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Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.

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Daily Data Insights

Bite-sized insights on how the world is changing, published every weekday.

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The image shows a bar chart titled "Number of lives saved by childhood vaccinations from 1974 to 2024," sourced from Shattock et al. (2024). A total of 93.71 million lives have been saved by measles vaccines since 1974. Other diseases include tetanus (27.95 million) and whooping cough (13.17 million). The data highlights the large impact of vaccination programs globally.

Measles vaccines have saved over 90 million lives in the last 50 years

Measles vaccination has saved 94 million lives globally since 1974. Of those, 92 million were children.

The chart shows the number of lives saved by different childhood vaccines in the last 50 years. These estimates come from Andrew Shattock and colleagues and are based on global data on diseases, causes of death, vaccination rates, and vaccine efficacy.

Measles vaccines rank the highest in the total number of lives saved.

Measles is especially contagious and deadly. The virus depletes immune cells, making it harder to fight off measles and making other infections much more life-threatening. It can also erase immune memory to infections and vaccines that children have already encountered.

Before vaccines, almost all children caught measles, and it was a common cause of disability and death. With high measles vaccination rates, millions of lives are saved globally each year.

Read more in our article about the impact of global vaccination

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The UN projects that Africa’s population will double by 2070

Today, Africa is home to 1.5 billion people. By 2070, the UN expects this number to more than double. Its estimates range from 2.7 billion to 3.7 billion, with the most likely scenario placing the African population around 3.2 billion.

This region is where most of the growth in the world population will occur in the next 50 years.

Europe’s population is already shrinking, with Asia and Latin America expected to follow from the 2050s onwards. The UN expects North America’s population to grow, although much slower than Africa's.

Read more about population growth →

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In these nine African countries, average incomes have more than doubled since 1990

Economic growth is most important for the world's poorest people, and most of the world’s poorest live on the African continent. Are Africa’s economies growing?

The picture is mixed. In some countries, incomes have unfortunately declined in the last decades. This includes Madagascar, Zimbabwe, and Burundi. I have written about this in my brief explainer on extreme poverty.

In today’s Daily Data Insight, I want to focus on the other side: I want to highlight the African countries that are achieving economic growth. Nine of them are shown in the chart above.

In all nine countries, people’s average incomes have more than doubled since 1990.

This made substantial improvements in living standards possible: the share of people in extreme poverty and the rate of child mortality declined in all nine countries.

If you want to know more about the importance of growth and how it can be measured, you could read my article: What is economic growth? And why is it so important?

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Line chart titled '20.5 million people receive antiretroviral therapy through PEPFAR' showing the annual number of people receiving antiretroviral therapy through PEPFAR, the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, from 2004 to 2023. The chart starts near zero in 2004, rising steadily each year, and reaching 20.5 million people in 2023. The therapy helps keep people with HIV healthy and prevents its spread to others. Data source: President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (2024), published by Our World in Data.

In 2023, PEPFAR provided life-saving therapy against HIV to 20.5 million people

The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, was established in 2003 to fight the global HIV epidemic.

Since its launch, PEPFAR has provided millions of people with antiretroviral therapy (ART) worldwide, especially in Africa.

The chart shows the number of people who received therapy through PEPFAR in a given year. In 2023, it was 20.5 million people.

ART is highly effective: it helps keep people with HIV healthy and reduces the risk of spreading the virus to others, saving more than one million lives each year.

But, after months of legislative delay, PEPFAR was recently renewed for only one year, raising concerns about the program's future after March 2025.

Explore data on other aid success stories →

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Line chart showing an example of a data error that was detected and flagged for correction. The old data has a large spike in the middle of the timeline, while the new data shows a consistent line without the anomaly.

Spotting and fixing data issues: how we help improve data quality on and off our publication

In today’s Data Insight, we’re sharing a behind-the-scenes look at a part of our work we rarely talk about, but that is crucial in contributing to a more accurate understanding of the world.

