Solar and wind power have grown quickly in Poland, but coal still dominates

The chart shows the relationship between GDP (gross domestic product) per capita — a measure of average incomes in a country — and people’s living conditions.

Where GDP per capita is higher, living conditions are far better in many ways. Where average incomes are higher, children die less often, fewer of them are born dead, mothers die less often, fewer children suffer from hunger, doctors can focus on fewer patients, people live longer, more people can read, children have better access to education and better learning outcomes, more people have access to electricity and clean drinking water, and people are happier with their lives.

The disparity between countries with a low and a high GDP per capita is enormous. Looking at the first panel, for example, you can see that a child born in one of the poorest countries is more than 20 times as likely to die as a child born in one of the richest.

China makes and exports more goods than any other country. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, when I think about China’s economy, the first thing that comes to mind is manufacturing — increasingly at the technological frontier in electric vehicles, batteries, and solar panels.

China’s position in manufacturing follows decades of economic transformation. The chart shows one aspect of this: the decline in agricultural employment.

At the turn of the 21st century, around half of all Chinese workers were employed in agriculture. One generation later, that share had more than halved, reaching 22% in 2025.

I find it striking how far the share of workers in agriculture has fallen, and just as striking how high it remains. Agriculture employs more than a fifth of China’s workers, while accounting for less than 7% of its GDP.

If the world is to reduce its carbon emissions and tackle climate change, it needs to move away from fossil fuels to low-carbon power.

There are two key sources of low-carbon electricity: renewables — which include solar, wind, hydropower, and others — and nuclear power.

While rapid growth in solar and wind has increased the amount of electricity coming from renewables, a lack of enthusiasm for nuclear means it’s playing a shrinking role in the global mix.

In the chart, you can see the share of global electricity coming from fossil fuels, renewables, and nuclear since 1985. Since 2000, nuclear and renewables have followed very different trajectories. Back then, both accounted for a similar share of global electricity. But in 2025, renewables made up more than three times as much: 34% compared to 9%.

The total amount of electricity produced by nuclear plants is about the same as it was two decades ago. But because the world produces much more electricity overall, its share of the electricity mix has declined.

The World Bank’s International Poverty Line is an extremely low poverty line. Set at $3 per day, it draws attention to the living conditions of the poorest people on the planet.

In the chart above, you can see how the share below this poverty line has declined over the last generation. In the year 2000, 36% of the world’s population lived on less than $3 per day. In 2024, it was 10%.

But is progress against global poverty only happening when measured against such a very low poverty line?

The chart gives the answer. The entire blue line is below the entire dark red line. This tells us that no matter what line you choose, the share below it has declined globally.

Progress against higher poverty lines has been large, too. The share living on less than $5 a day has declined from 57% to 25%, and the share living on less than $10 a day has declined from 74% to 53%.

But on the right-hand side of the chart, we see that most people still live on low incomes: 81% of people in the world live on less than $30 a day, or about $900 a month.

The HIV epidemic — which started in the early 1980s and progressed rapidly in the 1990s — has had lasting impacts that continue today. More than 800,000 people still die from HIV/AIDS every year.

But some countries were hit much harder than others.

In the chart, you can see the share of all deaths in a given year caused by HIV/AIDS in four countries that were particularly badly affected.

At the height of the epidemic, more than half of all deaths in Zimbabwe and Botswana, and over 40% in South Africa and Namibia, were caused by the disease.

Thankfully, interventions to prevent the spread of HIV and treatments such as antiretroviral therapy have reduced death rates across the world. But about one in five deaths in these countries was still caused by AIDS in 2023.