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Lithium is a critical component in many industries, including pharmaceuticals, optics, ceramics, and glass. But it’s best known for its use in batteries. Most rechargeable batteries in mobile phones, laptops, and consumer electronics are made from lithium-ion chemistries.

It’s also receiving increasing attention as a critical mineral in batteries for electric cars and storage for renewable energy.

Just a handful of countries supply the world’s lithium. In the chart, you can see each country’s share of global mined production in 2023. Australia produced almost half. Combined with China, Chile, and Argentina, these four countries produced over 90% of the total.

Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia form the so-called “lithium triangle”, which are large lithium deposits that span across these three countries. While Bolivia has huge lithium resources, it has produced very little so far.

This data comes from the United States Geological Survey.

Explore which countries produce other critical minerals in our data explorer →

Internet access has grown rapidly over the last few decades. It lets us connect with people across countries and continents, helps students learn and apply for jobs, and is even the primary mode of banking in some parts of the world.

But having access to fast internet also matters. This is also changing quickly.

In 2015, less than half — 44% — of the world population was in the range of a 4G network. That figure is now 90%. In the chart, you can see that this has increased quickly across many regions. This data comes from the International Telecommunication Union.

Note that being in the range of a 4G network doesn’t mean that someone is using it. If people don’t have a mobile, computer, or service to connect, they might be in the range of a network but not online.

Explore more charts on technological change across the world →

Women’s representation in national politics has increased dramatically in the last century.

But men still hold more parliamentary seats in almost every country. There are three exceptions: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Rwanda.

You can see this in the map. Most countries are in blue, meaning they have a higher share of men; in many countries, they make up more than 75% of the seats (shown in darker blue).

Look closely enough, and you can see the three countries in red that have more women.

This data comes from V-Dem and is based on parliamentary seats in 2023.

Explore how the share of women in parliament has changed in other countries →

America’s most popular type of meat is chicken. In Argentina, chicken is tied with beef. And in Japan, it’s fish and seafood.

There are large differences in the popularity of meat types across the world.

In the chart above, you can see the share of supply that comes from different types of meat: poultry, beef, pork, goat, and seafood. I’ve picked just a selection of countries that highlight some of the variation across the world.

Of course, countries also eat very different amounts of meat; this chart focuses on the relative amounts in national diets.

This data comes from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Explore the most popular types of meat in your country in the global dataset →

Global emissions of local air pollutants have probably passed their peak.

The chart shows estimates of global emissions of pollutants such as sulphur dioxide (which causes acid rain), nitrogen oxides, and black and organic carbon.

These pollutants are harmful to human health and can also damage ecosystems.

It looks like emissions have peaked for almost all of these pollutants. Global air pollution is now falling, and we can save many lives by accelerating this decline.

The exception is ammonia, which is mainly produced by agriculture. Its emissions are still rising.

These estimates come from the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS).

Air pollution has not peaked everywhere in the world — explore the data for your country →

One way to understand how far international migrants move is to measure the shortest distance between the borders of their origin and destination countries.

The chart above shows these distances for all international migrant populations worldwide. It includes the total number of people living outside their home country rather than yearly migration flows.

Most migration journeys are short, with neighboring countries (shown as “0 km” on the chart) the most common destinations. Nearly half of all migrants — about 47% — move less than 500 kilometers, roughly the distance from the Netherlands to Switzerland. The median distance between origin and destination countries is just under 600 kilometers.

24% of migrants travel over 3,000 kilometers, about the distance from Ukraine to Portugal. Only a small fraction — less than 4% — move more than 10,000 kilometers, roughly equivalent to a journey from Madagascar to the United Kingdom.

Read our full article on how far migrants travel from their home countries →

Papua New Guinea has 840 living languages — more than any other country.

A living language is one that is spoken by at least one person as their first language. The chart shows the ten countries with the most living languages as of 2024. This data is from the Ethnologue dataset produced by the Summer Institute of Linguistics International.

There are over 7,000 living languages globally, meaning that more than 10% of the world’s living languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea was initially settled by humans around 50,000 years ago, allowing a long time for languages to be established. Around 3,500 years ago, people speaking a different family of languages (Austronesian) arrived and settled in Papua New Guinea, bringing additional diversity to the country.

Unlike many nations, Papua New Guinea did not experience historical events such as the establishment of an early centralized authority, which often led to the dominance of a single language. Instead, its rugged mountainous terrain isolated communities, fostering the independent development of numerous languages.

Explore the number of living languages in other countries →

Cardiovascular disease mortality has fallen massively since the 1950s.

This chart shows annual age-standardized death rates from cardiovascular diseases in four countries: the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy.

The decline is substantial. In the United States, the death rate dropped from over 500 per 100,000 people in 1950 to under 150 in 2021 — a four-fold decline. The reduction in France and the United Kingdom was even greater, with death rates falling five-fold.

This progress comes from advancements in medical science, surgeries, emergency care, public health efforts, and dietary changes, improving cardiovascular health.

