RSSeNEWS to be determined...

Public health expert and statistician Hans Rosling has predicted the exact date when China and India will catch up with the West in per capita income; 27 July 2048, which is also his 100th birthday.

Speaking at the 2010 annual conference of TED, the Swedish statistician said that climate change, war and continuing inequality within and between countries were all factors that could influence the exact date. He worried whether the West would accept the rise of the Asian economies and commented that war "always set back growth".

Wider access to health, education, infrastructure and electricity were required if social instability is to be avoided in China and India. Rosling said that in terms of health, Shanghai and Kerala have already matched or overtaken the US but Guizho and Maharashtra are a long way behind.

Rosling explained he hadn't focused on GDP, because forecasting when India (with a population of over a billion) would overtake the UK was "a piece of cake". He was more interested in when Asia would regain its dominant position as the "leading part of world, as it used to be for thousands of years".

Using the Gapminder software he co-developed, Rosling mapped the growth income per person against life expectancy in China, India, Japan, the UK and the US.

He chose 1858 as the base date. That year Queen Victoria  was the 'first to twitter', using the transatlantic telegraph cable to exchange messages with US President Buchanan; the Indian uprising against occupation was suppressed by the British army, which also defeated the Chinese in the second Opium War ; Japan had to sign the Harris treaty and accept trade on terms favourable for the US.

Rosling stressed the importance of national sovereignty, and showed how life expectancy increased faster in Japan from 1858 to 1949 than in India and China, which did not have it.

He illustrated how major events including the first World War, Spanish flu, World War Two, Indian independence in 1947, the emergence of modern China in 1949 and more recently market reforms were spurs to improvements in health. Just before revealing his date prediction he showed how financial bubbles – the dotcom, Lehman Bros and Northern Rock had set back income growth.

TED is a non-profit organisation devoted to 'ideas worth spreading'. Rosling is professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet and Director of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system, now owned by Google.

Watch Rosling's TED presentation