Afghans report the lowest life satisfaction in the world

The map shows which European countries saw an increase in population, and which saw a decrease in the year from July 2022 to 2023.The regional divide is stark: most countries with negative population change are located in the eastern and southern parts of Europe, while countries in the west and north saw population growth.We focus on 2022–2023 as they are the most recent years in the UN’s latest World Population Prospects, published in 2024. Temporary shocks can influence year-to-year population changes, but this regional pattern is not unique to this particular year: you see it in earlier years too, and it also shows up when you look at population change over longer periods.A key driver of this is migration. Most countries in Western and Northern Europe have had positive net migration (i.e., more people arriving than leaving). Many countries in Eastern and Southern Europe, in contrast, have had more people leaving than arriving.Fertility rates have been declining across Europe, and all of these countries now have rates below the replacement level. That means that across much of Europe, since deaths now exceed births, the population would be shrinking without migration. In Western and Northern Europe, positive net migration has been offsetting this.Explore country-by-country trends in our Population & Demography Explorer.

Since 2000, GDP per capita has doubled in all three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (where it has nearly tripled).Living conditions in these countries have improved more broadly. Poverty rates are lower, and life satisfaction is higher. Incomes have not just doubled in terms of GDP per capita; median incomes have also doubled.Read more from my colleague Max Roser about economic growth, how it’s measured, and why it matters.

This Data Insight is the third of a three-part series on China’s role in global trade, drawing on new writing we added this week to our Trade and Globalization topic page.China is the top source of imports for many countries. But this tells us only how China compares with other trading partners, not how large these imports are relative to the size of each country’s economy. That is what this map shows.The map plots the total value of merchandise imports from China as a share of each importing country’s GDP. The data shows that Chinese imports are relatively small when compared with the overall size of the importing economy.Take the Netherlands as an example: China is the country’s leading source of imports. But compared with the size of the whole Dutch economy, this is a comparatively small amount — about 10% as a share of GDP. And as the map shows, the Netherlands is at the high end, largely because it imports a lot overall.In many countries, imports from China account for much less than 10% of GDP. There are a few reasons for this. First, even if China is the leading partner, most countries still import from a wide range of places. And second, in most countries, the economic value produced domestically is larger than the total value of imported goods.Read more about trade partnerships and China’s changing role in global trade.

One of the starkest expressions of global inequality is a child’s chance of survival. In 2023, 2.84 million children in Africa died before reaching their fifth birthday, giving the continent the highest child mortality rate of any region (5.9%).The chart above shows a simple hypothesis: how many more African children would reach the age of five if it had the same child mortality rates as other regions?If conditions in Africa improved enough to match Asia’s current child mortality rate (2%), 1.9 million of these 2.84 million children would survive.If the child mortality rate were to drop to the European rate (0.4%), then 2.64 million children would be saved each year.To learn more, read my colleague Max’s article on the progress made in reducing child mortality.