1 in 8 BillionPublic statistics behind a life
For 141 countries, a life uses births, survival, income, schooling, health and life satisfaction taken from public statistics. The age at death comes from each country’s life tables by sex. Causes of death follow WHO and GBD patterns by region and age.
Births and population come from UN World Population Prospects 2024.
Each country leads with a share of the babies being born now, then odds as 1 in N, and a rounded population under the title. Those two counts are the two ways a birthplace is drawn. Both come from that same UN revision.
India is 17.68% of births, 1 in 6. Qatar is 0.02%, 1 in 4,450.
Life expectancy is shown for women and men in each country.
The large figure is the combined expectancy. Women and men share the same cell. A life in today’s world uses today’s tables. A past world uses that year’s statistics, and the coming world uses UN projections.
Child mortality comes from UN IGME.
Each country gives the chance of dying before age 1 and before age 5, both as a percent and as deaths in 1,000. Child mortality is UN IGME, separate from the UN population series used for births and fertility.
Income per person is shown in PPP dollars, with inequality beside it.
The income line is GDP per capita at purchasing-power parity. The Gini index sits beside it, and a number closer to 0 is more equal. In a life, income is drawn from that distribution. A sum is a PPP dollar shown as it would feel at US prices. Those income figures come from the World Bank’s world development indicators, mostly by way of Our World in Data.
Years of schooling and university enrollment are part of the country cards.
Expected years of schooling and the university gross enrollment ratio are the education lines. Schooling comes from UNDP and UNESCO, through UNESCO UIS and the UNDP human development report.
The cards include maternal mortality, HIV, homicide, road deaths, smoking and out-of-pocket health costs.
Maternal mortality, tobacco and road deaths come from WHO and UN MMEIG, and smoking and health spending come from WHO. HIV is UNAIDS. Homicide is UNODC. Out-of-pocket health spending and internet use are World Bank lines. Jobs in agriculture are ILO. The share of people living in cities is UN-Habitat.
Fertility and the share of women married before 18 are part of every country.
Fertility is the total fertility rate, children per woman, from UN World Population Prospects 2024. Child marriage is the UNICEF share of women aged 20–24 who married before 18. Some child-marriage rates, and some road-death rates, were estimated from regional averages.
Life satisfaction uses the World Happiness Report 2024 and is missing where that report has no score.
The score is out of 10. A country with no score in that report has no satisfaction line. The other lines for that country still come from the sources above.
7 countries leave the score off: Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, North Korea, Oman, and Papua New Guinea. The scored countries run from 1.72 / 10 in Afghanistan to 7.74 / 10 in Finland.
Of the 141 incomes, 13 are under $2,000, 45 run from $2,000 to under $10,000, 41 from $10,000 to under $30,000, and 42 are $30,000 or more. Yemen’s income is $2,000, so it sits in the second band. The lowest income is $900 in South Sudan. The highest is $130,297 in Singapore.
Across the 141 countries, mean life expectancy is 75.2 years for women and 70.0 years for men. Life satisfaction is scored for 134 countries.
Births, survival, income and the rest come from the same families of statistics. Most of them arrived by way of Our World in Data, and a world that is not today adds further series. WHO, UN MMEIG, UN-Habitat and the education reports are named on their own lines.
| Figure | Comes from |
|---|---|
| Births, population, life expectancy, fertility | UN World Population Prospects 2024 |
| Chance of dying before age 1, and before age 5 | UN IGME |
| Maternal mortality, smoking, road traffic deaths | WHO and UN MMEIG. Maternal mortality, smoking and health spending come from WHO. |
| Expected years of schooling, university enrollment | UNDP and UNESCO, through UNESCO UIS and the UNDP human development report. |
| Income per person (PPP), income inequality, internet use, out-of-pocket health costs | World Bank world development indicators |
| People working in farming | ILO |
| People living in cities | UN-Habitat. Past and coming worlds also use World Urbanization Prospects 2018. |
| HIV | UNAIDS |
| Homicide | UNODC |
| Women married before 18 | UNICEF |
| Life satisfaction | World Happiness Report 2024 |
| Age at death inside a life | That country’s life tables by sex |
| Causes of death | WHO and GBD patterns by region and age |
| Past and coming worlds, beyond the lines above | Maddison Project 2020, UCDP/PRIO and Lee-Lee 2016, with the UN population and urbanization series |
Every cell below is a figure from the 141 birthplaces, not a new calculation from the original yearbooks. Where several countries share the lowest or highest figure, they are listed together. A floor shared by many countries is given as a count.
| Figure | Lowest | Highest |
|---|---|---|
| Income per person (PPP) | $900 in South Sudan | $130,297 in Singapore |
| Life expectancy | 54.5 years in Nigeria | 84.7 years in Japan |
| Chance of dying before age 5 | 0.2% in Belarus, Finland, Japan, Norway, and Sweden | 11.7% in Nigeria |
| Chance of dying before age 1 | 0.2% in Belarus, Czechia, Finland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, and Sweden | 7.2% in South Sudan |
| Children per woman | 0.72 in South Korea | 6.13 in Somalia |
| Expected years of schooling | 5.6 years in South Sudan | 20.8 years in Greece |
| University enrollment | 3% in Eritrea, Malawi, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic | 100% in Argentina, Australia, Finland, Greece, South Korea, and Turkey |
| Income inequality (Gini) | 0.24 in Belarus and Slovakia | 0.59 in Namibia |
| Life satisfaction | 1.72 / 10 in Afghanistan | 7.74 / 10 in Finland |
| Women married before 18 | 0.5% on 28 birthplaces | 76% in Niger |
| Maternal mortality | 1 per 100,000 in Belarus | 1,223 per 100,000 in South Sudan |
| HIV, adults | 0% in Syria | 19.82% in Lesotho |
| Homicide | 0.1 per 100,000 in Singapore | 51.9 per 100,000 in Jamaica |
| Road traffic deaths | 1.7 per 100,000 in Singapore | 64.6 per 100,000 in the Dominican Republic |
| Out-of-pocket health costs | 4% in Botswana | 77% in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan |
| People working in farming | 0% in Singapore | 86% in Burundi |
| People using the internet | 0% in North Korea | 100% in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates |
| People living in cities | 15% in Papua New Guinea | 100% in Kuwait and Singapore |
Smoking is given as two shares. The highest share of men who smoke is 72% in Myanmar. The highest share of women who smoke is 39% in Serbia.
Some road-death rates and some child-marriage rates, and other missing values, were estimated from regional averages and similar methods. A few values without recent data are filled in from regional averages.
Estimated cells are not marked one by one. The rate is still shown, and a regional fill is used where a recent national figure was missing. Data from the World Bank, Our World in Data, the Maddison Project and UCDP (CC BY 4.0) and the UN (CC BY 3.0 IGO) were adapted.
Today’s world is calculated with today’s statistics. A past world uses that year’s. The coming world uses UN and other projections. Births and population in those other worlds still come from UN World Population Prospects 2024. Urbanization in them also uses World Urbanization Prospects 2018.
Income and conflict further back use the Maddison Project 2020 and UCDP/PRIO. Education further back uses Lee-Lee 2016. Those three apply when the world is not today. The 141 birthplaces are the present-world cards.
Religion, major cities, common disasters and where people move are shown for each country. No dataset is named for those four. They sit outside the real-statistics set.
Where people move is left off some countries. The birthplace comparison names the fifteen that leave that line off. Life satisfaction is the only real-data line that is blank for some countries, and it is blank only where the World Happiness Report 2024 has no score.
15 countries leave off where people move.
Update notes from the English edition to the current build