Latest

Death rates from illicit drugs are the highest in the United States. This is largely the result of a steep rise in opioid deaths in recent years.

This map shows death rates from opioid overdoses, measured as the number of deaths per 100,000 people in each country’s population. This data comes from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s latest Global Burden of Disease study.

In 2021, the United States had, by far, the highest death rate from opioids, with 15.4 deaths per 100,000 people each year. Second behind it was Canada, with 6.9 deaths per 100,000. Several European countries and Russia counted between 3 and 4 deaths per 100,000.

This is not only the case for opioids: the US also has the highest death rate from amphetamine and cocaine overdoses.

Explore this data by country and over time →

Energy demand in China has increased rapidly over the last few decades due to rising incomes and industrialization.

The country now uses about the same amount of energy per person as the European Union. You can see this in this chart, with new data from the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

This measure of primary energy is based on the substitution method, which tries to account for the inefficiencies of fossil fuels compared to renewables.

Note that this does not account for energy embedded in traded goods, so some of this increase in China has come from producing goods exported to other countries.

We have just updated our energy data based on the latest release →

While some countries have granted more rights to LGBT+ people, others are moving in the opposite direction.

The chart, based on data from researcher Kristopher Velasco, shows that five countries had an explicit ban on same-sex marriage in 1991. Their laws did not just say nothing about same-sex marriage; they had laws that made it explicitly illegal.

By 2019, this number had increased to 37 countries, concentrated in Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa.

These marriage bans have happened while a similar number of countries have legalized same-sex marriage.

In this way, LGBT+ rights have become more polarized: some countries have introduced progressive laws, while others have become more regressive.

Read more in our new article on LGBT+ rights →

Most of the world's poorest people still rely on solid fuels — such as crop waste, dung, wood, and charcoal — for cooking and heating.

These fuels cause damaging air pollution in households when they’re burned.

According to estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, indoor air pollution prematurely kills more than three million people each year.

As shown on the chart, deaths from indoor pollution are falling as more people get access to cleaner cooking fuels. Improving access to clean energy could prevent many more early deaths.

Explore this data →

This chart shows the amount of annual funding for research and development (R&D) to understand, treat, and develop technologies against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). This data comes from Policy Cures Research’s G-FINDER project.

Less than $100 million is spent on R&D for most NTDs, despite millions of people being affected by these diseases —  which include dengue, leishmaniasis, and trachoma.

Without funding, it’s very difficult to develop new medicines, vaccines, and technologies to reduce suffering and disability for the millions of people affected by these diseases.

We know that effective funding works. Large public health initiatives have helped fund research against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and COVID-19 and have saved millions of lives.

Explore the data →

How satisfied are people with their lives? Answering this question can give us important insights into what matters to people and the circumstances that lead to a fulfilled life.

The World Happiness Report has published data on life satisfaction — based on the Gallup World Poll — since 2012 and covers more than 140 countries worldwide. We have just updated our charts with the latest data.

It measures life satisfaction by asking people to rate their lives on a ladder from 0 to 10, where their worst possible life is 0 and their best possible life is 10.

The resulting score is averaged over the last three years to focus on longer-term shifts.

Despite drastic experiences like the COVID-19 pandemic, overall life satisfaction remains remarkably consistent globally. We can also observe correlations with other measures of well-being: healthier and richer countries tend to have higher average life satisfaction scores.

Explore our data on happiness and life satisfaction →

According to the latest Global Burden of Disease Study — published last month by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) — COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in 2021, after cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

These estimates suggest that COVID-19 was responsible for around eight million deaths in 2021. In many countries across South America and sub-Saharan Africa, the IHME reports that it was the leading cause of death.

Global improvements in healthcare have led to a steady reduction in the death rate from infectious diseases in recent decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed this trend.

Explore this data →

Globally, there are large differences in the estimated share of income received by the richest 1% of the population. In Norway and Slovakia, it’s 7%; 27% in Mexico, and 31% in Mozambique and the Central African Republic.

You might expect these numbers to be strongly correlated to a country's level of economic development. But this isn't always the case. In the United States, for example, 1% of its population takes home 21% of national income. This is relatively high globally.

The data comes from the World Inequality Database, and we just updated our charts with their latest data. The data above is based on income before taxes and benefits, but after-tax incomes show a broadly similar inequality map.

Explore this data →

The ozone hole over Antarctica was growing rapidly throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, as the data in the chart shows. At its largest, the ozone hole was more than 25 million square kilometers — slightly bigger than the size of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The earth’s ozone layer is important as the ozone absorbs most of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, and helps to keep Earth habitable. Human emissions of ozone-depleting substances — mostly chlorofluorocarbons — were breaking down ozone high in the atmosphere.

