Our World in Data

It’s a widespread view that child deaths are still a pressing problem in poorer countries, but not in rich ones.I don’t think this is true, and I want to illustrate it with one example from the United States.In 2023, 30,200 children died in the US. In the same year, 22,800 Americans of any age were killed through homicide. You can see this in the chart.Few Americans would argue that murders are a “solved problem”. And this is certainly not what you’d take away from the news. As we showed in a recent article, homicides receive disproportionate coverage in both left- and right-leaning media, relative to the number of people who die from them.The everyday tragedies of children dying from preterm births, neonatal sepsis, and asphyxia do not get nearly the same attention, but are no less important. These are problems that we can still make more progress on.I’ve recently written about what high-income countries can do to continue reducing child deaths.

We just lived through the period with the fastest population growth in human history. Six decades ago, there were three billion people on our planet. Since 2022, there have been more than eight billion people — an increase of five billion over this period.It would have been impressive if food supplies had merely kept pace with population growth. But as the chart above shows, they grew even faster. On every continent, food supplies — measured by calories — grew faster than the population. This rise in food production per person was a major reason for the decline of extreme poverty and hunger.To us, this chart documents one of humanity’s most extraordinary achievements.Hunger remains a large problem today, especially in Africa. We recommend the article by our colleague Hannah Ritchie: “Increasing agricultural productivity across Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most important problems this century”.A note on the data: Food supply estimates come from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. We adjusted them to account for changes in region definitions and data coverage over time.

The economist Paul Krugman once said, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything”. When workers can produce more value in the same amount of time, economies can grow faster, and living standards can rise.The chart shows the productivity metric published by the Penn World Table for South Korea and Japan. It measures gross domestic product (GDP) per hour of work.Since 2000, South Korea’s productivity has more than doubled, narrowing what was once a vast gap with Japan. It has now even surpassed its neighbor.Many forces affect productivity, but one stands out in Korea’s case: its commitment to innovation. The country spends nearly 5% of GDP on research and development, among the highest shares in the world, and it files far more patents per million people than any other nation.Explore productivity growth for more countries in our newly updated data from the Penn World Table.

What does the British government spend its budget on? The chart shows spending broken down by category, scaled to £100. It combines both central and local government spending.Social protection is the single largest item. Out of every £100 spent, £33 goes to it — more than health, at £19 per £100. The UK is typical in this regard — in every OECD country except the US, social protection is the biggest category.Public services also account for a large share: £14 per £100. These include core government functions, foreign aid, and interest payments on government debt.Education and economic affairs, which support the broader economy or specific industries such as fishing and manufacturing, are also prominent categories.Explore how other OECD countries spend their budgets.

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.

This Data Insight is the second 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’s central role in merchandise trade is the result of a large change that has taken place in just a few decades. This change has been especially large in Africa and South America.In 1990, most African countries imported mainly from Europe, and most South American imports came from North America. Today, Asia is the top source of imports for both regions, primarily due to the rapid growth of trade with China.The chart here focuses on Ethiopia, a country that illustrates this shift. Home to around 130 million people, it is one of Africa’s largest countries and has experienced rapid economic growth in recent decades.In the early 1990s, over 40% of Ethiopia’s imports came from Europe, while very little came from China. Since then, the roles of China and Europe have almost reversed: imports from China now account for one-third of Ethiopia’s total imported goods.Read more about trade partnerships and China’s changing role in global trade.

This Data Insight is the first 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.Over the past two decades, China’s role in global trade has expanded substantially. It has become a central hub, particularly through growing relationships with many lower and middle-income countries.The map here shows how China ranks as a source of imports into each country. A rank of 1 means that China is the largest source of merchandise goods (by value) that a country buys abroad.In 2024, China was the top source of imported goods for around two-thirds of countries worldwide. This includes nearly all of Asia, much of Africa and Latin America, and parts of Europe.In many countries, China has overtaken the United States as the largest origin of their imported goods. This shift has occurred relatively recently, mainly over the past two decades.Read more about trade partnerships and China’s changing role in global trade.

