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.

Marriage is closely linked to decisions about having children in many societies. It also matters for legal rights, family finances, and many other aspects of life.

The age at which people marry has rapidly changed in many countries. The chart shows this by tracking the average age at first marriage among women, using records from national statistics.

In Portugal, Italy, and Spain, the average age at first marriage has risen rapidly and consistently. Portugal saw the largest increase: from around 26 years in 2002 to over 32 years by 2020. This is more than six years in less than a generation. It’s also the largest increase among the countries in the OECD Family Database with data available from the early 2000s up to 2020 (the most recent year with available data in the series).

Changes in the timing of marriage have come together with other related shifts. For instance, a growing share of people are not marrying at all.

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.

In the 1970s, oil spills from tankers — container ships transporting oil — were common. Between 70 and 100 spills occurred per year. That’s one or two spills every week.

This number has fallen by more than 90% since then. In the last decade, no year has had more than ten oil spills, as shown in the chart.

The quantity of oil spilled from tankers has also fallen dramatically. Over the last decade, the average is less than 10,000 tonnes per year, compared to over 300,000 tonnes in the 1970s.

In the past, forests around the world were cut down on a massive scale. We lost some of the world’s richest ecosystems.

In recent decades, the picture has become more complex. Deforestation has not ended, but it is no longer happening everywhere. Since 1990, some regions have continued to lose large areas of forest, while others have slowed this long-run trend — and even reversed it.

The map shows regional changes in forest area based on the latest data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Deforestation has been particularly large in South America and Africa. At the same time, the forested area has expanded in Europe, North and Central America, and large parts of Asia.

These gains show that deforestation is not inevitable. When pressure on land falls, forests can return.

The Netherlands was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001. Since then, almost 40 other countries have followed suit.

You can see this in the chart, based on data from Pew Research. By 2025, same-sex marriage was legal in 39 countries.

Last year, two countries were added to the total. Thailand became the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, and a same-sex marriage bill also took effect in Liechtenstein.

The share of the world population living in extreme poverty has never declined as rapidly as in the past three decades.

The decline in China was particularly fast, and given that one in six people in the world lives there, we’re often asked whether the decline in global poverty was only due to the decline in China.

The chart shows the data that answers this question. In blue, we see the global decline. In red, we see the decline if we exclude China from the data. In the world outside of China, 33% lived in extreme poverty in 1990; by 2025, this share was down to 12%.

The large economic growth that lifted 940 million Chinese people out of extreme poverty since 1990 was a major contributor to the global decline in poverty. But the non-Chinese world also achieved a very large reduction.

It is not true that the global decline in poverty was only due to China. Extreme poverty has declined in China and the rest of the world.

Forty years ago in Japan, two babies were born for every person who died. Twenty years ago, these numbers were equal. And today, the ratio has reversed: one baby is born for every two people who die.

In the chart, you can see this change in the number of births and deaths over time.

Since deaths now greatly outnumber births, and because immigration is low, Japan’s population has started to shrink.

Debates over whether religion is booming or dying are common. What does the data say?

Most countries lack long-term data on religious identity, but results from the Pew Research Center offer insights into changes over the decade from 2010 to 2020. (Unfortunately, 2020 is the most recent year for which we have comparable global data.)

At a global level, there was barely any change. The share of people identifying with any religion dropped by just one percentage point, from 77% to 76%.

But religious affiliation did drop significantly across many countries in Europe, the Americas, and Oceania. You can see this drop for a selection of countries in the chart.

In Australia, rates dropped from 75% to 58%. In the United States and Chile, the percentage has decreased from roughly 85% to 70%.

So while religious affiliation is stable in many parts of the world, this data shows religion is becoming less prominent in others.

Note that this data is based on self-identification with any religion; it doesn’t tell us about changes in practices or rituals, such as prayer or attending services.

This chart shows one way to compare automated manufacturing across countries — it plots the number of robots per 1,000 manufacturing employees.

The chart shows very large differences between countries. South Korea stands out, with more than one robot for every ten manufacturing workers.

Singapore comes second, and China ranks third, close to Germany. The United States sits in the middle, close to the European average, below Switzerland, Denmark and Slovenia.

This perspective shows industrial robot adoption in relative terms. In another Data Insight, I looked at robot adoption in absolute terms. From that perspective, China stands out by a large margin: it’s a large economy with a huge manufacturing sector, and it has by far the largest stock of industrial robots.

Much of this expansion has happened recently: China’s annual installations increased 12-fold over a decade, helping it catch up to South Korea in terms of robots per worker.