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Antibiotics can play an important role in preventing disease and improving the health of animals. But overusing them, particularly for livestock, poses a risk to human health through antibiotic resistance.

Over the last decade, Europe has made much progress in reducing antibiotic use in farm animals. This has been achieved through stricter regulations and, in some countries, taxes on antibiotics.

The chart shows the change in sales of these antimicrobials for livestock between 2010 and 2022. It shows a range of European countries, with a few examples highlighted in bold.

Antibiotic use has fallen by over half in some countries, such as the UK, Italy, France, and the Netherlands.

These countries have still managed to maintain productive agricultural sectors by focusing on other ways to manage disease risk and animal growth, such as vaccinations, ventilation, cleaner equipment, and high-quality diets.

Read more about the differences in antibiotic use for livestock across the world →

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January 2025 was the hottest January on record. This was surprising because the world recently transitioned from El Niño (which tends to increase global temperatures) to La Niña (which tends to cool them). We might have expected this cooling to be reflected in January’s temperatures. It was not.

But February did not follow this same pattern.

The chart tracks monthly temperature anomalies, comparing current temperatures to historical averages. Each dot represents a February anomaly, with El Niño (warmer) years in orange and red and La Niña (cooler) years in blue.

As expected, February 2025 cooled compared to February 2024, following the usual pattern where La Niña years tend to be cooler than the El Niño years before them.

However, this doesn’t mean global warming has slowed. Recent La Niña years are still warmer than El Niño years from just a few decades ago, showing that even natural climate fluctuations don’t reverse the long-term warming trend.

We update this data monthly so you can track how these patterns evolve.

Read our recent article that explains in more detail how the world is warming despite natural fluctuations from the El Niño cycle →

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In every country in the world, women live longer than men — but the size of this gap in life expectancy varies widely.

The difference is striking in some countries, like Russia and Ukraine, where women’s life expectancy is over 10 years longer. Their gaps have been wide due to higher death rates in young and middle-aged men — often due to alcohol use, smoking, and other risks. The war in Ukraine has widened this gap further, as men face high mortality from conflict.

The gap is much smaller in other countries, including in West Africa and South Asia. There are likely multiple reasons for this, including higher rates of maternal mortality and HIV among women. Just a few decades ago, Bangladesh and India had shorter female than male life expectancies due to higher rates of female infanticide and neglect in childhood, and the gap in lifespans in these countries is still relatively small.

Many factors affect life expectancy, and the sex gap in lifespans has varied widely across countries and over time.

You can read more in my article about why women live longer than men →

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The world's population has more than doubled over the last 60 years, but global food production has managed to keep up.

The chart shows the change in four indicators since 1961: cereal production, cereal yields, land use for cereals, and population. Each metric is expressed in its relative change since 1961 (which is given a value of zero).

Cereal production has increased by 3.5-fold, more than the 2.6-fold growth in population. That means production has grown faster than the population, and the world produces more cereal per person than 60 years ago.

We can also see what has driven this increase. You can grow more food by either increasing crop yields or using more land. While land use has increased, most of this growth has come from higher crop yields. This has spared some natural habitats from being converted into farmland.

Read more in my article on the Green Revolution and food production →

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Putting a number on “happiness” is hard. But one way to better understand how satisfied people are with their lives is to ask them.

Self-reported life satisfaction is one key metric that researchers rely on. Respondents are asked to rate their lives on a 10-step ladder, where 0 represents the worst possible life, and 10 is the best.

The chart shows self-reported life satisfaction measured against gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The two are positively correlated: people in richer countries tend to be more satisfied with their lives.

Of course, income is not the only thing that matters. You can also see the large spread of values for countries with similar levels of GDP per capita. For example, South American countries tend to have higher happiness levels than those in other regions.

Explore more data on life satisfaction across countries, within countries, and over people’s lifespan →

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When we emit carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere, most of it stays there for centuries or millennia. This means that CO₂ emitted even a century ago has contributed to the rising temperatures we see today.

In other words, how much the climate warms depends on how much cumulative CO₂ is emitted over time.

The chart shows the ten countries with the largest share of the world’s historical emissions, based on cumulative emissions from fossil fuels and industry since 1750.

The United States has contributed the most, accounting for almost one quarter. This is followed by China and Russia.

There are many other ways to understand contributions to climate change – explore data on annual, per capita, and trade-adjusted emissions →

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Global average yields of cereal crops have tripled over the past 60 years. This has been crucial to feeding a growing population while sparing natural habitat from expanding agricultural land.

