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The world has made progress against the tragedy of infant mortality. But infants remain at risk, especially after birth.

The experience of a baby leaving the womb and entering the world is a sudden change, and birth complications, suffocation, trauma, and sepsis can be fatal.

The chart shows the risks over the first year of life. It uses national data from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to show the daily death rate (on the vertical axis), plotted against the baby’s age in days (on the horizontal axis).

As you can see, the first day of life is the riskiest. Risks then decline sharply in the days following birth and continue to decline gradually over the rest of the year. This pattern is seen across countries.

Read more about how mortality risks change over our lifetimes →

Data from the World Bank shows that paid leave for early childcare varies a lot around the world.

The chart shows several key differences. In some countries, like India, only mothers get paid leave. In France, fathers also get paid leave. Parents in Russia can partially share the leave.

There are also differences in the purpose of the leave. In countries like South Africa, it’s for childbirth. In others, like the United States, it’s for childcare in the months after birth. In countries like China, paid leave covers both childbirth and early childcare.

The length of paid leave differs immensely, too. In Egypt, for example, only 90 days are available, while in Japan, parents have a combined total of 800 days.

What’s not shown in the chart is how much money parents receive. This also varies a lot between countries.

These differences in government support affect young families’ finances, how childcare is shared, and how much time newborns spend with their parents.

Explore this data over time and for more countries →

There are two ways to produce seafood: catch fish in the wild or farm your own. Seafood farming is often called “aquaculture”. Aquaculture is dominated by the farming of fish, but also includes other organisms, such as crustaceans and aquatic plants.

Aquaculture has grown rapidly over the last few decades. In fact, as the chart shows, it has overtaken wild catch since 2013.

This has relieved some pressure on wild fish stocks: if this increased demand for fish had been satisfied by wild catch, then many more would be severely overexploited.

Explore the data →

The chart shows that in wealthy countries, many more women are now in the workforce compared to 50 years ago.

Data from the OECD and researcher Clarence Long shows that in the late 1960s and 1970s, only 25% to 40% of women were economically active.

This number has increased to more than 50% in all countries shown. In Spain, for example, the share of women in the workforce more than doubled, going from about one in four to more than half.

Even with these increases, women’s participation in the formal workforce is still significantly lower than men's. However, women are more likely to be informally employed than men in many countries and devote more time to unpaid work.

Read more about the changes in women’s employment →

Outdoor air pollution is a significant health issue that impacts well-being and mortality.

It can increase the risk of several leading causes of death, including stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory diseases like asthma.

This chart shows that death rates from outdoor air pollution vary widely across countries. These rates, measured as the number of premature deaths per 100,000 people, are based on data from the IHME's Global Burden of Disease study.

Outdoor air pollution tends to worsen as countries transition from low to middle-income status and industrialize. This is often due to increased energy and industrial emissions without adequate regulation and cleaner technologies.

However, as countries reach higher income levels, death rates decline again as air quality improves.

Explore outdoor air pollution death rates for all countries →

Infants, children, adults, and the elderly are all less likely to die than in the past.

The chart shows death rates by age in France since the early 19th century, combining data from the Human Mortality Database and the United Nations World Population Prospects. Death rates have fallen in every age group.

When data collection began in 1816, around 1 in 5 babies in France died during infancy. Two centuries later, that figure was 1 in 274, a 50-fold reduction.

In 1816, around 1 in 20 people aged 65, died. In 2021, it was 1 in 106, a five-fold reduction.

These reductions mean that death continues to be delayed, and life expectancy continues to rise.

Read more about the fall of death rates over time →

In 1980, Ethiopia had the highest death rate from tuberculosis in the world. Almost 400 people died per 100,000 people, according to data from the latest edition of the Global Burden of Disease study.

Since then, the country has achieved a sixfold reduction in the death rate. This steep decline is shown in the chart.

The nation's widespread health initiatives have likely significantly improved access to tuberculosis care and treatment. These efforts have significantly exceeded the progress of other countries with similar tuberculosis rates in the 1980s.

Despite these advances, Ethiopia's tuberculosis mortality rate remains significantly above that of wealthier nations, where fewer than 1 in 100,000 people die from the disease annually.

Explore tuberculosis mortality rates in other countries →