When will we learn that it's fairer to be middling?

Soccer in the UK is very expensive to watch in the stadium and not cheap on satellite TV either. As a result, considering its obvious visual limitations, radio commentary is surprisingly popular again – as is the post-match phone-in, when disgruntled fans vent their spleen.

Somewhere underlying the sentiment of most callers is the idea that their team should by rights be top of the league, and would be there, too, but for the failings of inept managers, poor players, purblind referees or lack of goalmouth ambition.

Few fans are prepared to consider second, third, fourth, let alone fifteenth place in the league as success. It’s first or nothing.

One of the most successful science podcasts of 2007 – stay with me on this! – was a TEDtalk by Hans Rosling, Professor of Global Health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, called Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen [1].

In its travels across the online universe, Rosling's talk not only brought to life some interesting data, it also introduced many to TED’s smart use of the new media and to Gapminder – a non-profit set up by Rosling to promote use and understanding of information about social, economic and environmental development. (The name Gapminder echoes from the plaintive automated warning to London tube passengers to 'mind the gap' when they step off subway trains.)

What’s striking about Rosling's presentation is how far the data are at odds with the preconceptions of the Western mindset: that our world is one of small families and long lives, and that the Third World is one of large families and short lives. As Rosling's graphics demonstrate with some verve, these mistaken prejudices are based on 1960s data.

His TEDtalk is only 20 minutes long and words don't do the bubbly visual representations of the data justice. But one aspect of the changes of the last 40-odd years that it reveals deserves closer post-match scrutiny.

Since the Second World War, the countries making the greatest progress in child health have neither been the richest nor the poorest. They've been the ones in the middle. One of the most striking examples is the United Arab Emirates, where overall wealth has declined but child health has improved. By many more ordinary economic standards, the UAE has gone backwards, but, as far as children are concerned, the country has made big strides.

In the UK, the idea of moving backwards economically is unthinkable. Yet it's increasingly apparent that acceptance of lower than average income in favor of improved distribution of wealth might bring many benefits for children and families. (And one shouldn't get so anxious about shedding wealth; the UK only needs to be as poor as Spain to make progress). [See, for example, Inequality says more than wealth about children's well-being [2] and the source article published in the British Medical Journal online as Child well-being and income inequality in rich societies: ecological cross sectional study [3].]

The idea of aspiring to be in the middle is alien to political strategists but it deserves examination. Do we want all our schools to top the league tables, or do we want to narrow the gap between the worst and the best ? As parents, do we want our children to come top in all the subjects? Probably not.

So how do we get football fans to set the trend by phoning in full of excitement at the prospect of their team finishing the season mid-table? Or persuade them to take delight in their team playing well but losing? It will be about as easy, I suspect, as persuading UK politicians to campaign in favor of moving the country into the middle rank economies – and allowing its children to reap the benefits.