Despite the world’s immense progress against child mortality, in some of the poorest countries, one in ten children still dies. That’s a level last seen in the richest countries in the middle of the 20th century.The chart shows the nine countries, all located in Africa, where this is the reality today. In Niger, more than 11 out of every 100 children die before the age of five. In the European Union, the child mortality rate is more than twenty times lower.To learn more, read my colleague Max’s article: “Child mortality: an everyday tragedy of enormous scale that we can make progress against”.

In 1961, around two chickens were slaughtered per person globally each year. As many countries grew richer — and richer countries tend to eat more meat — global demand for chicken increased.Since then, the number of chickens slaughtered per person has quadrupled. On average, 9 chickens are killed each year for every person in the world. Chickens have also become much heavier, so the amount of meat eaten in kilograms has grown even faster.Life is short and painful for many farmed animals. Global estimates suggest that most are raised in factory farms. In the United States, around 99% of livestock comes from them.Explore more interactive charts and articles on animal welfare on our dedicated topic page.

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.

Almost 20,000 Americans were murdered in 2023.The chart shows the homicide rates among male and female victims. Men were 2.7 times more likely to die by homicide than women.We can see that for men, most of these murders were committed by friends, neighbors, acquaintances, or strangers (shown as “Other” in the chart) rather than a partner or family member. The opposite is true for women: intimate partners are the biggest threat.Because the risks are different, the most effective responses may differ too. For women, reducing intimate partner violence is a key priority. For men, prevention is more often tied to crime, gangs, and violence among acquaintances or strangers.Explore homicide rates for more countries.

The 1970s were a decade shaped by fears about overpopulation. As the world’s most populous country, China was never far from the debate. In 1979, China designed its one-child policy, which was rolled out nationally from 1980 to curb population growth by limiting couples to having just one child.By this point, China’s fertility rate — the number of children per woman — had already fallen quickly in the early 1970s, as you can see in the chart.While China’s one-child policy restricted many families, there were exceptions to the rule. Enforcement differed widely by province and between urban and rural areas. Many couples were allowed to have another baby if their first was a girl. Other couples paid a fine for having more than one. As a result, fertility rates never dropped close to one.In the last few years, despite the end of the one-child policy in 2016 and the government encouraging larger families, fertility rates have dropped to one. The fall in fertility today is driven less by policy and more by social and economic changes.This chart shows the total fertility rate, which is also affected by women delaying when they have children. Cohort fertility tells us how many children the average woman will actually have over her lifetime. In China, this cohort figure is likely higher than one, but still low enough that the population will continue to shrink.Explore more insights and data on changes in fertility rates across the world.

Seasonal influenza is sometimes seen as a mild illness, but it remains a major cause of death. In serious cases, it can cause deadly complications such as pneumonia, strokes, and heart attacks. Researchers estimate that the flu causes about 400,000 respiratory deaths and 300,000 cardiovascular deaths globally each year.The flu is most dangerous for infants and older adults. The map here shows rates of respiratory deaths caused by the flu in adults aged 65 and over, averaged across 2002–2011 (excluding the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic).The data shows that death rates tend to be higher in South America, Africa, and South Asia than in Europe or North America.I come from South America, and I found this surprising: most of what I hear about flu deaths tends to come from richer countries in the Northern Hemisphere. But the map shows that the flu is also deadly, in some cases even more so, in other regions where poverty, worse underlying health, limited access to healthcare, and lower vaccination coverage contribute to higher mortality.One explanation for my misperception might be that surveillance and reporting are stronger in the countries that I associate with deaths from flu. Another could also be age differences: people in high-income countries tend to be older, so their total number of deaths — the ones you actually hear about — may still be higher, even if rates are lower.When you consider the total death toll, you realize that the numbers are very large on the whole. Recall that the map only includes respiratory deaths, so the overall mortality is actually higher if we include other flu-related complications like cardiovascular disease.Even if you account for the uncertainty of estimates in low-income countries — due to limited testing and death registration — the overall pattern remains striking: seasonal influenza kills hundreds of thousands each year, with many of these deaths in South America, Africa, and South Asia.Read more in our article, “How many people die from the flu?”

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.

