How will your country's demographics change this century? At Our World in Data we built a tool to let you see for yourself. The UN's assumptions are the starting point. But then you can adjust the three drivers of change — births, deaths, and migration — to what you expect.

Here is the article: Five million children die every year — what do they die from? ourworldindata.org/five-mill…

I've spent the last 15 years of my career researching how to find the best career. This book is the culmination of everything I've learned. It's called 80,000 Hours, and it launches in a week.

Low-carbon electricity sources grew faster than demand in 2025, pushing fossil fuels into decline— Solar and wind energy have grown quickly in recent years, but global electricity demand has grown faster. So while their share of electricity generation kept rising, it wasn't enough to push fossil fuels into absolute decline. But in 2025, that changed. According to Ember's Global Electricity Review, low-carbon electricity sources grew faster than demand, pushing some fossil fuels out of the mix. Global electricity generation increased by around 850 terawatt-hours (TWh) from 2024 to 2025. As you can see in the chart, solar and wind accounted for nearly all of this growth. While the world still burned slightly more gas, this was more than offset by a decline in coal and oil. To reduce carbon emissions, fossil fuel use needs to keep falling in absolute terms — not just in the power sector but also in other energy and industrial sectors. (This Data Insight was written by @_HannahRitchie and Pablo Rosado.)

📢 We’re looking for a writer to join our team at Our World in Data! → ourworldindata.org/hiring-wr… What we’re looking for is quite unique: someone who writes excellent narrative articles on large global problems, finds memorable framings to make hard ideas easier to understand, while being genuinely obsessed with technical details. They need to know which questions are important and what readers need to understand the answers. If this sounds like you (or someone you know!), you can find more details from our Deputy Editor, @_HannahRitchie, at the link here.

I'm a data scientist @OurWorldinData and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸 We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto. The researcher who maintained it, Professor Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.

Mental health care is scarce everywhere — but in poor countries, it barely exists. Depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems are common everywhere. They are not confined to any particular income level. But access to care is rare. In much of the world, people who struggle with their mental health have almost no psychologists or psychiatrists to turn to. Mental health care is scarce in all places, but it is much scarcer in poor countries. Governments in high-income countries spend about $66 per person per year on mental health care, as the chart shows. In low-income countries, that figure is $0.04. This gap in spending reflects a gap in people. As the WHO’s latest Mental Health Atlas highlights, there is roughly one psychiatrist per million people in low-income countries. High-income countries have 70 times more. A recent study in the Lancet Psychiatry estimated that globally, only 9% of people with major depressive disorder receive a “minimally adequate treatment”. In high-income countries, it is 27%; in Sub-Saharan Africa, just 2%. Hundreds of millions of people in poorer countries live with treatable conditions and have no access to a psychologist or psychiatrist. It is one of the largest gaps in global health — and one that receives remarkably little attention or funding. There are efforts to close this gap without waiting for the workforce to catch up. One approach is to train lay counsellors — people without formal clinical qualifications who learn to provide psychological support. Randomized trials in India and Zimbabwe have shown this can be effective for depression. Another approach is to use technology: apps and, increasingly, AI-based tools that can extend the reach of limited clinical expertise. These are not substitutes for a functioning mental health system, but in places where that system barely exists, they offer a starting point. (This Data Insight was written by @MaxCRoser.)

In the past, forests around the world were cut down on a massive scale around the world — but this is no longer the case. Deforestation continues in large parts of South America and Africa, while the forested area has expanded in Europe, North and Central America, and large parts of Asia.

Love this new little feature on Our World in Data. When you view data for world regions defined by providers such as the WHO or the UN, a new tooltip appears. It explains how the region is defined and shows it to you on a small world map.

✍️ New article: Tracking historical progress against slavery and forced labor: a long-run data view For much of history, forced labor was widespread and brutal. Tens of millions of people were made to work under the threat of violence or punishment. The situation today is very different. Many governments have ended their own use of forced labor, changed laws, and now prosecute those who use it. Some forms of forced labor and human trafficking still exist—but they are much less common than in the past. The chart summarizes how these massive changes unfolded across the globe. It shows for each point in time how many countries had not yet abolished “large-scale” forced labor, meaning forced labor that was common and entrenched—tolerated, enabled, or imposed by authorities, rather than isolated abuse. To measure this specific form of large-scale forced labor, we rely on expert assessments from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project, based at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden. What the chart shows has been well documented in the many excellent books by historians and social scientists. What we add to this is a quantitative, bird’s-eye perspective on the global history of slavery and forced labor. The decline of forced labor is one of the biggest social and economic changes in history. It gave many millions of people much more freedom to live their lives. This shows that large changes to our societies and economies are possible—even those that were once unimaginable. Summarizing changes of this scale in a single chart is challenging. Forced labor can take many different forms; legal rules and real-world practices often don’t match, and no country is completely free from forced labor.