Solar and wind gain an edge over coal in a number of countries

Over the last three decades, employment has changed dramatically across Asia.

In the early 1990s, almost two-thirds of the labor force in South Asia was employed in agriculture, and more than half in East Asia. Today, this is just 40% in the former, and one-quarter in the latter.

The chart shows the change across several countries in these regions. The share has fallen in all of them, but some stand out as having particularly dramatic transitions away from farming.

In Bangladesh and Vietnam, rates have fallen from around 70% to 38%. In China, they have dropped from 60% to 25%. In India, things have moved more slowly.

This matters for people still working in agriculture and those who have moved to jobs in other sectors. Productivity gains — which can allow family members and former workers to move away from the farm — mean that the financial returns per farm worker have increased over this time. Those who have moved to jobs in industry and services often see an increase in their wages. The result is that mean incomes have increased across these countries.

Read our data insight on this transition in today’s rich countries →

Honest elections matter because they give people a say in how their country is run. They help ensure that governments reflect the people's will and that policies respond to real needs.

It’s sometimes assumed that support for democracy and fair elections is limited to particular regions or cultures. However, data from the Integrated Values Surveys, which asks people across many countries how much honest elections matter to them, shows otherwise.

Across all the countries surveyed, large majorities said honest elections are important in their lives. Nearly everyone said so in Indonesia, South Korea, and the UK. Even in countries where experts judge elections as unfree or unfair — like Iran, Egypt, or Russia — around 80% to 90% still said they matter.

In some contexts, people may feel pressure to answer this question in a certain way, either downplaying or overstating the importance of elections. Still, the consistency of results across such different countries suggests the demand is real.

Explore more data on free and fair elections for all countries →

After only two years, California’s driverless taxis now transport passengers for more than four million miles per month. Although they still make up only a fraction of taxi trips in the state, they are expanding quickly.

This chart shows the monthly distance traveled in driverless trips in California. It measures the total number of passenger-miles, summing up the distance traveled by all passengers.

In August 2023, California regulators fully approved self-driving taxi services in San Francisco for companies Cruise and Waymo. However, Cruise stopped operating in late 2023 due to safety and regulatory issues, so the recent growth reflects only Waymo’s service.

Trips stayed under half a million miles per month until mid-2024. But since then, growth has taken off. Within a year, usage multiplied eightfold, climbing past four million miles by May 2025, the latest data available.

This is a new chart on Our World in Data — we will update it every quarter based on the latest reports →

Since the 1960s, China’s population has more than doubled. Despite having more than twice as many mouths to feed, the amount of food it produces per person has increased dramatically.

Better seeds, irrigation, pest management, and improved farming techniques have all helped increase the country’s agricultural productivity. But the addition of nutrients through fertilizers has also made a huge difference. The chart shows the rapid uptake of fertilizers in China from the 1960s through the early 2000s.

While fertilizers can play a crucial role in feeding more people and using less land, they also have negative environmental impacts. Excess nutrients run off into rivers and pollute coastlines, and fertilizers can emit nitrogen oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas. Using fertilizers more efficiently helps grow food while cutting pollution.

China has made important progress on this in the last decade. As you can see in the chart, its fertilizer use peaked in 2014 and has fallen since then. At the same time, the country’s agricultural production has continued to increase.

In 2015, China launched its “Zero-Growth Action Plan for Fertilizer”, and its government policies have played an essential role in this turnaround.

Subsidies previously made fertilizers very cheap in China, which encouraged farmers to overuse them. Cutting these subsidies while offering incentives for agricultural machinery, precision technologies, farmer education, and larger farms (which tend to use less fertilizer per hectare) has made China’s farming sector much more efficient.

Read more in my article “How effective are policies in reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture?” →

To track progress towards ending extreme poverty, the United Nations relies on World Bank estimates of the number of people living below a poverty threshold called the “International Poverty Line” (IPL).

In June 2025, the World Bank announced a major change to this line, raising it significantly, from $2.15 to $3 per day. As a result, 125 million people who would not have been counted as extremely poor before June are now included.

The increased IPL and the higher poverty estimates are due to a mix of overlapping changes, which we explained in a recent article.

Two things are particularly important to know.

First, the higher estimates of extreme poverty reflect a higher poverty threshold, not that the world is poorer. In fact, the latest data shows that incomes among the world’s poorest are actually higher than previously estimated.

Second, the overall message is the same whether we look at the new or previous estimates. Progress in recent decades has been enormous: well over a billion people have escaped extreme poverty since 1990. But this progress has now stalled. Incomes are stagnant in the places where most of the world’s poorest live. Unless this changes, hundreds of millions of people will be stuck in extreme poverty for years to come.

Read our complete explainer on the new International Poverty Line and World Bank poverty data →

One of the most tragic beginnings in life for a child is to lose their mother during childbirth.

This was incredibly common in the past, and it still is in many countries today. But the world has made much progress in reducing maternal mortality rates.

As the chart shows, maternal deaths per 100,000 live births have fallen by 57% since 1985. Progress was temporarily reversed during the COVID-19 pandemic, but rates have started to fall again since then.

As a result, there are around 365,000 fewer maternal deaths each year than in 1985.

There are still huge gaps in maternal mortality rates across the world; we estimate that closing these gaps could save an additional 275,000 women each year.

Explore data for countries across the world in our newly updated data on maternal mortality →

Few health problems affect billions of people at any time; anemia is one of them.

Anemia is a condition in which someone has fewer red blood cells or lower hemoglobin levels in their blood. It might seem like a minor health condition, but it can have serious implications. In children, it can lead to delays in cognitive and physical development. During pregnancy, it can increase the risk of mortality for both the baby and the mother.

Around half to two-thirds of cases are caused by nutritional deficiencies, particularly iron, but also folic acid and vitamin B₁₂.

As you can see in the chart, anemia is more common in lower-income countries: the condition affects more than half of children and almost half of pregnant women. Poverty often means that people can’t afford diverse diets and are more likely to fall ill from infectious diseases, increasing their nutrient requirements.

While rates are much lower in rich countries, it’s not a solved problem. I know relatives and friends in the United Kingdom who have struggled with anemia.

Read more in my article “Billions of people suffer from anemia, but there are cheap ways to reduce this” →