Today
Malaria is an infectious disease that kills over 600,000 people a year. Most of them, children.
Its high death toll is at least partly explained by the fact that there are so many infections every year: an estimated 260 to 310 million.
I was curious to know how often people living in the worst-affected areas are infected with malaria. In the chart, you can see estimates of new cases per 100 people across high-burden countries. In recent decades, infection rates have declined but remain very high. There are around 30 new cases per 100 people each year.
It would be tempting to simplify this number and say that 30% of people living in Nigeria are infected each year. But that’s probably far from reality.
This is because the same people are often reinfected. When I looked at the scientific literature, I was surprised by how often. A study focused on children in Uganda found that those without preventative measures were infected around five times per year. Another found that in Burkina Faso, it was up to six times.
So, the reality behind the “30 cases per 100 people” average is probably very skewed. Many — particularly children who have not built up immunity — are infected multiple times per year, while most of the population is not infected at all.
August 27
More than 100,000 children under the age of 15 died from drowning in 2023. I found this statistic staggering when I first saw it. Drowning is one of the top causes of death among older children.
The World Health Organization explains that around 90% of all drowning deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. There, much of the risk comes from everyday exposure to water in ponds, rivers, and lakes used for bathing and washing clothes, or open wells used to collect water.
Deaths like these can be prevented, and they increasingly are. Drowning used to be far more common than it is today. That’s the focus of the chart.
In 1980, almost 30 children under five died from drowning for every 100,000 children in that age group. By 2023, this rate had fallen to 7.4. Death rates among older children also fell substantially.
Targeted measures can reduce drowning risks. These include covering wells, using doorway barriers or playpens to keep young children away from water, and water-safety training, among others.
Rising living standards matter as well, and much of the decline in the chart reflects this. As many countries have become richer, access to safe water has improved, so fewer families depend on ponds and open wells for everyday needs.
August 25
America’s most popular type of meat is chicken. In Argentina, it’s beef. And in Japan, it’s seafood.
There are large differences in the popularity of meat types across the world.
In the chart, you can see the share of supply that comes from different types of meat: poultry, beef, pork, sheep and goat, and fish and seafood. I’ve picked just a selection of countries that highlight some of the variation across the world.
Of course, countries also eat very different amounts of meat; this chart focuses on the relative quantities in national diets.
This data comes from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
August 22
Many countries are in a fairly unique demographic position in history: their populations are shrinking not due to a temporary shock but to sustained structural decline.
If we look at the United Nations’ population estimates and medium projections, 66 countries and territories had already passed peak population this year. Almost all of them are in Europe and East Asia.
But there is one country in Southeast Asia in this position: Thailand. As you can see in the chart, the UN projects that its population will continue to fall throughout this century.
This is the result of a rapid drop in fertility rates. In 1970, women in Thailand had an average of 6 children; twenty years later, that had fallen to 2. This was as fast as China’s decline. Today, the rate is at most 1.2 children per woman, and some national statistics put it closer to 1.
What makes Thailand unusual is that this happened while it was still a relatively poor country. In 1970, it launched its National Family Planning Program. This was voluntary and non-coercive, but effectively increased contraceptive use, family planning access, and education levels for women.
August 20
In the 1970s, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution asking developed countries to contribute at least 0.7% of their national income to foreign aid. Most countries signed off on this goal, except for Switzerland and the United States.
But very few countries have met this target in the fifty years since then. Even today, only a handful of countries do.
In 2023, five countries met this target: Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark. Two years on, this has dropped to four, as Germany’s contribution shrank to 0.6%.
As you can see in the chart, other developed countries give less than 0.7% of their national income.
August 18
Guyana, a small country in South America, has seen the fastest growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the world over the past decade.
This is illustrated in the chart, which shows GDP per capita for Guyana and several other countries, based on estimates from the World Bank.
The data is adjusted for inflation, so Guyana’s sharp growth is not due to price changes over time.
A large and sudden expansion in oil production has driven most of this growth. Between 2020 and 2025, the country’s oil production grew 860%, making it a key contributor to global crude oil supply growth.
Before oil extraction started, Guyana’s GDP per capita was well below the global average. It is now more than three times higher.
It’s too early to see the full effects of this, and hard to measure how far the oil boom has translated into better living standards in the country. Official poverty estimates, for example, have not been published since production began. But there is early evidence of the government channeling oil revenue toward citizens, for instance, through cash grants for every adult, free tuition at public universities, and increasing health spending.
August 15
Rich countries spend, on average, the equivalent of $7,300 per person on healthcare each year. This includes public and private expenditures.
In low-income countries, the equivalent is only around $125 per person.
This is based on spending data from the World Health Organization’s Global Health Observatory, which you can see in the chart across levels of income. The data is adjusted for differences in living costs between countries.
That means rich countries spend around 60 times as much per person on healthcare as the poorest countries.
This resource gap is one of the reasons for the stark differences in health outcomes. The average life expectancy is around 16 years lower in poorer countries, and other health measures, such as child mortality, maternal mortality, and disease burden, tend to be far worse.
