October 15, 2025
Large families used to be the norm in Colombia, but that has changed a lot over just a few generations. I come from Colombia, and my own family reflects this: my grandmother had eleven siblings, my mother had seven, and I have just one sister.
My family is one example of this broader shift within Colombia. In 1950, around the time my mother was born, the fertility rate was 6.4 births per woman. By 2023, it had fallen to 1.6.
That’s what the chart here shows. It plots the total fertility rate: the average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime, if she experienced the observed birth rates of women in her country in the corresponding year. It’s the most widely used measure to track birth patterns across countries and over time.
The chart shows that Colombia’s fertility rate is similar to that of richer countries like France and the UK. It also displays Colombia’s trend alongside China’s for comparison. Perhaps surprisingly, the slope (i.e., the speed) of Colombia’s drop has been similar to China's, despite the latter introducing a one-child policy.
Colombia’s experience mirrors a wider change across many middle-income countries, including much of Latin America. Education of women, urbanization, declining infant mortality, family planning, and changing norms are all key drivers of this trend.
Yesterday
Have global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions gone up or down this year?
The latest projections from the Global Carbon Project give us some insight. Their researchers and analysts do invaluable work in estimating greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, helping us understand how the situation is evolving.
Today, they published their latest “carbon budget”. The chart shows their historical estimates, as well as their projections for 2025.
They project that this year, emissions from fossil sources — that is, from fossil fuels and industrial processes — will increase by around 1%. Emissions from all three fuels — coal, oil, and gas — are expected to increase. Meanwhile, emissions from land-use change have decreased due to fewer extreme wildfires and reduced deforestation in South America.
This reduction in land use may offset the increase from fossil fuels, resulting in a global total similar to last year. Note that estimates for land-use emissions are much less certain than for fossil fuels.
While many countries have made progress in reducing emissions, global fossil emissions continue to rise. To tackle climate change, they need to peak and rapidly decrease in the coming years and decades.
November 11
Roads in rich countries tend to be much safer than those in low- and middle-income countries. Cars are more modern, infrastructure is better, and driving laws are stricter and better enforced.
However, there are still huge differences between high-income countries. This is obvious from the chart, which shows death rates from road injuries across various countries. Rates can vary more than 20-fold.
I was recently surprised to find that my country, the United Kingdom, has some of the safest roads in the world, alongside Sweden, Singapore, and Norway. It can be easy to complain about the situation in our own country without considering what things are like elsewhere.
Road deaths are incredibly high in several Middle Eastern countries, like Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. These countries tend to have far more high-speed highways, drivers often cover much longer distances, and the enforcement of regulations such as speed limits, seatbelt use, and driving distractions is weaker. These countries have reduced fatality rates in recent years, but still have much higher death tolls than other rich countries.
November 07
What difference does it make when people can choose their leaders? One area where the right to vote for political leaders may matter is corruption.
Democracy and corruption are hard to measure. One possible way to understand how countries perform on these fronts is to ask experts who study them closely. These expert judgments aren’t perfect, but we think they’re useful.
The V-Dem project surveys experts to assess how democratic each country is. Are elections free and fair? Do all citizens have equal voting rights? Are fundamental freedoms — like speech and assembly — respected? Experts also rate how frequent corruption is in public institutions, from bribery and embezzlement to whether laws are enforced fairly.
This chart combines these expert estimates: democracy on the horizontal axis and corruption on the vertical axis, with both scores on a scale from 0 to 1.
There are four corners in the chart. In the top left, you find many countries that are both autocratic and corrupt, such as Myanmar and Russia. In the bottom right, there’s a thick cluster of nations that have stronger democratic institutions and lower levels of corruption. What also stands out is that no country appears in the top right: none are rated as both having strong democratic institutions and being highly corrupt.
This chart shows correlation, not causation — but research on the causal link suggests democratic systems can indeed help expose and reduce corruption. And there is also a causal impact running the other way: corruption can weaken democratic institutions, for instance by lowering voter turnout.
November 05
The deaths of children are daily tragedies on an enormous scale. The UN estimates that between 1950 and 2024, 990 million children died. That’s almost a billion children who died in only 75 years.
The chart shows that the world has made progress. In 1950, 23% of children born died before they were five years old. Since then, the global child mortality rate has declined to 3.6%.
In absolute terms, the number of child deaths has also declined: in 1950, 20 million children died; by the year 2000, this number had halved; and since then, it has halved again.
But the deaths of millions of young children every year remain one of the worst problems in the world and deserve much more attention.
November 03
It’s a common misconception that life expectancy has increased only because fewer children die. Historical mortality records show that adults today also live much longer than adults in the past.
It’s true that child mortality rates were much higher in the past, and their decline has greatly improved overall life expectancy. But in recent decades, improvements in survival at older ages have been even more important.
The chart shows the period life expectancy in France for people of different ages. This measures how long someone at each of those ages would live, on average, if they experienced the death rates recorded in that year. For example, the last point on the top dark-red line shows that an 80-year-old in 2023 could expect to live to about 90, assuming mortality rates stayed as they were in 2023.
As you can see, life expectancy in France has risen at every age. In 1816, someone who had reached the age of 10 could expect to live to 57. By 2023, this had increased to 84. For those aged 65, it rose from 76 in 1816, to 87 in 2023.
The data for many other countries shows the same. This remarkable shift is the result of advances in medicine, public health, and living standards.
October 31
The world has made major progress in expanding access to education. A century ago, most children did not have the option to go to school at all. Today, access to education is widely seen as a basic right that governments are expected to provide. And most governments succeed — according to statistics compiled by UNESCO, about 9 in 10 children of primary school age are enrolled.
The chart shows how this expansion unfolded for boys and girls separately. Throughout most of the 20th century, enrollment rose steadily, but boys remained more likely to be in school than girls. It was only towards the end of the century that this gap began to close. Today, the gap is small: around 91% of boys and 89% of girls are enrolled in primary school.
While the gap is small globally, it remains large and persistent in some countries. In Chad, in Central Africa, about 80% of boys are enrolled in primary school, compared with 67% of girls. This difference has shown little change in recent years, as the data linked below shows.
October 29
A woman dying when she is giving birth to her child is one of the greatest tragedies imaginable.
Every year, 260,000 women die from pregnancy-related causes. This number rose to 322,000 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fortunately, the world has made continuous progress, and such tragic deaths have become much rarer, as the chart shows. The WHO has published data since 1985. Since then, the number of maternal deaths has more than halved.
