February 12, 2025
What’s the most common season for babies to be born?
In many European countries, it’s late summer or autumn. Births are 5% to 10% more common in these months than others.
But this seasonal pattern used to be different. The chart shows the most common month for births each year. We’ve focused on France, which has data since the 1860s.
As you can see, spring was the most common season for births then. The pattern was temporarily disrupted during the two World Wars but continued until the late 20th century. Then, births shifted to later in the year, with late summer and autumn becoming more popular.
This shift also occurred in many other European countries and North America.
February 27
The Ipsos Housing Monitor 2025 surveyed people across 30 countries, asking: “In general, do you think that your country is on the right track or the wrong track when it comes to housing?”.
The chart shows results for European countries, where housing prices have risen sharply since the global financial crisis, with particularly large increases since 2015.
The Netherlands and Spain stand out, with nearly 80% believing their country is on the wrong track.
People in Poland and Sweden are less concerned than in other countries. But even in these nations, the majority feels like their country is on the wrong track.
Explore more data on optimism and pessimism about the future →
February 26
This chart focuses on the share of women who had no births by the end of their childbearing years. The horizontal axis shows the woman’s birth year.
Around 18% of those born in the 1910s in the United States had no children. For the following generations who grew up during the “baby boom”, the share with no children dropped to 5%. Since then, this figure has risen and fallen again.
In Sweden, the share of women without any children has remained relatively stable at around 12% for women born between the 1950s and 1970s.
The trend in Japan and Spain has been different: the share of women with no children has grown steeply over recent generations. In Spain, the figure nearly doubled in a decade: from 10% for women born in 1960 to almost 20% for those born in 1970. In Japan, it almost tripled in twenty years.
Explore this data for twenty more countries →
February 25
Households in the United States have changed significantly over the last 60 years. In 1960, 43% of households were couples with children, but this had dropped to 24% by 2015.
Once a minority, single individuals living alone are now the most common composition, making up 28% of households in 2015.
Several factors may explain this shift. Since 2000, most population growth has occurred among those over 60, who are more likely to live alone after widowhood or once children leave home. Declining birth rates have further reduced the share of households with children.
At the same time, rising incomes among women, in particular, have made independent living more accessible, likely contributing to the increase in single-person households alongside the trend of marrying later or not at all.
Explore how household types compare across different countries →
February 24
In every country in the world, women tend to live longer than men.
You can see this in the chart below, which shows the average life expectancy of women on the vertical axis and the life expectancy of men on the horizontal axis, both for 2023. Each dot is one country.
As you can see, all countries lie above the middle line, which means that women's life expectancy was higher than men's.
There are various reasons why this gap in life expectancy exists, which my colleagues Saloni Dattani and Lucas Rodés-Guirao explain in their article. Typically, births are skewed in favor of males, with around 105 boys being born for every 100 girls. However, throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, mortality rates tend to be higher in males.
This data comes from the United Nations’ World Population Prospects.
Read our article on why women live longer than men →
February 21
Oil production plays an important role in the economy of many African countries. The chart shows oil rents as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) for the nine African nations most reliant on it.
Libya ranks first, with oil rents equivalent to 56% of its GDP in 2021, followed by Congo at 34% and Angola at 28%. Despite being Africa’s largest oil producer, Nigeria’s oil rents are just 6.2% of its GDP.
Despite this, these countries’ oil production is relatively modest on a global scale. In 2021, their combined output was less than half of what the United States, the world’s top producer, extracted.
Explore oil production for more countries →
February 20
Since the turn of the millennium, Internet access has grown quickly but at different rates across Asia’s most populous nations.
Four countries, home to more than 40% of the world's population, tell this story in the chart: China, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan.
Internet users in China rose from 2% in 2000 to 77% in 2023, while Indonesia’s users grew from 1% to 69%. The pace has been slower in South Asia, with India reaching 43% by 2020 and Pakistan 33% by 2022.
Explore Internet usage for more countries →
February 19
There are few experiences, if any, that are more painful for a parent than losing a child.
In the past, child deaths were much more common than they are today. But even when these deaths were not unusual, historical diary entries show us that most parents still found them heartbreaking.
Unfortunately, in many countries today, a large share of parents still experience the loss of a child. The map here shows the share of mothers who lost a child before they reached the age of five.
In most of Europe and North America, this share is less than 1%. But in some of the world’s poorest countries — like Cameroon, Nigeria, and the Central African Republic — more than one in three mothers have experienced this tragedy.
These figures come from a research article by Emily Smith-Greenaway and colleagues, based on reported or estimated data from 2010 to 2018 for mothers aged 20 to 44.
Read my colleague Max Roser’s article for more historical context around this data →
