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Governments need accurate information about their populations to implement effective policies.

But historically, few countries collected basic statistics on their people, so they knew little about them.

The chart here shows that, over time, many countries have built such institutions.

Starting in the 19th century, they began conducting population censuses, creating civil registers, and establishing statistical agencies. In the later 20th century, they started setting up population registers and using register-based censuses.

Thanks to these efforts, these countries better understand where people live, what jobs they have, who was born, and who has died.

However, many countries still lack these institutions, which makes it challenging for them to direct projects and policies where they are most helpful.

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The Netherlands was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001. Since then, more than 30 other countries have followed suit.

You can see this in the chart, based on data from Pew Research. By 2022, same-sex marriage was legal in 32 countries.

Since then, 3 more countries have joined this group: Andorra, Estonia, and Greece — bringing the total to 35. Last year, Nepal also registered its first same-sex wedding, but it’s not yet clear whether these rights are available across the country.

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The increase in the world’s population is not exponential. The global population is growing, but the growth rate has declined since its peak six decades ago.

The chart shows the annual rate of global population growth according to historical estimates and projections from the UN World Population Prospects.

The growth rate peaked in 1963 at over 2% per year, and since then, it has more than halved, falling to less than 1% by 2020.

The UN demographers expect rates to continue falling until the end of the century, eventually leading to negative growth rates and a shrinking global population.

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Tuberculosis is usually treatable with a specific combination of antibiotics. However, without proper treatment, the bacteria can survive and develop antibiotic resistance to an increasing number of drugs. This drug-resistant bacteria can then spread to other people, making the disease much more expensive to treat.

The chart shows the cost of treating a single patient with tuberculosis in India.

For tuberculosis patients without drug resistance, the average cost of treatment is only $24.

But among patients who have multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, the cost is almost $400. With extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, it costs more than $1,000. That’s about 50 times higher than patients without drug resistance.

Over the last twenty years, the share of countries that are democracies has remained relatively stable.

Relying on data from Varieties of Democracy, which we just updated, the chart shows that around half of all countries are democracies.

The world remains close to the historical high in the early 2000s and is much more democratic than 50 years ago; only 20% of countries were democracies in the early 1970s.

However, the chart shows smaller changes within democratic regimes: the share of liberal democracies, which grant additional individual and minority rights and constrain their governments, has decreased over the last decade.

While democracy has remained fairly resilient over the last few decades, this recent stagnation and limited rollback stresses that progress on increasing political rights is neither linear nor guaranteed.

Read more about the recent changes in democracy →

According to figures from the Aviation Safety Network, in the 1970s, there were about 6 fatal airliner accidents for every million commercial flights. This meant about 1 in every 165,000 flights ended in a fatal accident.

As the chart shows, this figure has dropped steadily in the last 50 years. According to the latest data, it is now about half a fatality per million flights. This means that, on average, it now takes more than 2 million flights for a fatal accident to occur.

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The Community Emissions Data System (CEDS) produces invaluable long-term data on the emissions of air pollutants worldwide. It has just published its latest update, extending this data to 2022.

One of the most striking changes in air pollution trends has been the abrupt drop in sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emissions from shipping. As you can see in the chart — where shipping is highlighted in red — there was a dramatic fall from over 10 million tonnes a year in 2019 to 3 million tonnes a year later.

The change resulted from the International Maritime Organization’s strict limits on marine fuels, introduced in 2020: the maximum percentage of sulfur allowed in these fuels fell from 3.5% to 0.5%. All ships worldwide had to comply.

This drop is positive for tackling local air pollution and acid rain. However, it also has implications for climate change since SO₂ has masked some of the warming caused by greenhouse gases.

Explore all of the updated data →

The world is close to eradicating polio. Annual cases have dropped from an estimated 400,000 in the 1980s to less than 4,000 in recent years.

But, to cross the finish line, sufficient testing is crucial to ensure that cases aren’t missed.

The World Health Organization recommends that at least 80% of potential polio cases be tested for the virus. Potential cases are identified based on “acute flaccid paralysis”, a sudden onset of paralysis in the limbs.

As shown in the chart, disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic led to a drop in polio testing rates in many countries. Thankfully, this new data shows that polio testing has rebounded.

This is due to the dedicated effort of countless health workers and opens the way to a future free from polio.

Renewable electricity production is growing quickly, mostly thanks to the deployment of solar and wind.

Ember has just published its latest Global Electricity Review, which includes final updates on electricity generation worldwide in 2023. We have updated our Energy Data Explorer with all of this data.

As the chart shows, renewables produced just over 30% of the world’s electricity in 2023.

This growth was mostly driven by the rapid rollout of solar and wind technologies. Hydropower generation actually fell in 2023 as a result of severe droughts, especially in China.

