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New
Article · 6 min read
Most people care about farm animals — our food system doesn't reflect that
Surveys worldwide show that most people find common animal farming practices unacceptable, even where meat consumption is high.
Pablo Rosado
Announcement
We’re looking for a writer
We’re hiring a writer who can make the world’s largest problems understandable to our large Our World in Data audience.
Hannah Ritchie
From our classics
How many species are there?
How many species do we share our planet with? How many of these species have we found and identified?
Hannah Ritchie
Article · 6 min read
What do people die from in different countries?
Explore causes of death data for all countries, spanning more than four decades.
Hannah Ritchie, Sophia Mersmann, and Fiona Spooner
New
Article · 6 min read
Most people care about farm animals — our food system doesn't reflect that
Surveys worldwide show that most people find common animal farming practices unacceptable, even where meat consumption is high.
Pablo Rosado
From our classics
How many species are there?
How many species do we share our planet with? How many of these species have we found and identified?
Hannah Ritchie
Announcement
We’re looking for a writer
We’re hiring a writer who can make the world’s largest problems understandable to our large Our World in Data audience.
Hannah Ritchie
Article · 6 min read
What do people die from in different countries?
Explore causes of death data for all countries, spanning more than four decades.
Hannah Ritchie, Sophia Mersmann, and Fiona Spooner
Updates and announcements
Announcement
Today
Hannah Ritchie has won the 2026 Unwin Award!
The award recognizes early-career authors whose work is considered to have made a significant contribution to the world.
Data update
Yesterday
Nearly one in ten people worldwide still live in extreme poverty
Explore updated data from the World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform.
Data update
This Week
NVIDIA's data center & AI revenue has grown nearly 15-fold since early 2023
Track the rapidly increasing demand for AI hardware.
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Yesterday
Which countries have fertility rates above or below the “replacement level”?
Fertility rates — which measure the average number of children per woman — have been falling worldwide. Since 1950,
global fertility rates
have halved, from almost 5 children per woman to 2.2.
As a result,
global population growth
has slowed dramatically, and many countries' populations are
expected to decline
by the end of the century.
This is because fertility rates in many countries have fallen below the “replacement level”. This is the level at which a population replaces itself from one generation to the next. It’s generally defined as a rate of 2.1 children per woman.
The map shows which countries had fertility rates above and below this level in 2025. This is based on projections from the UN World Population Prospects.
Explore how fertility rates have changed across countries over time, and how they are projected to evolve through 2100.
Continue reading
April 21
Indoor air pollution causes almost three million premature deaths every year
Most of the world's poorest people still rely on solid fuels — such as crop waste, dung, wood, and charcoal — for cooking and heating.
These fuels generate household air pollution when they’re burned. This has health impacts for those who breathe them in, and can increase the risk of a range of illnesses, including cardiovascular disease, stroke and some cancers.
Estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation suggest that indoor air pollution causes almost three million premature deaths each year. That’s three million people dying earlier than they otherwise would without this pollution.
As shown on the chart, deaths from indoor pollution have fallen as more people get
access to cleaner cooking fuels
. Improving access to clean energy could prevent many more early deaths.
Read my colleague Max Roser’s article on the “energy ladder”: what energy sources do people on different incomes rely on?
Continue reading
April 18
Death rates for cervical cancer in the United Kingdom have fallen by 80% since 1950
Cervical cancer death rates among women in the United Kingdom
have fallen
by around 80% since 1950. You can see this reduction in the chart.
This progress happened for a couple of key reasons.
The first was the introduction of population-level screening programs in 1988. Across the UK, women are invited to get a regular smear test to detect precancerous changes or cervical
cancer cases early
, when treatment has much better odds of success.
Another, and more recent innovation, which could put the UK on the path to eradicating cervical cancer completely, is the rollout of the
human papillomavirus
(HPV) vaccine. This protects someone from the HPV infection, which can later develop into cervical cancer.
In schools across the country, girls in their early teens are offered the HPV vaccine, effectively
offering them
long-lasting protection. I was one of the first cohorts of girls in the UK to receive this, and it’s something I’m incredibly grateful for.
The UK is not alone in its progress: a
number of countries
have managed to reduce cervical cancer death rates in recent decades.
Read Saloni Dattani’s article on how the HPV vaccine can eliminate cervical cancer.
Continue reading
April 16
France’s nuclear fleet gives it one of the world’s lowest-carbon electricity grids
France generates two-thirds of its electricity from nuclear power, making it the country’s
dominant power source
As the chart shows, that’s far more than the average across Europe, which is 20%, and the world as a whole, at 9%.
