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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 →

The number of children in the world has stopped growing. This moment in time was given the term “peak child” by the late Hans Rosling.

The chart shows the estimated number of children under five years old globally up to 2023, with projections from the United Nations out to 2100. The UN thinks the number of under-5s peaked in 2017.

The chart also shows the number of young people under 15, which peaked in 2020. And the number of under-25s, which may have peaked last year.

“Peak child” is a sign that the world is on course for “peak population”. The UN expects the world population to start falling before the end of the century.

Read more about the key insights from the latest UN World Population Prospects →

Almost one-quarter of adults in the world smoke tobacco. However, there are significant differences by gender.

More than one-third of men smoke, while less than one in ten women do.

Men are more likely to smoke in almost every country in the world. You can see this on the chart, which plots the share of men who smoke versus the share of women. Nearly all countries lie above the diagonal line, which means more men smoke than women.

This data is collated and published by the World Bank. It’s based on adults aged 15 years and older and includes all tobacco products.

Explore all of our data and research on smoking across the world →

Childhood cancer deaths in the United States have fallen dramatically over time, as shown in the chart. It presents annual cancer death rates in children under five years old.

There has been a six-fold decline since the 1950s.

This progress reflects decades of collaboration between scientists, clinicians, and public health workers.

One major success story has been in treating acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a common form of leukemia in children: researchers identified genetic mutations that caused the disease, making it possible to develop targeted chemotherapy drugs that have greatly improved survival. Surgeries, bone marrow transplants, and other treatments have also played a role.

We’ve also seen big improvements for other blood cancers, such as lymphomas and multiple myeloma, though progress has been slower for cancers of the brain and nervous system.

Explore more data on our page on cancer →

Record national life expectancies have been climbing for over a century.

In 1840, Swedish women had a life expectancy of 46 years — the highest of any country recorded that year. By 1921, Australia held the record at 63 years.

For most of the 20th century, Iceland, Norway, Australia, and Sweden competed for the top position before being overtaken by Japan in 1984. Hong Kong and Japan have held the records since then.

These countries didn’t merely catch up; they’ve continued to push the limits higher.

Japan added six more years to female life expectancy between 1984 and 2010, rising from 80 to 86 years.

This remarkable rise has resulted from many advances in medicine, public health, and living standards — breaking many predictions of the “limits” of life expectancy.

Read more in our article about the rise of maximum life expectancy →

Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, many people have left the country. By 2020, around 8.5 millions had emigrated, representing nearly half (48%) of all people born in the country.

As you can see on the chart, most Syrian emigrants have stayed close to home. Two-thirds of Syrian emigrants now live in Turkey, Lebanon, or Saudi Arabia, with Turkey alone hosting over 40%.

Political obstacles have made it difficult for Syrian migrants to move beyond neighboring countries and reach Europe. In 2016, the European Union and Turkey made a deal to curb migration by keeping migrants in Turkey in exchange for 6 billion euros in aid.

The Syrian case is part of a larger global pattern: most individuals who leave their country stay in the same continent.

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

In 1960, Singapore’s GDP per capita — a measure of average income — was a third of the average in Western Europe. It was even lower than Western Europe’s average income in 1900.

Since then, while Western Europe experienced steady growth, Singapore grew even faster. By 1994, it had surpassed Western Europe, and today, its average income is roughly twice as high. This is after adjusting for inflation and differences in living costs between countries.

Singapore became an independent republic in 1965. Key factors in its economic success include anti-corruption policies, investment in education and human capital, and its development as a global financial hub.

Explore how GDP per capita trajectories compare across countries →