I’m still recovering from the shock of a conversation with a high school senior a few weeks ago… when I was telling her about our adoption process in Haiti and about Haiti in general.  When I shared that most of the country does not have electricity…. and her response of “wow are there really places like that?”  Yes, dear there are.  And in my mind I’m hearing smacks from my imaginary face slap to her to wake up and get with reality. 

I found these stats on a blog and I’ve been thinking about them since.  Wanted to share them with you.  If this is true and it boiled down right now to 100 people in the world, I’d be one of 18 white people, 5 of only Americans…. and being one of those 5 Americans I would have control of 32% of the worlds wealth at my hands.  (that stuff is for a later post.  wow)

If the World Were a Village of 100 People

If we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this:

The village would have 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific

51 would be male, 49 would be female

82 would be non-white; 18 white

67 would be non-Christian; 33 would be Christian

80 would live in substandard housing

67 would be unable to read

50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation

33 would be without access to a safe water supply

39 would lack access to improved sanitation

24 would not have any electricity (And of the 76 that do
have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)

7 people would have access to the Internet

1 would have a college education

1 would have HIV

2 would be near birth; 1 near death

5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens

33 would be receiving –and attempting to live on– only 3% of the income of “the village”