See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income | Anna Rosling Rönnlund

What does it look like when someone in Sweden brushes their teeth or when someone in Rwanda makes their bed? Anna Rosling Rönnlund wants all of us to find out, so she sent photographers to 264 homes in 50 countries (and counting!) to document the stoves, bed, toilets, toys and more in households from every income bracket around the world. See how families live in Latvia or Burkina Faso or Peru as Rosling Rönnlund explains the power of data visualization to help us better understand the world.

Check out more TED Talks:

The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more.

Follow TED on Twitter:
Like TED on Facebook:

Subscribe to our channel:

59 Comments on See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income | Anna Rosling Rönnlund

  1. So let me get this straight…you’re saying the more money you have the more and nicer crap you have??!! Brilliant! I’m shocked! Hopefully this incredibly surprising study got government funding.

    • Moritz Reihs I think it’s a very interesting and thorough project. Kinda fun in a pictorial way. But I think basically it could say the same thing comparing household incomes adjusted for local economic factors (as there would be differences just as there would be between a million dollar home in Napa and one in West Virginia) without comparing fingers to toothbrushes or shitholes to bidets and other components which basically all circle back to the correlation between income and standard of living. I think the most interesting part that was briefly touched on would have been where the participants place themselves on the poor/rich spectrum.

    • It’s more of where people believe they stand rather then where they actually stand. Also that ethnicity or region has very little to do with the way you live. The photos are there for an easier way to view as an individual with access to the internet. Gives it a more humane vibe and leaves nothing to the imagination. glad to see you missed the fundamental point of the speech.

    • Home Wall I do not think ANY individual is worth more or less than any other. I have however been to Haiti several times as well as to other countries and if you think Americans are racist you haven’t been to a good number of truly monolithic countries. Btw Haiti is an absolute paradise that has been turned into a true absolute shithole by political and economic corruption and a malignant suppression of opportunities and advancement of its people…and guess what…NOT by us. If you do go, don’t drink the water because most of it is contaminated by human waste and garbage. I don’t know about you but that’s my definition of a shithole.

  2. This wealth scale doesn’t seem to include millionaires or billionaires, or even just high-income middle class like you’d find in San Francisco. Really like the photos of basic living necessities across the globe, though.

  3. Interesting idea and project. But the presentation wasn’t thoroughly conclusive imho which leads to people misunderstanding the premise.

    • I’m sorry, I didn’t expect literally blind people watching this video.

      In the video she showed rooms which you couldn’t tell apart, bedrooms from Norway, India, Mexico and Nigeria that wouldn’t out of place in a single house, let alone single suburb.

      and if you can’t connect the dots, then it’s just proving her point even more

    • Thytos In the case of the students I have heard that people rank themselves between rich and poor because they actually look up and see people more well-off than themselves rather than looking back and seeing all the people that are less well-off. It would have been interesting to hear a little bit more on the point that you raised.

    • +666Tomato666 I’m pretty sure many people understood that part but there was no conclusion to this presentation. Yeah, she presents bedrooms from different regions, but she also explains in the beginning how the world is a very strange place based off of pictures from disease, cultural differences, terrorists, animals etc… and she tries to connect them with the assumptions we make about how people live based on income? With minimal correlation being present. Her thesis isn’t very accurate.

    • Junior she said, media portrays the rest of the world as vastly strange and distant, when in reality, if you sort them by income/wealth, you get a CLEAR picture of the world.

  4. The whole world is not ok at all and yes as she Said “strange” because who rule the world now are horrible evils they own the money and the media the internet to Brain wash the world and of course using the fake news to bring the wars and and divisions in every country to make the world live in chaos why not hiding a treatments and cures for the diseases I guess they did it in purpose we should wake-up it’s not too late.

  5. I just looked that website up and realized that my parents earn more than the family at the top end. So yeah I think it is lacking some “rich” families (I am upper middle class in germany)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*


Shares
Share This