| A Summary of the World
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 like this:
There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from North and South America, and 8 Africans.
51 would be female; 49 would be male.
70 would be non-white, 30 would be white.
70 would be non-Christian; 30 would be Christian.
50% of the world's wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people, and all 6 people would be from the U.S.
80 would live in substandard housing.
70 would be unable to read.
50 would suffer from malnutrition.
One would be near death; one would be near birth.
Only one would have a college education.
No one would own a computer.
When one considers our world from such an incredibly compressed perspective, the need for both tolerance and understanding becomes glaringly apparent.
Imagine our species as a village of 100 families.
Then, 65 families in our village are illiterate, and 90 do not speak English.
70 have no drinking water at home.
80 have no members who have ever flown in an airplane.
Seven families own 60 percent of the land and consume 80% of all the available energy. They have all the luxuries.
Sixty families are crowded onto ten percent of the land.
Only one family has any member with a university education.
(Source: Carl Sagan: Billions and Billions - Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, 1997)
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