tell it better so am referencing the source account here:

In 1992, Donella Meadows was being interviewed on National Public Radio about her State of the Village article and other work. The interview caught the attention of David Copeland, member of Value Earth, an East Coast based environmental group. He had just recently been asked to produce a poster for the 1992 Earth Summit being held that year in Rio de Janeiro. David had caught the interview while driving home one evening, pulled over to write down everything he could about Donella Meadows with the intent to reproduce these statistics for the Earth Summit poster. David tracked down Donella Meadows through a persistent series of phone calls and received the “yes” he needed. Donella’s statistics describing
the world as 1000 people were subsequently published and distributed on 50,000 posters during the 1992 Earth Summit. The poster also featured an image of the planet Earth from space. Throughout the conference, the information was shared on an international level. Yankee Publishing reproduced Donella’s statistics in the Old Farmers Almanac of that same year.

Also in 1992, the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV) of Madison Wisconsin, published an educational curriculum, entitled “Unheard Voices: Celebrating Cultures of the Developing World.” The curriculum was an expansion of a popular international calendar featuring photos and artwork from various countries served by the Peace Corps accompanied by statistical information on each country. A Biden-Pell grant for developmental education that year allowed the team at RPCV, headed by Nancy Westbrook, to author this educational curriculum intended for wide circulation throughout the educational community. They ensured this by opening the copyright to permit not-for-profit reproduction and distribution of their curriculum free of charge and without permission from the authors. The curriculum lists a statistical outline representing the world as a village, similar to that one found in the article written by Donella Meadows though in Westbrook’s version, the number of 1000 people representing the world population was reduced to 100. This is the first copyrighted document we found that did so. After the publication of that curriculum, various websites reproduced the statistics as they appeared in the curriculum on their websites and listed “Unheard Voices: Celebrating Cultures of the Developing World” as their source. By February 2001, electronic versions of the Global Village idea had circulated so widely and sparked enough interest that The Daily Mail, one of Britain's largest newspapers, ran an article about the list of statistics, citing it as “author unknown.”

It was around that time that I first learned of and printed that copy that hung over my desk for so many years.

We asked ourselves, what do we really know about the people with whom we share the planet and why should we care about them, or more to the point, how do we express our care? We recognized that as a result of looking at the world population as a village of 100 people, we could better come to know our world neighbors, we could gain greater understanding of some of the issues that affect the planet we all share, and we could learn more about what it means to be a global citizen.

-Carolyn Jones (source)

How well do you know the people of the world? Let’s explore together, shall we?

Photo by Antoine Plüss on Unsplash

If the world were 100 people

In 2016, 100people.org updated the numbers from a 1992 version and it is this updated version that is the source for what is shared below. (I personally find the original 1990 version to be more impactful because it goes into more detail and would encourage those so interested to read it).

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

👩Gender

50 would be female

50 would be male

🧓Age

25 would be children
There would be 75 adults,
9 of whom would be 65 and older

🌏Geography

There would be:
60 Asians
16 Africans
14 people from the Americas
10 Europeans

⛪Religion

31 Christians
23 Muslims
16 people who would not be aligned with a religion
15 Hindus
7 Buddhists
8 people who practice other religions

🦜Language

12 would speak Chinese
6 would speak Spanish
5 would speak English
4 would speak Hindi
3 would speak Arabic
3 would speak Bengali
3 would speak Portuguese
2 would speak Russian
2 would speak Japanese
60 would speak other languages

📚Literacy

86 would be able to read and write; 14 would not

Photo by Lavi Perchik on Unsplash

🎓Education

7 would have a college degree

💻Internet access

40 would have an Internet connection

Photo by Giovanni Gagliardi on Unsplash

🏡Housing

78 people would have a place to shelter them
from the wind and the rain, but 22 would not

👩‍⚕️Health

1 would be dying of starvation
11 would be undernourished
22 would be overweight

91 would have access to safe drinking water
9 people would have no clean, safe water to drink

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

What surprised you the most?

Progress

There has been some progress over time, but there is more work to do.

Perhaps most striking is the 7x increase in college education:

In 1992:

1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer

By 2016:

7 would have a college degree
40 would have an Internet connection

More people have access to housing but still too many do not:

In 1992:

80 people would live in substandard housing

75 people would have some supply of food and a place to shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 25 would not.

By 2016:

78 people would have a place to shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 22 would not

The global food supply and diet have evolved in ways both good and bad. Fewer are undernourished but more are overweight.

In 1992:

50 would suffer from malnutrition
20 would be undernourished
1 would be dying of starvation
15 would be overweight

By 2016:

1 would be dying of starvation
11 would be undernourished
22 would be overweight

And more people now have access to clean, safe water, but 771 million still do not:

In 1992:

17 people would have no clean, safe water to drink

By 2016:

9 people would have no clean, safe water to drink

If something here has pulled on your heartstrings, if even a little, please listen to that and find a way to take action. There are many good charities and organizations doing important work in these areas and, together, we can continue to improve outcomes.

🎵 Media Embed

There are many video variations on the Village of 100 online. Most feel educational (this one is the best one of that type I watched). If you prefer an emotional feel, NorthHighVideo created a video montage called If the World was a Village of 100 People set to the song Someday by Rob Thomas.

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Wherever you are, pause for a moment and reflect on our global village.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

I hope you have a great weekend!

Be well,

-Bryce