I agree that the title is linkbait, which is unfortunate since the content is interesting enough to not need it. Why are those things people should care about?

I agree that the title is linkbait, which is unfortunate since the content is interesting enough to not need it. Why are those things people should care about? I understand that knowing these things means you have a less-skewed view of the world, but I don't think it's unreasonable that Average Joe doesn't know the world life expectancy or the population distribution. To most people these metrics are just interesting curiosities and nothing more - they have other things to care about, so naturally something like this falls by the wayside. I feel like the article is unfairly criticizing people for not being informed. I think it would be more interesting if someone gave this to 1,000 leading politicians, who should be much more knowledgeable about this stuff but I suspect would only do somewhat better, if at all. (Disclaimer: making that up.)