Nuclear power is a
low-carbon electricity source
, giving France a very clean electricity mix for decades.
Per unit of electricity, France
emits far less greenhouse gas
than its neighbors and has some of the lowest-carbon power in the world. The global average, based on lifecycle emissions, is 472 grams of
carbon dioxide equivalents
(CO
e) per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated. In France, this figure is 42 grams.
See how low-carbon your country’s electricity is.
Continue reading
April 14
Hunger levels have increased across Africa over the last decade
In every region of Africa, hunger is more prevalent than a decade ago.
The chart shows the increase in the share of the population that is undernourished, comparing 2014 and 2024 (the most recent year available). These estimates come from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
The situation across Africa is dire. In Middle Africa, where hunger is most acute, almost 1 in 3 people are undernourished. In Eastern Africa, the figure is roughly 1 in 4. Across Africa as a whole, it's 1 in 5.
This marks a reversal of a longer positive trend: over the preceding decades, hunger had been falling across
much of the world
, including
parts of Africa
. That progress has now stalled or gone into reverse. Conflict, extreme weather, and the economic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic have all contributed.
Explore this data interactively, for all countries and regions in the world.
Continue reading
April 11
Many countries are “leapfrogging” landlines and going straight to mobile phones
The concept of “
leapfrogging
” is popular in development. It suggests that, as they develop, lower-income countries can skip intermediate technologies or systems and go straight to the modern equivalent.
One example of this is the use of landlines and mobile phones.
The landline telephone was invented in 1876 and became a dominant form of communication across Europe and North America. As you can see in the chart, it was increasingly adopted in the United States and the United Kingdom throughout the 20th century.
However, mobile phone adoption increased rapidly in the 1990s, and landlines have declined since the millennium. Mobile phones have become a substitute.
But many countries have almost skipped landline adoption entirely. Ghana and Nigeria are good examples: landline subscriptions have remained extremely low, and instead, mobile phone adoption has exploded.
Explore landline and mobile subscriptions in more countries.
Continue reading
April 9
The global suicide rate has fallen since the 1990s, but the death toll is still high
Even after years of working with global health data, one statistic that I’m always struck by is the number of people who die by suicide every year. In 2023, it was estimated to be around three-quarters of a million.
That means suicides account for
more than 1 in every 100 deaths
in the world.
But a world where so many die from suicide is not inevitable. We know this because global suicide rates have fallen by an estimated 40% since the 1990s.
You can see this in the chart: rates
have fallen
from 15 to 9 deaths per 100,000 people over the last thirty years.
The
large differences
between countries also suggest that there are things that can be done to reduce this number even further.
Banning particularly toxic pesticides is one effective way to reduce suicide deaths in low- to middle-income countries; I looked at this in detail in a recent article.
Continue reading
See all our data
Child mortality rate
Long-run estimates combining data from un & gapminder
What share of children die before their fifth birthday?
What could be more tragic than the death of a young child? Child mortality, the death of children under the age of five, is still
extremely common
in our world today.
The historical data makes clear that it doesn’t have to be this way: it
is possible
for societies to protect their children and reduce child mortality to very low rates. For child mortality to reach low levels, many things have to go right at the same time:
good healthcare
good nutrition
clean water and sanitation
maternal health
, and high
living standards
. We can, therefore, think of
child mortality
as a proxy indicator of a country’s living conditions.
The chart shows our long-run data on child mortality, which allows you to see how child mortality has changed in countries around the world.
Explore the data
Explore the data
Share of population living in extreme poverty
World Bank
Share of population living in extreme poverty
World bank
What share of the population lives in extreme poverty?
The UN sets the “International Poverty Line” as a worldwide comparable definition for extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is currently defined as living on less than $3 per day. This indicator, published by the World Bank, has successfully drawn attention to the terrible depths of poverty of the poorest people in the world.
Two centuries ago,
the majority
of the world’s population was extremely poor. Back then, it was widely believed that widespread poverty was inevitable. This turned out to be wrong. Economic growth is possible and
makes it possible
for entire societies to leave the deep poverty of the past behind. Whether or not countries are leaving the worst poverty behind can be monitored by relying on this indicator.
Explore the data
Explore the data
Life expectancy
Long-run estimates collated from multiple sources by Our World in Data
Life expectancy
Long-run estimates collated from multiple sources by our world in data
How has people’s life expectancy changed over time?
