In the 1980s, youth literacy was higher in Sub-Saharan Africa than in South Asia; it’s now the opposite

Child mortality rates in China have fallen from more than 20% in 1950 to less than 1% today.But this steady progress was interrupted in the late 1950s during the “Great Leap Forward”. This was China’s national plan to industrialize rapidly, but it resulted in widespread famine and economic turmoil.As the chart shows, child mortality rates spiked in China over this period, with up to one in three children dying before reaching the age of five. This change was so dramatic that it is also clearly visible in the global trend.This data comes from the UN’s World Population Prospects.Explore child mortality for all countries in our interactive chart.

There are two ways to produce seafood: catch fish in the wild or farm your own. Seafood farming is often called “aquaculture”. Aquaculture is dominated by the farming of fish, but also includes other organisms, such as crustaceans and aquatic plants.Aquaculture has grown rapidly over the last few decades. In fact, as the chart shows, it has overtaken wild catch since 2013.This has relieved some pressure on wild fish stocks: if this increased demand for fish had been satisfied by wild catch, then many more would be severely overexploited.Read more in our article on the rise of aquaculture.

The United Kingdom was the birthplace of coal. It has now, effectively, died there.As shown in the chart, in the late 1980s, around two-thirds of the UK’s electricity came from coal. By the time I was born in the 1990s, this had dropped to just over half.The use of coal has plummeted in my lifetime. It now makes up around 0.1% of the UK’s electricity.Coal was first replaced by gas, but is now being pushed out by wind, solar, and biomass.Explore more charts on the death of British coal.

Throughout the entire 20th century, about 100 million people died earlier than they would have because of smoking. That’s a lot, but it pales in comparison to the expected numbers for this century.Between 2000 and 2023 alone, smoking-related deaths are estimated at 163 million. You can see this comparison in the chart.Some epidemiologists project that unless there is a substantial change in smoking uptake and rates across the world, there could be as many as one billion smoking-related deaths in the 21st century.In the 20th century, most of these occurred in today’s high-income countries. In the 21st century, most will come from low- and middle-income countries.Many of the people who are expected to die are smoking today, but even more are expected to be future smokers. Finding ways to help people stop smoking and prevent them from starting matters for keeping this huge figure in the millions, not billions.People often ask whether vaping is safer than smoking. I tackled this question in a recent article — the short answer is “yes”.

Just a decade ago, almost three times as much electricity in the European Union was coming from fossil fuels as from solar and wind.But last year, for the first time, solar and wind produced more than coal, gas, and oil combined. They accounted for just over 30% of total electricity production.You can see this rise of solar and wind — and fossil fuels’ decline — in the chart.This record happened despite a poor year for wind output due to low wind speeds and a slight increase in gas to compensate for lower hydropower output from dry conditions.Explore more data for specific European countries based on the latest update from Ember.

4,510 objects were launched into space in 2025, surpassing the previous peak of 2,903 objects in 2023 by a large margin.The data shows that US agencies and companies were responsible for launching 3,708 of these objects — 82% of the global total.The vast majority of these American launches consist of small satellites deployed as part of large commercial “constellations”. These interconnected networks of satellites now account for the bulk of all objects sent into orbit.The rapid growth of satellite constellations makes it possible to expand Internet connectivity, but it also increases concerns regarding space debris and the congestion of Earth’s orbital environment.Explore our interactive chart of objects launched into space.