A dramatic reduction in smoking rates, better screening and monitoring for conditions like high blood pressure, and the development of life-saving treatments such as stents, statins, and clot-busting drugs have all contributed.

Explore trends in cardiovascular mortality in more countries →

In the 1970s, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution asking developed countries to contribute at least 0.7% of their national income to foreign aid. Most countries accepted this target, except for Switzerland and the United States.

But very few countries have met this target in the fifty years since then. Even today, only a handful of countries do.

Just five countries met this target in 2023: Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark. You can see them in blue on the map.

Every other developed country gave less than 0.7% of their national income.

Explore more of our new charts on foreign aid: who contributes, and where it goes →

Artificial intelligence has advanced rapidly over the past 15 years, fueled by the success of deep learning.

A key reason for the success of deep learning systems has been their ability to keep improving with a staggering increase in the inputs used to train them — especially computation.

Before deep learning took off around 2010, the amount of computation used to train notable AI systems doubled about every 21 months. But, as you can see in the chart, this has accelerated significantly with the rise of deep learning, now doubling roughly every six months.

As one example of this pace, compared to AlexNet, the system that represented a breakthrough in computer vision in 2012, Google’s system “Gemini 1.0 Ultra” just 11 years later used 100 million times more training computation.

To put this in perspective, training Gemini 1.0 required roughly the same amount of computation as 50,000 high-end graphics cards working nonstop for an entire year.

Read more about how scaling up inputs has made AI more capable in our new article by Veronika Samborska →

Moving between continents is less common than moving to another country within the same region. For most people, international migration means crossing a nearby border, rather than a very long distance or even an ocean.

Consider Asia, the world's most populous continent.

When an Asian emigrant leaves their home country, they can either move to another Asian country or head to one of the other five continents.

Data from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs shows that six out of ten Asian emigrants remain within Asia. In other words, more Asian emigrants move to other Asian countries than to all other continents combined.

European and North American emigrants show an even stronger tendency to stay in their continent, at 70% and 87%, respectively. This share is smaller in Africa and South America, at around half.

While this data aims to include illegal migrants, experts acknowledge the challenges in fully measuring these populations.

Read our full article on how far migrants travel from their home countries →

In 1991, fewer than 15% of people in Bangladesh had access to electricity. Thirty years later, access was almost universal.

Over 100 million Bangladeshis have gained access to electricity during this time. This enables them to light their homes, use household appliances, or stay connected through phones and the Internet.

The statistic measures the lowest “tier” of energy access: the capacity for basic lighting and charging a phone for at least four hours a day. But more than half the people in Bangladesh now also have a higher tier of electricity access, which means capacity to power high-load appliances (such as fridges) and electricity for more than eight hours a day.

The UN has set a target to achieve universal access to electricity by 2030. Currently, about 9 in 10 people worldwide have basic access to electricity.

You can explore the progress in other countries in our SDG Tracker here →

Global cement production grew rapidly through the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. In the decade from 2003 to 2013 alone, production doubled from 2 to 4 billion tonnes.

But, as you can see in the chart, this growth has stalled in the last 10 years. There has been some variation from year to year, but overall, global production has stayed around 4 billion tonnes. This data comes from the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

China was a significant driver of global growth in the 1990s and 2000s but has also reached a plateau in production. It now produces more than half of the world’s cement.

Cement production makes up around 7% of global CO₂ emissions.

Explore global trends in other metals and minerals in our data explorer →

Some countries take in far more refugees than others relative to their population.

A refugee is defined by the UN as someone needing international protection, who has fled their home country and whose home country’s government cannot or will not protect them.

This chart shows the cumulative number of refugees per 1,000 people in the country where they live as of 2023.

There are huge differences between countries: Lebanon hosts 137 refugees for every 1,000 residents — over four times as many as Germany (31) or Poland (25). Those numbers are still much higher than the Netherlands (13) and France (10), far above the United States at just 1.2 refugees per 1,000 residents.

These differences reflect conflicts in neighboring regions and national policies welcoming or deterring refugees.

Explore the number of refugees per 1,000 people for more destination countries →

The experience of poverty goes far beyond having no or low income. Unfortunately, still in many countries today, a large share of people experience severe poverty in many areas of life, such as health, education, and living standards.

To capture this broader reality, researchers from the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the UN Development Programme developed the global Multidimensional Poverty Index. This group of indicators measures poverty across essential areas of well-being, capturing whether people are undernourished, whether they lost a child, and lack access to education or basic facilities like clean water or electricity.

The map shows the share of the population in each country living in multidimensional poverty, highlighting where households face overlapping deprivations.

In countries across South America and some in East Asia, this share is less than 10%. But in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of the people experience these extreme conditions. The share even exceeds 4 in 5 people in Niger (91%), Chad (84%), and the Central African Republic (80%).

These figures are based on data from over 100 countries drawn from household surveys conducted between 2011 and 2023.

Read more on our article: Beyond income: understanding poverty through the Multidimensional Poverty Index →