But in 1987, the world agreed to phase out these ozone-depleting substances by signing the Montreal Protocol. Since then, emissions have fallen close to zero.

As a consequence, the ozone hole stopped growing in the late 1990s. It will take decades to recover fully, but it’s slowly starting to rebuild.

Explore this data →

Most people agree that family is very important, no matter where they live.

Using data from the European Values Study and World Values Survey, the chart shows that a large majority of people worldwide declare family to be important in their lives. This share is above 80% in every country except six.

Only a small percentage of people say they find family “not very important” or “not important at all”.

Despite our disagreements, we should remember how much people across countries and cultures agree on what truly matters to them.

Explore this data →

Coal dominated Europe's electricity mix over the 20th century, but it is quickly dying in many countries in the 21st.

The chart shows the share of electricity that comes from coal for a range of countries in Western Europe. The data comes from Ember.

Transitioning away from coal has helped reduce carbon emissions and local air pollutants.

Explore the data →

The United Nations’ first Sustainable Development Goal is to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” by 2030. The world is still very far away from this goal.

The data from the World Bank shows that in 1990, 55% of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa and 65% in East Asia and the Pacific lived in these conditions — broadly similar figures. But the most recent figures were 37% in Sub-Saharan Africa and 1% in East Asia and the Pacific.

The United Nations focuses on “extreme poverty” in its Sustainable Development Goals agenda. They define this as living with less than $2.15 per day. This figure represents what $2.15 could buy you in the United States in 2017 prices; it is adjusted for inflation and cost of living differences between countries.

Explore this data →

Human rights are much better protected in all world regions than a century ago, according to data by Varieties of Democracy.

This recently updated chart shows an index that captures human rights. The index ranges from 0 (least rights) to 1 (most). As you can see, every world region scored significantly higher in 2023 than 100 years ago.

Although progress has not been steady, and there have been setbacks — including in recent years — the overall improvements have been substantial. These trends remain when giving more weight to countries with larger populations.

While progress has been made in all world regions, there are still big disparities across them, with Africa and Asia lagging behind. And the strong protections on other continents show that further global progress is possible.

Explore this data →

One of the most transformative changes in technology over the last few decades has been the massive drop in the cost of clean energy. Solar photovoltaic costs have fallen by 90% in the last decade, onshore wind by 70%, and batteries by more than 90%.

These technologies have followed a “learning curve” called Wright’s Law. This states that the cost of technology falls consistently as the cumulative production of that technology increases.

The chart shows the perfect example of this for solar power. This data comes from the International Renewable Agency, Greg Nemet, and Doyne Farmer & François Lafond.

On the horizontal axis, we have the cumulative installed capacity of solar panels, and on the vertical axis, the cost. Both are measured on logarithmic scales, and the trend follows a straight line. That means the fall in cost has been exponential.

Costs have fallen by around 20% every time the global cumulative capacity doubles. Over four decades, solar power has transformed from one of the most expensive electricity sources to the cheapest in many countries.

In the last two centuries, the price of lighting has decreased drastically.

You can see this in the chart, which plots historical data from Roger Fouquet and Peter Pearson. To allow for comparisons over time, the data is adjusted for inflation and expressed in prices for the year 2000.

In the 1300s, one million lumen-hours — a standard lighting measure — would have cost around £40,800 in 2000 prices. By 2006, this had fallen to £2.90, a 14,000-fold decline.

Innovations in lighting appliances, fuels, infrastructures, and institutions during the 19th and 20th centuries made this progress possible.

To put this in perspective, consider that a standard 100-watt incandescent light bulb today can emit about 1,700 lumens. Therefore, running one such bulb for 24 hours would produce about 50,000 lumen-hours. That means that 1 million lumen-hours today would require continuously keeping a standard 100-watt incandescent bulb on for about 25 days. Achieving the same amount of light with candles would require burning more than 100 candles every day for that period.

Most people today take the ability to switch on a light at night for granted. But those who live or have lived without artificial light can appreciate how important it is.

Read more on our page on light at night →

It is hard to imagine just how violent the past was.

The chart shows that in the 13th and 14th centuries, based on data from researcher Manuel Eisner, homicide rates across Western Europe were higher than 10 murders per 100,000 people in a year. In Italy, the rate was as high as 70 murders per 100,000 people.

Since then, murder rates have fallen significantly across these countries. According to data from WHO’s Mortality Database, their homicide rate is now around 1 murder per 100,000 people — less than a tenth of what it used to be.

Despite these improvements, homicides remain a common cause of death globally and are even a leading cause in some countries. But significant and lasting reductions in violence between people are possible.

Explore this data →