Explore the updated data from Ember →

Southern Europe demonstrates that countries can substantially increase the taxes they collect in a relatively brief period of time.

The chart shows that in 1980, tax revenues in Greece, Portugal, and Spain accounted for around 20% of their respective GDP, based on data from UNU-WIDER. This was slightly less than the United States’s 25% of GDP and much lower than Germany’s 36%.

Within a few decades, the three countries greatly increased their tax revenues. By 2021, they had almost caught up with Germany, with revenues nearly 40% of GDP. Even the 2007–2008 economic crisis only briefly interrupted their upward trend.

This shows that governments can increase their tax collection to expand public policies, even in countries where taxes were comparatively low in the past.

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There are many ways to examine a country's age structure. One interesting approach is to look at the age group with the largest population, as shown in the world map.

Across most African countries, the largest demographic is children younger than 10.

This contrasts sharply with Europe, where the largest age groups tend to be much older. Many European countries are most heavily populated by those in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. For example, the fifties are the largest age group in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In Monaco and Croatia, the most populous are those in their sixties.

If we look back to 1950, the map looks very different. Small children and teenagers were the most populous age groups in almost all countries.

Over the last 70 years, birth rates have declined in most countries, and life expectancy has increased, leading to aging populations worldwide.

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The share of the world population living in extreme poverty has never declined as rapidly as in the past three decades.

The decline in China was particularly fast, and given that one in six people in the world live there, we’re often asked whether the decline in global poverty was only due to the decline in China.

The chart shows the data that answers this question. In red, we see the global decline. In green, we see the decline if we exclude China from the data. In the world outside of China, 29% lived in extreme poverty in 1990 — by 2022, this share was down to 11%.

The large economic growth that lifted 800 million Chinese people out of extreme poverty since 1990 was a major contributor to the global decline in poverty. But the non-Chinese world also achieved a very large reduction.

It is not true that the global decline in poverty was only due to China. Extreme poverty has declined in China and the rest of the world.

Many countries do not collect or publish national data on suicides, especially poorer countries.

Around 60% of high-income countries have shared data on annual suicide rates in a given year with the World Health Organization, but less than 20% of lower-middle-income countries do, and no low-income countries have done so since 2011.

This lack of data is partly due to an absence of vital registries — where death certificates are collected — and coroners, doctors, and legal systems to determine and record causes of death across the population.

Without this data, statistical organizations estimate suicide rates based on other data, such as surveys and data from similar countries. This is challenging because suicide is highly stigmatized in many countries and sometimes even criminalized.

The chart also shows that more countries have improved their data collection and reporting systems. With more effort to improve vital registries, we will gain a greater understanding of where and why suicides occur, who is at risk, and how to prevent this tragic cause of death.

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Polio is a highly infectious viral disease that largely affects children, causing paralysis and permanent disability; it can also lead to death.

In the early 1980s, over 50,000 cases were reported annually. This only includes cases that have been diagnosed and reported to health authorities. The true number of total cases was likely higher than 300,000 in the worst years.

The number of reported cases has been dramatically reduced in recent years. We have just updated the data shown in the chart. Last year, there were 536 paralytic polio cases worldwide.

Much of this reduction has come from global efforts toward better vaccination and improved screening and testing, primarily coordinated by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), founded in 1988.

Global polio eradication is possible through high vaccination rates, thorough screening and testing to detect cases, and rapid, high-quality immunization campaigns to limit outbreaks.

Read more on how our generation can eradicate polio globally →

Since the late 20th century, astronomers and space agencies have taken steps to monitor the threat of large asteroids passing near Earth. International initiatives were established to detect, track, and characterize these celestial bodies to safeguard our planet from possible collisions.

As the chart shows, more than 33,000 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered and tracked since 1990. NASA estimates that over 90% of all the near-Earth objects larger than 1 kilometer have already been discovered.

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In 1987, countries around the world signed the Montreal Protocol to reduce emissions of ozone-depleting substances — such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), and halon gases used in refrigerators, deodorants, and other industrial processes.

This chart shows that since the Montreal agreement entered into force in 1989, global emissions of ozone-depleting substances have fallen by more than 99% as manufacturers have substituted them for less harmful alternatives.

The Montreal Protocol is one of the most successful international agreements to date.

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In the 1970s, less than half of Morocco's primary-age children attended school. Today, nearly every child is in school, with enrolment rates having soared to over 99%, according to data published by UNESCO.

Though this is a remarkable achievement, there's still room for improvement in education quality. Only about a third of these students achieve basic reading comprehension by the end of primary school.

Focusing on getting children into school has been crucial. The next step is to enhance the quality of education to ensure they not only attend but also learn and thrive.

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