Friday, July 15, 2005

The Global Village (?)

You must have seen something similar to the following in your emails:

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following.

There would be:
57 Asians

21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans

52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white

30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian

30 would be Christian

89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.

80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer


It sounds kind of plausible and emphasizes the have and the have-not of the world pretty nicely, but is it true?

According to this urban legend page, there are a few inconsistencies in the numbers above. You might want to check it out before passing on the email.

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