However, some cereal crops have seen much larger gains in efficiency. Maize (corn) and rice achieve the highest yields and have seen huge gains in recent decades. Wheat and barley have also performed well.

As the chart shows, crops like sorghum and millet have lagged behind. A hectare of land could yield 5 to 6 tonnes of corn or rice but only 1 to 1.5 tonnes of millet and sorghum.

It’s not just that yields for these crops are much lower today; growth over the past 60 years has been much more modest, increasing by less than 50%.

This is a huge challenge since these are key staple crops across much of Sub-Saharan Africa, where hunger rates are the highest and farmer incomes are the lowest.

Read more in my article on increasing yields in Sub-Saharan Africa →

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Government spending on health has grown substantially across rich nations since 1990, with particularly steep increases in the United States. The chart shows healthcare spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) in four countries.

Japan and the UK saw their share more than double, while it more than tripled in the United States, from 4.5% to 16% of GDP. The rising costs partly reflect demographic change, as older populations typically need more medical care, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each country organizes healthcare differently. Germany requires everyone to buy insurance from regulated providers, while Japan gives everyone government insurance. The United Kingdom provides healthcare directly through its national health service, while the US combines private insurance with government coverage for the elderly and those on low incomes.

Explore government health spending for more countries →

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In 2000, Sierra Leone had the highest rate of maternal mortality in the world (alongside South Sudan). Around 1,800 pregnant women died for every 100,000 live births.

Since then, risks for mothers have plummeted. The country has focused on expanding healthcare, increasing the retention of skilled medical staff, and improving access to crucial medicines and treatments. In 2010, it rolled out free healthcare to pregnant women and children.

The results are shown in the chart. Maternal mortality rates have fallen by 74% in two decades.

While these rates are still extremely high — rates in the safest countries are around 100 times lower — Sierra Leone has made massive strides in saving both women and children.

Explore more global data on maternal deaths and declines over time →

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In 1981, the major foreign aid donor countries, also known as the Development Assistance Committee, made a promise at the UN: to aim for at least 0.15% of their national income to assist the world's least developed countries — about 1 dollar out of 700.

Over the years, they repeated this pledge. But by 2022, most countries failed to honor this promise. The chart shows the 20 OECD countries giving the most aid, as a percentage of their national income, to the world’s poorest nations.

Only three countries met the target: Luxembourg, Sweden, and Norway.

Some countries are so wealthy that even a rounding error in their budgets could mean the difference between life and death for people in the poorest parts of the world.

Explore foreign aid given to least-developed countries for all donor countries →

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Patients diagnosed with cancer in 2014 were more likely to survive in Australia than in the UK across multiple types of cancer. This is despite both countries having similar socio-economic conditions, allocating a comparable amount per person to healthcare, and having a similar share of their populations living with cancer.

For colorectal cancer, 71% of Australian patients survived five years after diagnosis, compared to 60% in the UK.

Lung, liver, and pancreatic cancers, which are among the most aggressive, also had lower survival rates in the UK.

The survival gap was most dramatic for pancreatic cancer patients, where Australia's 14% five-year survival rate was nearly double the UK's 8%.

These survival rates only account for diagnosed patients, meaning early detection and prompt treatment access significantly impact outcomes. Differences in healthcare systems, screening coverage, treatment approaches, and other health risk factors may contribute to the gap.

Explore how cancer survival rates compare across other countries →

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South Korea is undergoing one of the world’s most rapid demographic transitions. Fertility rates — the number of children a woman has over her lifetime — have fallen rapidly over the last 50 years, and this is reflected in a rapidly aging population.

One of the clearest signs is the total number of children living in South Korea. In the chart, you can see that the number of children and adolescents under 15 years old is shrinking quickly.

The number of under-15s peaked around a decade later but has now fallen by 60%, from 14 million to less than 6 million.

This is a pattern we see in other countries such as Japan, China, and even Thailand — albeit at different rates.

Explore more data on population trends, births, and fertility rates in our Population and Demography data explorer →

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The chart shows health expenditure per person for G7 countries; the data is adjusted for differences in living costs between countries.

The US spends much more on healthcare per person than any other G7 nation: $12,000 in 2021. This is more than 50% higher than Germany, the next-highest spender.

Japan and Italy spend just $4,700 and $4,400 per person at the lowest end — slightly over one-third of US spending.

Despite spending much more on healthcare, the United States has the lowest life expectancy in the G7. This is due to a combination of higher death rates from smoking, obesity, homicides, opioid overdoses, road accidents, and infant mortality.

