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Italy has become much safer over the last thirty years.

In the early 1990s, there were around 3 homicides per 100,000 people every year. That was one of the highest rates in Europe.

Since then, rates have fallen by more than 80%. As you can see in the chart, they have been around 0.5 per 100,000 in recent years. That now makes Italy safer than many of its European neighbours.

Mafia-related homicides dropped dramatically in the 1990s following intensified efforts from the Italian government. Some of this organized crime may have also shifted from violent acts towards financial and “white collar” crime.

While estimates can vary across data sources, for Italy, they show strong agreement →

If you live in the same country as your family, you don’t usually have to pay a fee when you send them money. International migrants face a harsher reality: they pay hefty transaction costs when supporting family back home. Globally, the average fee in 2023 was 6.3%, more than double the UN Sustainable Development Goal's target of getting this down to 3%.

This may not sound like much, but migrants send large amounts home to help with schooling, medical bills, house maintenance, and food. The total sum was nearly three times larger than global foreign aid in 2023. (Here, foreign aid consists of net development assistance from national governments and private philanthropy that meets the necessary conditions.)

Although 6.3% might seem modest, when applied to large volumes of money, these transfer fees amount to tens of billions of dollars.

The chart shows that migrants lost $51 billion in transaction fees in 2023, which is not far from the $66 billion the US gave as foreign aid. That's $51 billion paid by migrants but never received by their families.

With the new US administration projected to cut aid by more than half, aid experts from the Center for Global Development suggest reducing fees could help fill some of the gap. They recommend promoting cheaper transfer options, increasing competition between services, and linking banking systems across countries.

While money sent home by migrants isn’t as targeted to vulnerable groups as aid, most of it flows directly to families in low- and middle-income countries who can use it for what they need most.

Read more about money sent home by migrants →

Foreign aid has saved and improved millions of lives through health programs, food aid, and humanitarian assistance. Several countries — including the United States and the United Kingdom — have announced large cuts to their foreign aid budgets in the last few months. However, one country has been moving in the opposite direction in the last five years.

Since 2018, the amount Japan gives in foreign aid has more than doubled. You can see this in the chart.

In 2018, Japan gave $8.6 billion. By 2023, this had increased to $19.3 billion. This makes Japan’s aid budget equivalent to 0.44% of its gross national income. That was more than the United States, which gave 0.24%, but still less than many European countries, including the UK, France, Germany, and Norway, which topped the list at 1.1%.

Read my recent article on how small amounts of foreign aid can go a long way →

In the early 1980s, Nepal’s children suffered from some of the highest death rates from pneumonia in the world, with over 1,400 deaths for every 100,000 children under five. That meant around 39,000 children died from pneumonia each year, more than from any other cause.

Since then, Nepal has made huge progress. The death rate has fallen almost 20-fold. This improvement is due to various measures, including pneumococcal and Hib vaccines, better access to healthcare and antibiotics, and improved nutrition.

Despite this progress, pneumonia is still among the leading causes of death in children in Nepal. And we know that more progress can be made: high-income countries have achieved much lower rates, with fewer than 5 per 100,000.

Explore how deaths from pneumonia among children have changed in other countries →

When we think about money flowing from richer to poorer countries, foreign aid is one of the first things that comes to mind.

However, another major channel receives far less attention in mainstream conversations: the money international migrants send back to their families or bring home after working abroad. Unlike aid, which is publicly funded and often targeted at structural development, these private transfers typically aim at family support to cover critical needs such as food, healthcare, and education.

This chart shows how big that contribution is: in 2023, migrants sent or brought back $822 billion, almost three times the $288 billion provided through global foreign aid. Global foreign aid refers to net development assistance from national governments, with a very small portion coming from private donor philanthropy that meets the criteria for development assistance.

While this gives us a good sense of the size of these different flows, it’s important to note that the distribution of where each goes tends to differ. Most of the money sent home by migrants goes from high-income to middle-income countries, but low-income countries also rely on them relative to their GDP. When it comes to foreign aid, low-income countries receive almost as much money as middle-income countries.

