November 25, 2025
Seasonal influenza is sometimes seen as a mild illness, but it remains a major cause of death. In serious cases, it can cause deadly complications such as pneumonia, strokes, and heart attacks. Researchers estimate that the flu causes about 400,000 respiratory deaths and 300,000 cardiovascular deaths globally each year.
The flu is most dangerous for infants and older adults. The map here shows rates of respiratory deaths caused by the flu in adults aged 65 and over, averaged across 2002–2011 (excluding the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic).
The data shows that death rates tend to be higher in South America, Africa, and South Asia than in Europe or North America.
I come from South America, and I found this surprising: most of what I hear about flu deaths tends to come from richer countries in the Northern Hemisphere. But the map shows that the flu is also deadly, in some cases even more so, in other regions where poverty, worse underlying health, limited access to healthcare, and lower vaccination coverage contribute to higher mortality.
One explanation for my misperception might be that surveillance and reporting are stronger in the countries that I associate with deaths from flu. Another could also be age differences: people in high-income countries tend to be older, so their total number of deaths — the ones you actually hear about — may still be higher, even if rates are lower.
When you consider the total death toll, you realize that the numbers are very large on the whole. Recall that the map only includes respiratory deaths, so the overall mortality is actually higher if we include other flu-related complications like cardiovascular disease.
Even if you account for the uncertainty of estimates in low-income countries — due to limited testing and death registration — the overall pattern remains striking: seasonal influenza kills hundreds of thousands each year, with many of these deaths in South America, Africa, and South Asia.
Today
On the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal have scaled up solar and wind power almost in step.
In the chart, you can see the share of electricity coming from solar and wind. Both countries generated over 40% of their electricity from these sources in 2025. That was higher than the European Union average of 30%.
The two countries have very similar geographies and share an electricity market. They also have weak connections to the rest of the European electricity grid, forcing them to generate clean power at home rather than rely on imports.
Wind power is more prevalent in Portugal, while solar is ahead in Spain.
June 9
For most of human history, more people were born each year than died. Populations grew very slowly for most of this history, then rapidly in recent centuries, as child mortality plummeted and people lived longer.
But this is changing. As the map shows, deaths now outnumber births in a growing number of countries across Europe and East Asia.
The balance of births and deaths tells us about a country’s “natural population change” — whether it would grow or shrink without any international migration. Where deaths outnumber births, the population will shrink unless enough people move in from abroad to make up the gap.
June 6
Coal generates one-third of the world’s electricity, more than any other source.
But zoom into the country level, and the picture is much more varied. The map shows which source generated the most power in each country in 2024 or 2025 (the latest year available).
Thanks to large reserves, coal dominates across Asia. It’s the largest source in China, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia. These are huge power producers, which is why coal is so dominant at a global level.
Across most other regions, it’s mostly a mix of gas and hydropower. On islands and parts of North Africa, it’s oil.
Europe has the most diverse mix, with nuclear power dominating generation in countries such as France and Finland, and solar and wind overtaking fossil fuels as the largest sources in countries such as Spain and Germany.
Solar and wind are growing quickly in many countries; when these sources are combined as “variable renewables”, they become the largest source in six more countries: the Netherlands, Portugal, Greece, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Pakistan.
June 4
At the turn of the millennium, Australia got more than 80% of its electricity from coal. This has dropped to less than 45%.
The chart shows how the country’s electricity mix has changed in recent decades.
In the 2000s and early 2010s, coal was initially replaced by gas, with only moderate growth in solar and wind. But in the last five years, solar and wind have been deployed much more quickly. Gas is now on the decline, too. In 2023, solar overtook gas to become Australia’s second-largest electricity source.
While coal is declining, it still supplies much more of Australia’s power than most high-income countries.
June 2
Unsafe sanitation is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. It increases the risk of many fatal diseases, including cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio.
Unfortunately, over 40% of the world does not have access to safe sanitation facilities. This is based on estimates from the WHO/UNICEF’s Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene.
The chart shows the share of the global population that has access to safe sanitation over time. While rates have increased, particularly over the last decade, they still fall far short of the UN’s target of universal access in 2030.
Increasing access to safe sanitation would save many lives from preventable infectious diseases.
May 30
Lung cancer kills more than two million people every year, making it the most fatal cancer globally.
While a number of factors increase the risk, the 20th century brought one like no other: smoking.
There is now plenty of epidemiological evidence linking smoking to lung cancer, but we can also see it in the patterns of death over decades. The chart shows death rates from lung, trachea, and bronchus cancers among men in a selection of high-income countries. Each shows a very clear rise and fall over the late 20th century.
This pattern mirrors smoking rates, with a lag. The timing and height of each peak depend on when and how strongly smoking took hold: early in the United Kingdom, later in Japan.
You also see this rise and fall among women, shifted later, since they took up smoking after men did.
Today, most smokers live in low- and middle-income countries, who are at different stages of this curve. Helping people quit or preventing them from starting in the first place would save many lives for decades to come.
May 28
Effective waste management systems are something that many of us living in high-income countries take for granted. Our waste is collected from bins in our street and taken to controlled or sanitary landfills, incinerators, or recycling centers.
But in many low- and middle-income countries, this is not the case.
In some of them, less than half of the waste (from households, shops, and other sources) is collected by management services at all.
In many countries, even when waste is collected, most of it — sometimes over 80% — is taken to open dumps or is openly burned. You can see this in the chart.
Both methods cause pollution, either through waste leaking from open dumps or toxic air pollution generated when plastics and other materials are burned.
While these numbers show that huge amounts of the world’s waste are mismanaged, they also tell a story of opportunity. Countries that invest in waste management can do so effectively, so that very little waste pollutes the environment, and the air is far cleaner.
