VILLAGE EARTH

There's quite a story that goes with this "Village Earth" data.  It seems that the first version that made its way around cyberspace was attributed to an academic at Stanford University, but he never claimed authorship but said he was only forwarding it to others with his automatic address label included.  Then more research found the original author to have been a deceased scholar, Donella H. Meadows, former professor at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.  What isn't clear is exactly where the original numbers came from.  So a few others went to work finding those numbers. Inspired by this original attempt to provide a perspective on the distribution of wealth, power and standard of living around the world are the following date based on readily available sources as noted below.  

If all the world were reduced to a village of only 100 people, you would find ...

60 Asians
12 Europeans
13 Africans
15 from the Western Hemisphere (9 Latin Amer. /  5 No. Amer. / 1 Oceanian)[1]

50-50 female to male[2]

80 would be non-white / 20 would be white[3]

67 would be non-Christian / 33 would be Christian[4]

20 people would earn 89% of the entire world's wealth[5]

25 would live in substandard housing[6]

17 would be unable to read[7]

13 would suffer from malnutrition[8]

1 would die within the year / 2 would give birth within the year[9]

2 would have a college education[10]

4 would own a computer[11]

 

[1] Source: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, "World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision."

[2] Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census International Data Base, Table 094: Midyear Population by Age and Sex 2001.

[3] Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census International Data Base, Table 001: Total Midyear Population 2001, assuming the populations of South America , Asia , and Africa are "non-white" and those of North America , Europe , and Oceania are "white."

[4] Source: Britannica Book of the Year 1999, "Religious Population of the World, 1998," reprinted at infoplease.com, using numbers from the "Christians" heading only for the Christian percentage.

[5] Source: The International Herald Tribune, February 5, 1999 , cited in the World Income Inequality table.

[6] Source: Habitat for Humanity International, "Why Habitat is Needed."

[8] Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization report, cited at OBGYN.net.

[9] Source: U.S. Census Bureau, World Vital Events Per Time Unit 2001.

[10] Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, World Education Indicators, Gross Enrollment Ratio by Sex.

[11] Source: UN Human Development Indicators, "Access to Information and Communications 1995."