April 19

Data update

Billions of people depend on synthetic fertilizers. Track how they're produced, traded, and used.

Hannah Ritchie

Edouard Mathieu

Fertilizers have played an essential role in feeding a growing global population. It's estimated that just under half of the people alive today are dependent on synthetic fertilizers.

They have an environmental impact, too — both positive and negative.

They increase crop yields and thus reduce the amount of land we use for agriculture. But nitrogen fertilizers generate greenhouse gases and excess runoff into water systems, disrupting ecosystems.

Fertilizer use is about balance: using enough for productive farming, without overusing and damaging the environment.

We published a new interactive chart that helps you understand how much fertilizer is being used around the world, where it is produced, and how much different countries import and export.

The chart includes the latest data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. It covers all countries since 1961, so you can see how fertilizer use has changed over time.

April 16

Data update

How much do governments spend, and what do they spend it on?

Pablo Arriagada

In the chart, we see total government spending broken down by purpose, such as health, education, and defense, relative to the size of the economy (as measured by GDP). This is shown for a selection of OECD countries.

How much governments spend varies quite a lot across OECD countries: in France it’s 57% of GDP, while in Chile it’s less than half that (28%).

Keep in mind that these are relative shares, not absolute amounts. GDP itself varies considerably across countries, so the same percentage can represent very different sums depending on the size of a country’s economy.

This data comes from the OECD’s Government at a Glance dataset, which covers 47 countries. I recently updated our charts with the latest release.

April 15

Data update

Track confirmed human cases of H5N1 “bird flu” since 1997

Lucas Rodés-Guirao

Avian influenza A (H5N1), often referred to as “bird flu”, is a subtype of influenza virus that infects birds and mammals. In rare cases, humans can also be infected.

Public health experts consider H5N1 a potential pandemic threat and monitor it closely, especially through the WHO Global Influenza Programme (GIP).

Since 2003, the WHO has recorded nearly 1,000 confirmed human infections with H5N1 across 25 countries, causing more than 450 deaths.

Keep in mind that the true burden of infection is not fully known, because only a small fraction of potential cases are tested by labs to confirm whether they have influenza and to identify their strain.

I've updated our chart with the latest data from the WHO GIP (obtained via the US CDC), covering monthly reported cases since 1997. We update this data quarterly.

April 9

Data update

How much is the US spending on building data centers?

Veronika Samborska

Data centers are the backbone of AI, cloud computing, and other digital services — and spending to build them has increased rapidly in the United States.

As of January 2026, US spending on data center construction was over $2.4 billion per month, roughly 16 times the level in early 2014.

This growth has been especially rapid since AI chatbots have become very popular, starting in late 2022. Monthly spending has nearly tripled since then.

It’s important to note that this only covers the cost of building the physical structures. Servers and other hardware inside are excluded, and they can make up a large share of the total cost of a data center.

I recently updated our chart with the latest data from the US Census Bureau. I do this quarterly, so our next update will be around June 2026.

April 7

Data update

Californians now travel nearly 10 million kilometers each month in driverless taxis

Veronika Samborska

In December 2024, passengers in California's driverless taxis were traveling around 3.8 million kilometers per month.

By the end of 2025, that figure had climbed to roughly 9.4 million — more than doubling in a single year. You can see this increase in the chart.

This data comes from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which requires companies operating paid driverless taxi services to file detailed quarterly reports on passenger distance, safety incidents, and other operational data. (Only Waymo has been in operation since late 2023.)

The reports are published on the CPUC's website, making it possible to track this fast-moving industry with publicly available, standardized data.

I recently updated this chart with the CPUC's latest quarterly report and will continue to do so each time they publish one.

April 4

Data update

Are Americans worried about AI taking their jobs?

Veronika Samborska

As artificial intelligence advances rapidly, how are Americans’ attitudes about it changing? Are they becoming more concerned about automation, or less?

Answering these questions is harder than it might seem. Long-run, comparable opinion data on AI is rare. Most surveys only provide a snapshot at a single point in time, making it hard to track meaningful changes in public sentiment.

Two recurring surveys from YouGov, a UK-based polling and market research firm, are among the few sources that let us study these trends over time.

One survey, shown in the chart here, asks working American adults how worried they are about their jobs being automated.

The other asks Americans whether robots will ever surpass human intelligence.

I recently updated both charts with the latest releases from YouGov. Both surveys are updated twice a year, with the next release expected around mid-2026.

April 3

Data update

How much revenue do governments collect, and where does it come from?

Pablo Arriagada

Governments fund public services — from healthcare and education to infrastructure and defense — largely through taxation.

But how much tax revenue countries collect varies widely, as the chart shows. Here, it's expressed as a share of GDP to allow comparison across countries of different sizes.

In some countries, like Bangladesh and Ethiopia, tax revenue is less than 10% of GDP. In others, like Italy and France, it’s more than 40%.

Understanding how governments raise revenue is key to understanding fiscal policy, state capacity, and the relationship between taxation and development.

The UNU-WIDER Government Revenue Dataset is one of the most comprehensive cross-country datasets on government revenue composition.

I recently updated our charts with the latest release, which now covers 198 countries and territories from 1980 to 2023.

April 2

Data update

There are now nearly 800 million active mobile money accounts in the world

Veronika Samborska

You probably use a bank account every day without thinking about it — to buy groceries, pay a bill, or receive your salary.

But for more than a billion people worldwide, transactions only happen with cash — no easy way to send or receive money remotely, and a constant risk of loss or theft.

Mobile money is changing this.

Unlike banking apps or services like Venmo, it doesn't require a bank account, smartphone, or internet. People make payments and receive deposits by simply dialling a short code on a basic mobile phone.

This technology has spread rapidly, especially across Sub-Saharan Africa, where hundreds of millions of people now rely on it.

You can see this in the chart, which I recently updated with the latest release of the Global Mobile Money Dataset from the GSM Association (GSMA). The GSMA has tracked mobile money data since 2009. The data now extends through 2024.

In our article, you can read more about mobile money and how it's expanding financial access and changing lives.

April 1

Data update

What share of income goes to the richest 1% in your country?

Pablo Arriagada

What share of income goes to the richest 1% in your country? How about the richest 10% or 0.1%? How has that changed over time?

The World Inequality Database (WID) is the leading source for answering questions about incomes and wealth at the very top of the distribution.

Standard household surveys tend to undercount incomes at the top — the wealthiest are harder to reach, less likely to respond, and more likely to underreport.

The WID addresses this by combining surveys with tax records and national accounts, giving a more complete picture of how income and wealth are distributed across the population.

Built by an international network of over a hundred researchers, the WID provides data for countries around the world, with some series going back over a century.

I recently updated 20 of our charts and multiple data explorers with the latest data.

March 31

Data update

Where are people being forced from their homes because of conflict or disaster?

Tuna Acisu

A record 83 million people globally were living in internal displacement at the end of 2024 — forced from their homes by conflict, violence, or natural disasters, but remaining within their own country's borders.

Unlike refugees, who cross international borders, internally displaced people are often harder to track and don't show up in all migration statistics.

I recently updated around 20 of our charts with the latest data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

The data covers disaster-related displacements since 2008 and conflict-related displacements since 2009, with global coverage across all countries.

This data helps us better understand the human impact of natural disasters, conflicts, and violence — and helps NGOs and governments support those who have been displaced.