November 25, 2025
Seasonal influenza is sometimes seen as a mild illness, but it remains a major cause of death. In serious cases, it can cause deadly complications such as pneumonia, strokes, and heart attacks. Researchers estimate that the flu causes about 400,000 respiratory deaths and 300,000 cardiovascular deaths globally each year.
The flu is most dangerous for infants and older adults. The map here shows rates of respiratory deaths caused by the flu in adults aged 65 and over, averaged across 2002–2011 (excluding the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic).
The data shows that death rates tend to be higher in South America, Africa, and South Asia than in Europe or North America.
I come from South America, and I found this surprising: most of what I hear about flu deaths tends to come from richer countries in the Northern Hemisphere. But the map shows that the flu is also deadly, in some cases even more so, in other regions where poverty, worse underlying health, limited access to healthcare, and lower vaccination coverage contribute to higher mortality.
One explanation for my misperception might be that surveillance and reporting are stronger in the countries that I associate with deaths from flu. Another could also be age differences: people in high-income countries tend to be older, so their total number of deaths — the ones you actually hear about — may still be higher, even if rates are lower.
When you consider the total death toll, you realize that the numbers are very large on the whole. Recall that the map only includes respiratory deaths, so the overall mortality is actually higher if we include other flu-related complications like cardiovascular disease.
Even if you account for the uncertainty of estimates in low-income countries — due to limited testing and death registration — the overall pattern remains striking: seasonal influenza kills hundreds of thousands each year, with many of these deaths in South America, Africa, and South Asia.
Yesterday
The Netherlands was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001. Since then, almost 40 other countries have followed suit.
You can see this in the chart, based on data from Pew Research. By 2025, same-sex marriage was legal in 39 countries.
Last year, two countries were added to the total. Thailand became the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, and a same-sex marriage bill also took effect in Liechtenstein.
February 21
The share of the world population living in extreme poverty has never declined as rapidly as in the past three decades.
The decline in China was particularly fast, and given that one in six people in the world lives there, we’re often asked whether the decline in global poverty was only due to the decline in China.
The chart shows the data that answers this question. In blue, we see the global decline. In red, we see the decline if we exclude China from the data. In the world outside of China, 33% lived in extreme poverty in 1990; by 2025, this share was down to 12%.
The large economic growth that lifted 940 million Chinese people out of extreme poverty since 1990 was a major contributor to the global decline in poverty. But the non-Chinese world also achieved a very large reduction.
It is not true that the global decline in poverty was only due to China. Extreme poverty has declined in China and the rest of the world.
February 19
Forty years ago in Japan, two babies were born for every person who died. Twenty years ago, these numbers were equal. And today, the ratio has reversed: one baby is born for every two people who die.
In the chart, you can see this change in the number of births and deaths over time.
Since deaths now greatly outnumber births, and because immigration is low, Japan’s population has started to shrink.
February 17
Debates over whether religion is booming or dying are common. What does the data say?
Most countries lack long-term data on religious identity, but results from the Pew Research Center offer insights into changes over the decade from 2010 to 2020. (Unfortunately, 2020 is the most recent year for which we have comparable global data.)
At a global level, there was barely any change. The share of people identifying with any religion dropped by just one percentage point, from 77% to 76%.
But religious affiliation did drop significantly across many countries in Europe, the Americas, and Oceania. You can see this drop for a selection of countries in the chart.
In Australia, rates dropped from 75% to 58%. In the United States and Chile, the percentage has decreased from roughly 85% to 70%.
So while religious affiliation is stable in many parts of the world, this data shows religion is becoming less prominent in others.
Note that this data is based on self-identification with any religion; it doesn’t tell us about changes in practices or rituals, such as prayer or attending services.
February 14
This chart shows one way to compare automated manufacturing across countries — it plots the number of robots per 1,000 manufacturing employees.
The chart shows very large differences between countries. South Korea stands out, with more than one robot for every ten manufacturing workers.
Singapore comes second, and China ranks third, close to Germany. The United States sits in the middle, close to the European average, below Switzerland, Denmark and Slovenia.
This perspective shows industrial robot adoption in relative terms. In another Data Insight, I looked at robot adoption in absolute terms. From that perspective, China stands out by a large margin: it’s a large economy with a huge manufacturing sector, and it has by far the largest stock of industrial robots.
Much of this expansion has happened recently: China’s annual installations increased 12-fold over a decade, helping it catch up to South Korea in terms of robots per worker.
February 12
Most people in the world are religious. When asked whether they identify with any religion, three-quarters of respondents choose one.
But in the chart, you can see huge differences in rates of religious affiliation across the world. In some countries, such as India and Pakistan, it’s almost universal: almost everyone identifies with a religion.
The opposite is true in China, where just one in ten people does. Several countries in East Asia, in particular, have particularly low rates of religious identification compared to other regions.
This doesn’t necessarily mean these populations hold no religious beliefs; they may still engage in activities that can be considered religious or spiritual, even though they don't describe themselves as belonging to any one in particular.
February 10
It might seem odd that countries would agree to import plastic waste from other countries, but many do so for the cheap materials or to feed specific manufacturing processes.
Environmentally, the trade in plastics has often been a concern, as it allows rich countries to effectively “dump” waste on poorer countries with weaker waste management systems.
The good news is that trade in plastic waste has fallen by more than two-thirds over the last decade. You can see this reduction in the chart.
China has been the biggest driver of this. It was once a large importer, but after a steep decline in trade in 2016 and a ban in 2018, many countries lost their largest export market.
In 2024, around 5 million tonnes of plastic waste were traded worldwide. For context, that is around 1% of the total plastic waste generated. What’s perhaps surprising is that most trade is now between high-income countries, which reduces the risk that this waste leaks into the environment.
