September 12, 2025
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 →
Today
The Northern White rhino is on the brink of extinction. In the chart, you can see the collapse of this beautiful animal's population as a result of poaching, habitat loss, and conflict.
Now, only two individuals are left — Najin and her daughter, Fatu. Without males, the subspecies is “functionally extinct” and cannot rebuild its population naturally.
Scientists, though, offer some hope of bringing the rhino back through assisted reproduction. Eggs from Najin and Fatu have been fertilized with preserved sperm from dead male rhinos to produce viable embryos. Since neither Najin nor Fatu can carry a pregnancy, the plan is to use a female Southern White rhino — the closest subspecies — as a surrogate, to carry the embryo through to birth.
In 2023, a surrogate called Curra became pregnant, showing that the method works. Sadly, she died of a bacterial infection during pregnancy.
Scientists plan to try again and are also exploring other breakthrough reproduction treatments to save the Northern White rhino before it’s lost forever.
Read my article on why large mammals are so threatened with extinction →
September 26
One of humanity’s biggest victories has been the fight against infectious diseases. This battle has led to plummeting rates of child and maternal mortality and dramatically increased life expectancy.
However, there are still large differences in infectious disease rates between different parts of the world. As we might expect, deaths are much less common in high-income countries where almost everyone can access clean water, sanitation, and medication.
One common misconception is that this prosperity has come at the cost of an increase in death rates from chronic diseases, such as heart disease and cancers (collectively called “non-communicable diseases”). But this is not the case. As you can see in the chart, death rates from these diseases are also lower in richer countries. It’s not the case that we’ve simply substituted one health problem for another.
That means that the risk of someone of a given age dying from any cause each year tends to decrease as countries get richer.
Explore more of our data on causes of death across the world →
September 24
The first nationwide law allowing same-sex couples to marry was passed in the Netherlands in 2001. Amsterdam’s mayor, Job Cohen, officiated the first couples. Twenty-five years on, these rights to same-sex marriage now cover 1.5 billion people worldwide.
These people live in 39 countries with marriage equality, mainly across Western Europe and the Americas.
This change in marriage laws has made a huge difference to the lives of many. But they are still in the minority globally. Four in five people still live in countries where same-sex couples are not equal under the law.
Explore which countries have legalized same-sex marriage →
September 22
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 →
September 19
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 →
September 17
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 →
September 15
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?” →