Learn more about money sent or brought home by migrants →

Tracking the occurrence of natural disasters can save lives by helping countries prepare for future ones.

In our work on natural disasters, we visualize data from EM-DAT, the most comprehensive international disaster database. Make a chart of the number of recorded disaster events over time — like the one above — and it looks like the number of disasters rose alarmingly from the 1970s to the millennium. This has led to many media outlets and organizations claiming that the number of disasters has quadrupled over the last 50 years.

However, as EM-DAT itself makes clear, most of this is due to improvements in recording. The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, which builds this database, was not established until 1973, and didn’t start publishing EM-DAT until 1988.

The number of recorded disasters increased due to more focused efforts to obtain globally comprehensive data and improvements in communication technologies, which allowed more events to be included, even in the planet's most remote areas.

EM-DAT suggests that only data from 2000 onwards is relatively complete and comparable. The number of events before 2000 is likely to be underestimated. Note that this data does not tell us anything about the intensity of disasters.

Read my full article, with my colleague Pablo Rosado, on the limitations of disaster databases →

In 1796, Edward Jenner developed the world’s first vaccine against smallpox. As it was refined and widely adopted, many countries in Europe and North America, the Soviet Union, and island nations eliminated smallpox through national vaccination programs.

But in the mid-20th century, the disease remained widespread across Africa and Asia, infecting tens of millions every year.

Before the World Health Organization (WHO) committed to eradication in 1959, few believed it was possible, given the failures of other eradication efforts like malaria. But smallpox had no animal reservoir, clear symptoms, and there was an effective, low-cost vaccine.

By 1967, the WHO intensified the eradication campaign with more funding. The strategy focused on “ring vaccination” — containing outbreaks by vaccinating people around each case — and embedding the work within local health programs.

As the chart shows, this approach worked swiftly: within a decade, the number of endemic countries fell to zero. Smallpox was officially declared eradicated in 1980, two centuries after Jenner’s discovery. It’s a lasting triumph of science and cooperation.

Read more on our page on smallpox →

Thirty years ago, Portugal had some of the most fatal roads in Europe. It was second only to Latvia in terms of death rates from road injuries.

But since then, death rates have fallen by 84%.

The chart shows road deaths per 100,000 people compared to other European countries. This metric is age-standardized, so it keeps the population's age distribution constant over time.

Portugal still has slightly higher death rates than many of its neighbors in Western Europe, but the gap is much smaller than in the 1990s.

Portugal’s roads have become much safer for many reasons, including seatbelt laws, speed limits, stricter drink-driving enforcement, better road design and pedestrian zones, and improvements in the safety and resilience of cars themselves.

While it made dramatic improvements over the 1990s and early 2000s, this progress has slowed in the last five to ten years.

Explore road death rates across other countries →

Losing a child is one of the worst things that can happen to a parent.

Imagine living in a world where there was a one-in-three chance your child would die. This wasn't just the reality for your children; it could just as well happen to your siblings, friends, or neighbors.

Such a world seems unimaginable today, but it wasn’t too far from reality two centuries ago, even in some economically advanced countries.

The chart shows the share of newborns who died before age five in the Netherlands since 1840. These historical estimates are more uncertain than recent data, but it's likely that before the 1870s, about one-in-three newborns died. Each birth carried odds no parent today could contemplate facing.

But a huge amount of progress has been made since then. Today, one in 250 Dutch children dies. This progress was driven by many factors, including improvements in nutrition, access to clean water, sanitation, vaccines, and reductions in poverty.

To learn more, read my colleague Hannah’s recent article: “Children in rich countries are much less likely to die than a few decades ago, but we rarely hear about this progress” →

You might be surprised to learn that a common stomach infection can lead to cancer. That infection is caused by Helicobacter pylori — H. pylori for short — a bacterium that can live in the stomach lining for decades.

The infection often begins in childhood and may not cause symptoms right away. But over time, it can damage the stomach’s protective lining, causing inflammation and ulcers. In some people, it eventually leads to cancer.

