FACTS! Or why I should have studied engineering

So one of my abiding worries with my degree (basically Politics and Spanish) is that I fear that I will finish it without actually knowing anything new in any tangible sense. No matter how many times I tell myself "it's the transferable skills Charlie! The transferable skills!" the fact that I'm basically no better off knowledge-wise than a person who has the Guardian as their internet homepage is slightly disconcerting. One of the things I do to combat this anguish is to learn 'facts'. Here are some of the facts on topics about global development/poverty/health/inequity which I have accumulated, along with (often not original) sources. Some are 'classics'; others will perhaps surprise. In any case, in no particular order, enjoy:

1. Worldwide, maternal and child mortality both nearly halved between 1990 and 2012.
(Development Progress)

2. The global cost of containing violence or dealing with its consequences reached a staggering $9.5 trillion (11% of global GDP) in 2012.
(UN Dispatch)

3. Close to half of all international migrants settle in the developing world, including 10 percent in Africa.
(Washington Post)

4. Globally, deaths from tobacco use each year exceed the number of deaths from HIV/AIDs, TB, and malaria combined.
(Center for Global Development)

5. It is estimated that women in the Global South spend a cumulative 200 million hours a day collecting water.
(Think Africa Press)

6. An estimated $18.5 trillion is stashed in offshore tax havens. That’s $3 trillion more than the gross domestic product of the United States.
(Oxfam, Working for the Few)

7. One study finds that potatoes may have been responsible for 12% of the global increase in population between 1700 and 1900.
(Banerjee and Duflo, Poor Economics)

8. The net fiscal balance of overall immigration to the UK between 2001 and 2011 amounts therefore to a positive net contribution of about £25 billion, over a period over which the UK has run an overall budget deficit (both EEA and non-EEA).
(Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration)

9. The Uganda Demographic and Health Survey found that 39 per cent, more than one in three, women and girls aged 15-49 had experienced sexual violence during their lifetime.
(Amnesty)

10. From 1980 to 2008 in USA, the bottom 90% of taxpayers saw their inflation-adjusted pre-tax incomes grow for total increase of 1.9%. For the top 1%, it increased 2.35 times.
(Angus Deaton, The Great Escape)

11. To ‘top up’ the incomes of the 800m people worldwide living on less than $1 day would require the adults of Britain, France, Germany, Japan, USA to give $0.15 a day.
(Angus Deaton, The Great Escape)

12. Between 2005 and 2009, the typical African American in the USA lost 53% of her wealth.
(Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality)

13. World GDP per capita doubled to $180 between 15 000 years ago and 1750 AD, then in the following 250 years increased 37-fold.
(Eric Beinhocker, The Origin of Wealth)

14. 72% of the world's poor live in middle income countries.
(Owen Barder)

15. 59% of the variance in people's income can be explained by the country in which they live.
(Michael Clemens on Development Drums) 

A nice fact-based video on progress in global health from Development Progress; Video credit: Development Progress

ps. there's no such thing as an objective fact