Explore health expenditure per person for other countries →

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People might associate democracy with having the right to vote. But meaningful democracy is much more than that.

In 2022, nearly every country granted its citizens the right to vote. 85% of them had an elected parliament and government. In 82%, elections were multi-party, meaning that people had more than one option on the ballot. You can see this in the chart.

But, fewer than two-thirds of these elections were genuinely competitive. In others, voters were systematically pressured or intimidated, the timing of elections was violated, or election fraud influenced the results.

Even more concerning, in only 39% of countries were people able to express their political opinions and associate freely.

As a result, just over one-third of countries recently held elections that met all of these democratic criteria and can be considered truly free and fair.

Find out which countries have all democratic criteria and which don't →

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In 1978, Louise Brown became the first baby born through in vitro fertilization (IVF). In this technique, eggs are fertilized with sperm in a lab before the resulting embryos are transferred to the uterus.

Assisted reproductive technologies have advanced further and now become widely available.

These innovations have helped many people who might otherwise struggle to conceive — supporting individuals and couples facing infertility, allowing older parents to preserve fertility, and enabling same-sex couples to have children.

The chart shows the share of births in 2019 that involved assisted reproductive technologies across various European countries. This can include cross-border treatment.

Spain had the highest share, with nearly 9% of births resulting from assisted reproductive technology, followed by Greece, Denmark, and Czechia. In contrast, countries like Ireland, Lithuania, Serbia, and Turkey had much lower rates, with less than 2% of all births.

Explore more data on fertility rates and reproductive technology →

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Since 2000, fewer couples in England and Wales have divorced within the first ten years of marriage, reversing the trend of the late 20th century.

The chart shows the percentage of marriages ending in divorce within a decade, based on the year of marriage. For those married in 1965, one in ten divorced within ten years.

By 1975, this had nearly doubled to 18% as legal reforms made separation easier and less stigmatized. Divorce rates peaked for couples married in 1995, with one in four divorcing by their tenth anniversary.

But, as you can see, this trend has started to reverse. Of the couples that married in 2012, only 17% had divorced by 2022. That’s well below the peak in the 1990s.

Explore our data on marriages and divorces in other countries →

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The biggest migration story of the past few centuries has not been from country to country but from rural areas to cities.

In 1960, one-third of the world’s population lived in urban areas. This share is now closing in on 60%. By contrast, less than 4% of the global population are international migrants.

But some countries are urbanizing much more quickly than others. Bangladesh is one example of a country that has experienced much faster internal migration than its South Asian neighbors. You can see this on the chart.

In 1972, just 8% of people in Bangladesh lived in towns and cities. This share has more than quadrupled to 40%.

Explore more data on the global movement of populations from rural areas to cities →

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The Ipsos Housing Monitor 2025 surveyed people across 30 countries, asking: “In general, do you think that your country is on the right track or the wrong track when it comes to housing?”.

The chart shows results for European countries, where housing prices dipped after the 2008 global financial crisis, before starting to rise again around 2013, with particularly large increases since 2015.

The Netherlands and Spain stand out, with nearly 80% believing their country is on the wrong track.

People in Poland and Sweden are less concerned than in other countries. But even in these nations, the majority feels like their country is on the wrong track.

Explore more data on optimism and pessimism about the future →

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This chart focuses on the share of women who had no births by the end of their childbearing years. The horizontal axis shows the woman’s birth year.

Around 18% of those born in the 1910s in the United States had no children. For the following generations who grew up during the “baby boom”, the share with no children dropped to 5%. Since then, this figure has risen and fallen again.

In Sweden, the share of women without any children has remained relatively stable at around 12% for women born between the 1950s and 1970s.

The trend in Japan and Spain has been different: the share of women with no children has grown steeply over recent generations. In Spain, the figure nearly doubled in a decade: from 10% for women born in 1960 to almost 20% for those born in 1970. In Japan, it almost tripled in twenty years.

Explore this data for twenty more countries →

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Households in the United States have changed significantly over the last 60 years. In 1960, 43% of households were couples with children, but this had dropped to 24% by 2015.

Once a minority, single individuals living alone are now the most common composition, making up 28% of households in 2015.

Several factors may explain this shift. Since 2000, most population growth has occurred among those over 60, who are more likely to live alone after widowhood or once children leave home. Declining birth rates have further reduced the share of households with children.

At the same time, rising incomes among women, in particular, have made independent living more accessible, likely contributing to the increase in single-person households alongside the trend of marrying later or not at all.

Explore how household types compare across different countries →