IF THE WORLD WERE A VILLAGE OF 100 PEOPLE

Taken from:

http://www.mysterra.org/webmag/coup-de-coeur_en.html

the world today, more than 6 billion people live.



If this world were shrunk to the size of a village of 100 people, what would it look like?


59 would be Asian
14 would be American (North, Central and South)
14 would be African
12 would be European
1 would be from the South Pacific

50 would be women, 50 would be men


30 would be children, 70 would be adults.


70 would be nonwhite, 30 would be white


90 would be heterosexual, 10 would be homosexual


33 would be Christians
21 would be Moslems
15 would be Hindus
6 would be Buddhists
5 would be Animists
6 would believe in other religions
14 would be without any religion or atheist.


15 would speak Chinese, Mandarin
7 English
6 Hindi
6 Spanish
5 Russian
4 Arabic
3 Bengali
3 Portuguese


The other would speak Indonesian, Japanese,
German, French, or some other language.


In such a village with so many sorts of folks, it would be very important to learn to understand people different from yourself and to accept others as they are. Of the 100 people in this village:


20 are underonurished
1 is dying of starvation, while 15 are overweight.


Of the wealth in this village, 6 people own 59% (all of them from the United States), 74 people own 39%, and 20 people share the remaining 2%.


Of the energy of this village, 20 people consume 80%, and 80 people share the remaining 20%.
20 have no clean, safe water to drink.
56 have access to sanitation
15 adults are illiterate.
1 has an university degree.
7 have computers.


In one year, 1 person in the village will die, but in the same year, 2 babies will be born, so that at the year's end the number of villagers will be 101.


If you do not live in fear of death by bombardment, armed attack, landmines, or of rape or kidnapping by armed groups, then you are more fortunate than 20, who do.


If you can speak and act according to your faith and your conscience without harassment, imprisonment, torture or death, then you are more fortunate than 48, who can not.


If you have money in the bank, money in your wallet and spare change somewhere around the house, then you are among the richest 8.


If you can read this message, that means you are probably lucky!


(The statistics were derived from Donella Meadows "State of the Village Report" first published in 1990)

Actually reposting this even though it is old but good information for a different perspective.  Not much has changed in the intervening years, other than the income distribution is now more worse.  I recently heard that the top 400 people control as much wealth as the bottom halk (150 million) of the United States.  I remembered this because of my earlier post about warren-buffet-wants-to-pay-more-taxes: my tax idea, and the 10 men go out for a beer tax explaination.