Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Rosling criticizes the notion of dividing the world into the "developed world" and the "developing world" by calling it an outdated view. He shows that today most countries are "developed" and the others are not how developing countries were when the term became popular. Instead, he offers a four category model based on income per person (adjusted for price differences):

1. Level 1: less than $2 a day
2. Level 2: $2–$8 a day
3. Level 3: $8–$32 a day
4. Level 4: $32+ a day

He says that the a majority of the countries in the world are on Level 2 or Level 3. A select few countries are on Level 1 and Level 4.

The book also stresses that many people think the world is getting worse when, in fact, it is not. The survey at the beginning states that with over 10,000 poll recipients 80% knew less about the world than "chimps" would have, i.e. they do worse than random guessing. That, the authors claim, shows that the media systematically skew data and trends and select stories to make people think that the world is getting worse.

However, Christian Berggren, a Swedish professor of industrial management, has questioned those claims and suggested that Rosling's own thinking shows a bias towards Pollyannaism. Particularly, Berggren criticized the authors for understating the importance of the European migrant crisis, the environmental impacts of the Anthropocene, and continued global population growth.[6]