Across the world, people are living longer. In 1900, the global average life expectancy of a newborn was 32 years. By 2021, this had more than doubled to 71 years.
Big improvements were achieved by countries
around the world
. The chart shows that life expectancy has more than doubled in every region of the world. This improvement is not only due to declining child mortality; life expectancy increased
at all ages
This visualization shows long-run estimates of life expectancy brought together by our team from several different data sources. It also shows that the
COVID-19 pandemic
led to reduced life expectancy worldwide.
Explore the data
Explore the data
CO₂ emissions per capita
Long-run estimates from the Global Carbon Budget
CO₂ emissions per capita
Long-run estimates from the global carbon budget
How have CO₂ emissions per capita changed?
The main source of carbon dioxide (CO
) emissions is the burning of fossil fuels. It is the primary
greenhouse gas
causing
climate change
Globally, CO
emissions have remained at just below 5 tonnes per person for over a decade. Between countries, however, there are large differences, and while emissions are rapidly increasing in some countries, they are rapidly falling in others.
The source for this CO
data is the Global Carbon Budget, a dataset we update yearly as soon as it is published. In addition to these production-based emissions, they publish consumption-based emissions for the last three decades, which can be viewed in our
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data Explorer
Explore the data
Explore the data
GDP per capita
Long-run estimates from the Maddison Project Database
GDP per capita
Long-run estimates from the maddison project database
How do average incomes compare between countries around the world?
GDP per capita is a very comprehensive measure of people’s
average income
. This indicator reveals how large the inequality between people in different countries is. In the poorest countries, people live on less than $1,000 per year, while in rich countries, the average income is more than 50 times higher.
The data shown is sourced from the Maddison Project Database. Drawing together the careful work of hundreds of economic historians, the particular value of this data lies in the historical coverage it provides. This data makes clear that the vast majority of people in all countries
were poor
in the past. It allows us to understand when and how the
economic growth
that made it possible
to leave
the deep poverty of the past behind was achieved.
Explore the data
Explore the data
Share of people who are undernourished
UN FAO
Share of people who are undernourished
Un fao
What share of the population is suffering from hunger?
Hunger
has been a severe problem for most of humanity throughout history. Growing enough food to feed one’s family was a constant struggle in daily life. Food shortages, malnutrition, and
famines
were common around the world.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization publishes global data on undernourishment, defined as not consuming enough calories to maintain a normal, active, healthy life. These minimum requirements vary by a person’s sex, weight, height, and activity levels. This is considered in these national and global estimates.
The world has made much progress in reducing global hunger in recent decades. But we are still far away from an end to hunger, as this indicator shows. Tragically, nearly one in ten people still do not get enough food to eat and in recent years — especially during the pandemic — hunger levels have increased.
Explore the data
Explore the data
Literacy rate
Long-run estimates collated from multiple sources by Our World in Data
Literacy rate
Long-run estimates collated from multiple sources by our world in data
When has literacy become a widespread skill?
Literacy is a foundational skill. Children need to learn to read so that they can read to learn. When we fail to teach this foundational skill, people have fewer opportunities to lead the rich and interesting lives that a good education offers.
The historical data shows that only a very small share of the population, a tiny elite, was able to read and write. Over the course of the last few generations, literacy levels increased, but
it remains
an important challenge for our time to provide this foundational skill to all.
At Our World in Data,
we investigated
the strengths and shortcomings of the available data on literacy. Based on this work, our team brought together the long-run data shown in the chart by combining several different sources, including historical and recent UNESCO data and a range of research publications.
Explore the data
Explore the data
Share of the population with access to electricity
World Bank
Share of the population with access to electricity
World bank
Where do people lack access to even the most basic electricity supply?
Light at night
makes it possible to get together after sunset;
mobile phones
allow us to stay in touch with those far away; the refrigeration of food reduces food waste; and
household appliances
free up time from household chores. Access to electricity improves people’s living conditions in many ways.
The World Bank data on the world map captures whether people have access to the
most basic
electricity supply — just enough to provide basic lighting and charge a phone or power a radio for 4 hours per day.
It shows that, especially in several African countries, a large share of the population lacks the benefits that basic electricity offers. No radio and no light at night.
Explore the data
Explore the data
Data explorers
See all our Data Explorers
Interactive visualization tools to explore a wide range of related indicators.
Poverty
Data Explorer
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Population and Demographic Change
Population Growth
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Causes of Death
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