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.
Yesterday
In a recent Data Insight, I wrote about how Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, I want to follow up with a striking comparison between Spain and Argentina.
The chart shows GDP per capita for Argentina and Spain over the last two centuries. These are historical estimates from the Maddison Project, and the data is adjusted for inflation and differences in the cost of living.
When Argentina declared independence from Spain in 1816, the two countries had very similar GDP per capita. By the late 19th century, Argentina had become richer than its former colonial power, and it stayed ahead for many decades. Spain then started growing faster in the 1960s, and by the mid-1970s it had caught up.
Continued economic growth in Spain after the 1980s drove the large gap we see today. It kept GDP per capita on a steep upward path into the 21st century. Argentina, by contrast, grew more slowly and went through several economic crises, visible on the chart.
Today, Argentina’s GDP per capita is closer to my home country of Colombia than to Western European countries like Spain. This helps us see how much of a difference economic growth can make within just a few generations.
March 19
Forty years ago, young people had higher literacy rates in Sub-Saharan Africa than in South Asia. You can see on the chart that the region had a 10-percentage-point lead in 1985.
But things have changed a lot since then. Sub-Saharan Africa now lags by more than 14 percentage points.
While literacy has improved in both regions, it has done so much faster in South Asia. There, almost all young people have basic reading and writing skills. In Sub-Saharan Africa, most of them do, but there is still a significant lag behind other world regions.
In South Asia, the increase in literacy rates among young women has been particularly dramatic. In the mid-1980s, only around 40% had basic reading skills. That has more than doubled to over 90%, and the gap between young men and women has essentially closed.
March 17
When I first visited Buenos Aires some years ago, I was struck by how grand the city's historic architecture was. This is something that strikes many tourists: parts of the city feel closer to Paris than you’d expect from a country whose income level today is more similar to my home country of Colombia than to France.
This chart helps put that observation in perspective. It shows the ten richest countries in the world in 1910, according to GDP per capita estimates from economic historians.
By this measure, Argentina was among the world’s richest countries in 1910, ahead of several Western European countries, including Germany and France. It also stood clearly ahead of its peers in Latin America at the time.
But over the course of the 20th century, Western European economies grew far faster, especially after the Second World War, and Argentina fell behind.
A long-run perspective like this shows how much of a difference economic growth can make within just a few generations.
March 14
In 1965, the median age in the United Kingdom was almost twice that of China. Half of the people in the UK were younger than 34 years, and half were older. In China, this midpoint was just 18 years.
Within just a few generations, that age gap has closed.
As you can see in the chart, the median age in both countries is now 40 years. Both populations have aged, but the increase was far faster in China.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, China’s median age fell partly because of a fall in child mortality: birth rates remained high, and more children survived.
After that, the rapid increase is largely explained by a steep fall in fertility, and therefore in births. Before then, high birth rates meant that large cohorts of children were continually entering the population, keeping it young. When births fell, fewer children were added each year, and the large, earlier generations grew older.
China’s median age is expected to continue rising quickly: under the UN’s medium projections, it will be 10 years older than the UK's by 2050.
March 12
Throughout the entire 20th century, about 100 million people died earlier than they would have because of smoking. That’s a lot, but it pales in comparison to the expected numbers for this century.
Between 2000 and 2023 alone, smoking-related deaths are estimated at 163 million. You can see this comparison in the chart.
Some epidemiologists project that unless there is a substantial change in smoking uptake and rates across the world, there could be as many as one billion smoking-related deaths in the 21st century.
In the 20th century, most of these occurred in today’s high-income countries. In the 21st century, most will come from low- and middle-income countries.
Many of the people who are expected to die are smoking today, but even more are expected to be future smokers. Finding ways to help people stop smoking and prevent them from starting matters for keeping this huge figure in the millions, not billions.
March 10
At the turn of the millennium, 2.2 billion people in the world lived in extreme poverty. In international statistics, this means they survived on less than $3 per day (in today’s money).
In the two decades that followed, this number more than halved. You can see this decline in the chart.
This huge reduction was driven by rising incomes and poverty alleviation across East and South Asia. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the opposite happened: while the share living in extreme poverty declined, the total number increased.
Looking ahead, based on the latest available projections from researchers at the World Bank, this reduction in global extreme poverty is expected to end. In fact, numbers in 2040 might be higher than they are today.
This is because most of the extremely poor today live in countries with stagnant economies. If these do not see much stronger economic growth, the world will have nearly one billion living in dire poverty for decades to come.
Note that these projections are based on the latest growth projections from the World Bank and the IMF. From 2031 onward, poverty projections are based on the average growth rates observed from 2015 to 2024.
March 7
Just a decade ago, almost three times as much electricity in the European Union was coming from fossil fuels as from solar and wind.
But last year, for the first time, solar and wind produced more than coal, gas, and oil combined. They accounted for just over 30% of total electricity production.
You can see this rise of solar and wind — and fossil fuels’ decline — in the chart.
This record happened despite a poor year for wind output due to low wind speeds and a slight increase in gas to compensate for lower hydropower output from dry conditions.