We work with hundreds of datasets from many different sources. To check their quality, we’ve built in-house tools that flag unusual patterns, helping us spot when something seems off. Even in high-quality datasets, occasional errors can slip through.

The chart shows a recent example: after we updated a dataset, we noticed an unexpected spike in one of its time series. Investigating further, we traced the issue back to the data provider and let them know. They reviewed it, confirmed the problem, and corrected the error. Thanks to exchanges like this, several datasets have been improved this year.

Improving data quality is always a collaborative effort. We deeply appreciate the work of statisticians and data providers worldwide, who play a critical role in creating and maintaining these datasets. Our role is to help flag issues when we spot them and provide constructive feedback to make the data better for everyone.

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The world population grew fast over the last 60 years, but farmers grew fruits and vegetables even faster

For almost all of human history, food was scarce for nearly everyone. The reason for this perpetual scarcity was that whenever food production increased, it did not lead to more food per capita but to more people.

Food production did not increase per capita. Population pressure ensured that living standards remained only barely above the subsistence level. Economic historians refer to this mechanism as the Malthusian Trap, and if you’d like to know more, you could read my article about it.

This changed in the last decades. More and more societies around the world broke out of the Malthusian Trap. We see this in the data as increasing food production in per capita terms. The chart shows that farmers have grown many fruits, vegetables, and nuts faster than the world population has increased.

The increase in global agricultural output was crucial for the reduction of hunger and famines that the world achieved in this period. Whether or not we will be able to end hunger globally will depend on whether this increase in food production will continue.

Explore global and country-specific data on a wide range of foods in our Food Data Explorer →

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Six area charts display the share of CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels versus land-use change across the world, United States, United Kingdom, China, Brazil, and Indonesia. Fossil fuel emissions dominate globally, particularly in the U.S., U.K., and China, where over 90% of emissions come from fossil fuels and industry. However, in Brazil and Indonesia, a significant portion of emissions arises from land-use change, especially in Brazil, where it is the main source.

Fossil fuels are the biggest source of CO2 emissions in most countries, but there are a few exceptions

Around 90% of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions come from fossil fuels and industrial processes such as cement production. The other 10% comes from land use change, primarily carbon released from trees and vegetation due to deforestation.

Fossil fuels are also the biggest source of emissions at the national level in most countries across the world. But there are a few exceptions.

In the chart, you can see the share of emissions from fossil fuels compared to land use change across a small selection of countries. In the United States, the United Kingdom, and China, fossil fuels dominate. This data comes from the Global Carbon Project.

However, in Brazil, land use change plays a much more significant role. This is for two reasons. First, deforestation rates are higher than in most other countries. Second, Brazil has a very clean power grid. Most of its electricity comes from hydropower, with solar and wind also growing quickly. It burns very little coal and gas.

Explore data on how emissions compare across the world and by source →

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What share of children die before their fifth birthday?

What could be more tragic than the death of a young child? Child mortality, the death of children under the age of five, is still extremely common in our world today.

The historical data makes clear that it doesn’t have to be this way: it is possible for societies to protect their children and reduce child mortality to very low rates. For child mortality to reach low levels, many things have to go right at the same time: good healthcare, good nutrition, clean water and sanitation, maternal health, and high living standards. We can, therefore, think of child mortality as a proxy indicator of a country’s living conditions.

The chart shows our long-run data on child mortality, which allows you to see how child mortality has changed in countries around the world.

Explore and learn more about this data
Explore and learn more about this data

Share of population living in extreme povertyWorld Bank

Life expectancy at birthLong-run estimates collated from multiple sources by Our World in Data

Per capita CO₂ emissionsLong-run estimates from the Global Carbon Budget

GDP per capitaLong-run estimates from the Maddison Project Database

Share of people that are undernourishedFAO

Literacy rateLong-run estimates collated from multiple sources by Our World in Data

Share of the population with access to electricityWorld Bank

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