GDP per capita has doubled in all three Baltic states since 2000

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.

Measuring happiness is difficult, but one way to understand how satisfied people are with their lives is to simply ask them.Self-reported life satisfaction is one key metric that researchers often rely on. It asks people to imagine a hypothetical ladder, where the best possible life for them is a 10, and the worst possible life is a 0. They then have to place their current position on the ladder.The chart shows the three-year average scores from 2022 to 2024 for the four countries with the highest ratings and the four with the lowest.Afghans reported the lowest life satisfaction in the world, far below any other country.This incredibly low score has been replicated in other studies. Researchers recently compared Afghans’ life satisfaction with international datasets dating back to 1946 and found it was the lowest ever recorded. Two-thirds gave a score of 0 or 1 on the 10-point scale.See self-reported levels of life satisfaction in your own country.