Women are much more likely than men to be killed by their intimate partner. The chart shows this across nine OECD countries in 2023.These deaths are rarely isolated events. Research shows that partner homicides are usually the endpoint of a long pattern of coercive control — behaviors such as surveillance, isolation, intimidation, restrictions on daily life, and physical violence.Recognizing both the gender imbalance and its roots in coercive control can help focus support services, encourage family and friends to act sooner, and increase social pressure against abusive behavior.While women face the highest risk from intimate partners, men make up about 80% of homicide victims globally. The gender split in partner homicides is therefore a striking exception.Explore more data on homicide rates where the perpetrator is an intimate partner.

This chart shows global GDP per capita, adjusted for inflation. Looking at the world economy from this perspective, it is the steadiness of this change that stands out to me. Average incomes per person have risen at a fairly constant pace of roughly 2% per year, interrupted only by the 2008–09 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic.One reason this is noteworthy, in my view, is that national economies changed a lot during the same period. Some economies slowed, many others grew, and more generally, some major political shifts took place. Yet when all of this is aggregated, the global average followed a remarkably smooth upward track.The line in the chart ends in 2024, so it does not yet capture more recent developments. But a few recent articles, such as this one from The Economist, look at data for 2025 and point to the same stability.Past trends may not continue in the future. But this data reminds us that global economic aggregates can develop more steadily than the headlines might make us think.Read more about what economic growth is and why it is important.

In 2015, countries worldwide signed the Paris Agreement, aiming to keep the global temperature rise “well below 2°C” and limit this increase to 1.5°C.To meet these targets, there are limits to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that can be emitted. These are called carbon budgets. Every year we emit more CO2, these budgets shrink. (That’s because total warming is roughly proportional to cumulative CO2.)In the chart, you can see estimates for how much CO2 the world can emit — from the start of next year — while staying below different levels of warming. This is based on having a 50% likelihood of staying below it; if we wanted to guarantee that we didn’t pass these temperatures, our budget would be much smaller.To get a sense of perspective, we’ve compared each budget with the projected amount of CO2 that the world is expected to emit in 2025. This tells us how many years we have left if emissions stay at their current levels.At current emission rates, the 1.5°C budget would run out around 2030. It seems implausible that global emissions will fall quickly enough to avoid this.The 2°C budget would last until mid-century. By taking action on climate change, we buy ourselves more time and can avoid this level of warming.This is based on the latest estimates from the Global Carbon Project. See how emissions are changing in your country.

Have global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions gone up or down this year?The latest projections from the Global Carbon Project give us some insight. Their researchers and analysts do invaluable work in estimating greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, helping us understand how the situation is evolving.Today, they published their latest “carbon budget”. The chart shows their historical estimates, as well as their projections for 2025.They project that this year, emissions from fossil sources — that is, from fossil fuels and industrial processes — will increase by around 1%. Emissions from all three fuels — coal, oil, and gas — are expected to increase. Meanwhile, emissions from land-use change have decreased due to fewer extreme wildfires and reduced deforestation in South America.This reduction in land use may offset the increase from fossil fuels, resulting in a global total similar to last year. Note that estimates for land-use emissions are much less certain than for fossil fuels.While many countries have made progress in reducing emissions, global fossil emissions continue to rise. To tackle climate change, they need to peak and rapidly decrease in the coming years and decades.This is based on the latest estimates from the Global Carbon Project. Explore how global and national emissions are changing.

Roads in rich countries tend to be much safer than those in low- and middle-income countries. Cars are more modern, infrastructure is better, and driving laws are stricter and better enforced.However, there are still huge differences between high-income countries. This is obvious from the chart, which shows death rates from road injuries across various countries. Rates can vary more than 20-fold.I was recently surprised to find that my country, the United Kingdom, has some of the safest roads in the world, alongside Sweden, Singapore, and Norway. It can be easy to complain about the situation in our own country without considering what things are like elsewhere.Road deaths are incredibly high in several Middle Eastern countries, like Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. These countries tend to have far more high-speed highways, drivers often cover much longer distances, and the enforcement of regulations such as speed limits, seatbelt use, and driving distractions is weaker. These countries have reduced fatality rates in recent years, but still have much higher death tolls than other rich countries.Read my article on how the United Kingdom built some of the world’s safest roads.