The map shows that in parts of Asia and South America, H. pylori is responsible for about 10% of all new cancer cases. The International Agency for Research on Cancer estimates that it causes around 800,000 cancer cases globally each year, making it one of the top infectious causes of cancer.

The good news is that the infection can be detected with a simple test and eliminated with antibiotics. If caught early, the risk of stomach cancer can be dramatically reduced. Since the bacterium is often transmitted through contaminated food and water, better sanitation and food safety also make a difference.

Read more about infections that cause cancers, and how they can be prevented or treated →

To tackle climate change, the world must transition away from fossil fuels and towards low-carbon power sources.

Greece is almost there when it comes to coal. Coal became the dominant source of electricity in the second half of the 20th century, but it has fallen out of favor in the 21st.

The chart shows that just over a decade ago, almost half of the country’s power came from coal. This has now fallen to 6%.

Solar and wind have replaced it; their share has tripled in the last decade; when combined, they’ve become the largest source.

As a result, the country’s CO₂ emissions from coal have fallen by nearly 90% from their peak, and national emissions as a whole have halved.

Solar and wind are growing rapidly in many countries; explore this data in our energy data explorer →

Young Americans spend much more time alone than they did in the past. According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey, people aged 15–29 spent about 45% more time alone in 2023 than in 2010.

The survey classifies all time spent without anybody physically present as “time spent alone”. This can include time spent talking on the phone or video calls.

Time spent alone among young people increased slowly in the second half of the 2010s and then rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic. It hasn’t fallen back to earlier levels since then.

In absolute terms, young people spent around four hours alone per day in 2010. By 2023, that number had grown to six hours per day.

Although all Americans spend more time alone, the increase is much smaller for older age groups. Those aged 30 to 44 spend about 20% more time alone now than in 2010, while for people 45 and older, the increase is about 10%.

While time alone can help with rest and personal reflection, it can also lead to loneliness and declining well-being. As time spent alone has increased, young people’s time with family, and even more so with friends, has decreased.

Explore more research and data on how people spend their time →

More than half a million children die from diarrheal diseases each year. This is tragic because many of these deaths could be prevented with the tools we already have.

Just ten pathogens are responsible for three-quarters of all diarrheal deaths in children; these are shown in the chart in red, blue, and gold. The leading cause is rotavirus, which kills over 200,000 children each year. Rotavirus vaccines already exist and are very effective in reducing death rates, but vaccination rates are still lagging in many poorer countries.

Other major killers include Shigella, Cryptosporidium, and E. coli, which can be tackled through better hygiene, clean water, improved sanitation, and new treatments.

These pathogens typically spread through contaminated food and water, respiratory droplets, and close contact with others. Basic tools like clean water and sanitation, access to vaccines, and oral rehydration treatment could go a long way in preventing early death, and give every child the chance to have a healthy, long life.

Explore more writing and data on diarrheal diseases on our dedicated page →

Globally, more than 700,000 people die from suicide every year.

Understanding the factors that increase the risk of suicide can help us provide the most effective interventions and support systems.

One thing we do know is that more men die from suicide than women. In the chart, you can see male suicide rates (on the vertical axis) plotted against female rates. One dot is one country. Since all of the dots lie above the line, male suicide rates were higher in all countries included in this dataset.

The size of this gender gap varies by country. In the United States, rates among men are four times higher than amongst women. In South Korea and Japan, they’re around double. Some countries lie closer to the line, meaning the gap is smaller.

The exact reasons for this gender gap are still debated. Factors could include the lethality of different methods, stigma around seeking help, different social pressures, and alcohol and drug abuse.

Every suicide is a tragedy. However, suicide death rates have declined in many countries, and we know that they can be reduced further with greater understanding and support. If you are dealing with suicidal thoughts, you can receive immediate help by visiting resources such as findahelpline.com.

Read my colleague Saloni Dattani’s article on how suicide statistics can vary across sources →