“The world my father told me about 50 years ago was a divided world,” says Hans Rosling, famed Swedish statistician and development expert, in a new video. Standing in the middle of one of his trademark graphs of development indicators, his body neatly splitting the data, he gestures: “In many people’s minds, the world still looks like this: developing and developed.”

“But it’s a myth,” he continues, “because the world has improved immensely in the last 50 years.”

“We are in the midst of a silent revolution,” said Ann Pawliczko, a senior technical advisor in the population and development branch at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), quoting former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “It is a revolution that extends well beyond demographics, with major economic, social, cultural, psychological, and spiritual implications.”

In a new book from the Wilson Center, Caryle Murphy asks how, while its neighbors face revolutions, Saudi Arabia has been able to “weather the storm of Arab youth discontent seemingly unscathed.”

To find out, Murphy went to the source, interviewing 83 young Saudis between the ages of 19 and 29 in the spring of 2012. She found that “they are by no means a revolutionary lot, preferring gradual, step-by-step change. They want change, but not at the cost of safety and security. Most favor more tolerance for diversity, including in the realm of religion.”

The original version of this article, by Rachel Yavinsky, appeared on the Population Reference Bureau’s Behind the Numbers blog.

After 45 minutes on Lake Victoria in a wooden fishing boat, my PRB colleague and I arrived on Busi Island, one of the Ugandan sites of the HOPE-LVB (Health of People and the Environment – Lake Victoria Basin) project. PRB, who partners on this project, came to Busi Island to see HOPE-LVB in action.

A majority of the world population now lives in urban settings, but many of the most rapidly growing cities are unprepared to accommodate their new citizens. Newly swollen municipalities in poor and institutionally fragile countries are especially disadvantaged by poor planning and management, deficient public services, and citizen insecurity.

The Wilson Center Policy Briefs are a series of short analyses of critical global issues facing the next administration that will run until inauguration day.

Seven billion people now live on Earth, only a dozen years after the global population hit six billion. But this milestone is not about sheer numbers. Demographic trends will significantly affect the planet’s resources and people’s security.

Despite progress over the years, Ethiopia’s Guraghe zone, located in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region, faces many development challenges. As senior monitoring and evaluation officer in the Guraghe People’s Self-help Development Organization (GPSDO), I have been working in this region for more than five years trying to reduce poverty and improve socio-economic development. The organization as a whole has been here for more than 50.

“When young people claim their right to education and health – including sexual and reproductive health – they increase their opportunities to become a powerful force for economic development and positive change,” said Nicole Gaertner, of UN Refugee Agency and the U.S. Department of State, quoting Secretary of State Hilary Clinton at the Wilson Center on December 13. [Video Below]