Life expectancy is returning to pre-pandemic levels

Immigrants without legal status are only a small fraction of the total immigrant population in most rich countries.

For example, just 7% of immigrants in the United Kingdom lack legal status. It’s 4% in Germany and less than 2% in the Netherlands. The United States stands out, with 22% of its immigrant population lacking legal status — that’s about one in five.

The estimates of immigrants without legal status come from the Measuring Irregular Migration (MIrreM) project and are for one specific year between 2017 and 2023. The total immigrant numbers are from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2020).

Explore data on immigration for more countries →

Fish stocks have a “maximum sustainable yield” — this is the point at which you can catch the largest amount of fish without affecting their total population over the long term. In other words, it means catching as many fish as possible without shrinking the population.

A fish is defined as “overexploited” if it is caught faster than the maximum sustainable yield.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that around one-third of the world’s assessed fish stocks are overexploited. This chart shows that this share has increased over time.

Many regions have formal assessments of fish stocks and catch rates to provide updated estimates of overfishing. However, many fish stocks across Africa, Asia, and South America are not frequently and rigorously assessed. To get global estimates, the UN FAO combines these formal assessments with expert opinion and extrapolations based on what national and regional-level data is available.

The UN FAO’s report — The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2024 — provides more detailed breakdowns of which species are overexploited or fished sustainably.

Explore more data and research on overfishing →

When asked where public spending should be reduced most, around 60% of people in the UK suggest cutting foreign aid.

However, people overestimate how much the UK spends on aid: last year’s UK Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses show that overseas aid amounted to £5.1 billion — just about 74 pounds per person.

As the chart shows, this is a tiny part of public spending, making up only 0.5% of the total budget.

To put this in perspective, the UK spends much more on other areas: over eight times as much on public order and safety, ten times more on defense, and forty times more on each of the two biggest expenses: health and welfare.

Spending is not much higher if we also consider funds dedicated to supporting refugees in the UK itself.

This situation is not specific to 2023: the UK’s foreign aid spending has been at similar levels for decades and is in line with what other wealthy countries spend. Compared to the size of its budget and economy, foreign aid is a relatively small expense.

Explore spending on foreign aid in the UK and other countries →

Homelessness is defined differently around the world, making it difficult to compare the issue across countries.

The map shows the forms of homelessness included in country statistics, as recorded by the Institute of Global Homelessness.

Sources distinguish three broad forms of homelessness: people with no accommodation who sleep in the streets or public spaces; people in temporary accommodation, such as emergency shelters; and people in severely inadequate housing, such as tents or slums.

Country statistics vary in which forms they include, with some countries focusing on just one type while others cover multiple combinations. Many sources do not provide enough details to know which forms of homelessness they refer to.

Despite these challenges, the data on homelessness has recently improved. The Institute of Global Homelessness has collected data on the completeness of national statistics, and the OECD has worked on making the statistics of their members comparable by using the same definitions of homelessness across them.

Learn more about the challenges of measuring homelessness →

In recent years, migration has prevented population decline among high-income countries.

The World Bank defines high-income countries as those with a gross national income (GNI) per capita of over $14,000 in 2023. It includes countries like the United States, Chile, and Poland.

The chart shows annual population growth with and without migration in these countries.

The green line, which includes migration, shows that populations in high-income countries are still growing.

What would this have looked like without migration? The blue line gives you the answer — it shows the annual population growth only considering births and deaths in the country. It has been falling for decades and went negative in 2020.

Note that these figures apply to high-income countries as a group; in some countries, such as Italy or Japan, the total population is shrinking, even when considering migration. This data comes from the World Population Prospects dataset published by the United Nations.

Explore more data on population growth →

Japan closed down most of its nuclear plants after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in 2011, and nuclear production dropped dramatically.

You can see this in the chart above, which shows the electricity mix of Japan since 1985. It’s based on data from the Energy Institute.

Fossil fuel plants — notably coal — were ramped up to keep the lights on. But some nuclear plants have come back online, which is why you see nuclear production start to rise again.

Read our article on the death toll of the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters →