Infant Mortality, America Móvil, and Netflix

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Today’s charts

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Infant mortality rates have been drastically decreasing worldwide over the past century. In a span of 25 years, infant deaths decreased from 12.1M to 5.8M per year. No wonder Bill Gates called this “the most beautiful chart in the world.”

Although the drop is commonly visualized with data from Africa, the same trend is visible in Latin America, and Bolivia reflects it like no other. One-eighth as many newborn babies die yearly as did 60 years ago. Many babies who died during the 20th century did so from infectious diseases like measles, so vaccines and antibiotics have been critical to reducing mortality rates. However, Bolivia’s efforts to improve the health of children didn’t stop there.

In the mid-1990s, the Bolivian government established a policy of free universal healthcare for mothers and children, in which maternal health and infant survival became a priority.

The system, known as the Universal Mother and Child Insurance scheme (SUMI), is a comprehensive health package that covers about 500 health problems in children from birth to five years of age. Bolivia’s infant mortality rate dropped by 37.7% in urban areas, and 29.9% in rural areas right after the program was implemented.

América Móvil is Mexico’s largest company. Ranked 194 in the Forbes Global 2000, it’s the world’s seventh-largest mobile network provider by equity subscribers. The corporation has 302M cellular subscribers, and 80M fixed revenue-generating users throughout its various countries of operation as of Q3 2021.

The company was founded in 2000 by Carlos Slim, now Mexico’s richest man. It currently operates in most of Latin America and the Caribbean under Claro, in the US under Tracfone Wireless, and in Mexico under Telcel. The various companies offer cellular service, Internet, satellite, and cable television.

Two months ago, the FCC approved the sale of América Móvil’s US subsidiary, Tracfone, to Verizon. Many of Tracfone’s users already use Verizon’s network; Tracfone uses other cellphone carriers’ physical networks for a fee.

In Mexico, Telcel has continued on its upward trajectory of market share. However, AT&T turned up the competitive heat in 2015 by acquiring Iusacell and rebranding it as AT&T Mexico. With a network available in 90% of Mexico, AT&T has captured 13% of the market share.

Netflix’s 2021 wasn’t as good as its 2020. It’s expected to report 18.4 million new subscribers globally, a 50% drop from the previous year. One might explain such a trend by pointing to the increasingly competitive Disney+ and other streaming platforms. However, it was expected that 2021 wouldn’t be as good as 2020 for certain industries. Just look at home fitness or e-commerce.

The company has arguably invested the most in its Latin American viewers: According to Wikipedia, the first-ever non-English original show was Club de Cuervos in 2015. Since then, Spanish and Portuguese content has poured out, accounting for roughly one-third of all of the company’s non-English content.

The region has been hungry for new content: Even LatAm’s top movie producer, Argentina, has only produced about 3% the amount of US movies. In 2017, Spain-produced Money Heist (La Casa de Papel) took the world by storm: it’s now among the company’s top 5 shows ever. And with the most recent success of Squid Game, two of the top 5 original shows ever were produced in non-English languages. The success of these shows indicates just the beginning of a massive opportunity for Netflix to continue winning the hearts and wallets of new global subscribers.

If you’re looking for a funny yet depressing way to recap last year, or you’re still not ready for 2022, watch Netflix’s “Death to 2021.”

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That’s all for this week. Let’s have a great year! 👋

Here’s the wholesome comment of the week. It came from the Panama Canal chart on Reddit:

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