SPHRE

The world in data, set in Helvetica.

The world in data, set in Helvetica.

SPHRE is an independent, source-first data publication. Read global indicators as stories, compare countries, map change over time, and trace every figure to its source.

Data stories

  • The Great Convergence — In 1960, where you were born decided how long you would live. Sixty years of data show that gap closing — unevenly, incompletely, but unmistakably.
  • The Birth Dearth — From Seoul to Lagos, the same curve at different speeds: the global fertility decline is the quietest revolution in the data.
  • The Wired World — Every country traces the same S-curve online — but the Global South skipped a century of infrastructure to get there.
  • The Urban Century — In 1960 one person in three lived in a city. Today it is nearly three in five — the largest migration in human history, and it is not finished.
  • The Great Slowdown — World population growth peaked above 2 percent a year in the 1960s. It has since fallen by more than half — the quiet unwinding of the twentieth century's loudest fear.
  • The Age of Migration — Across the rich world, deaths now outnumber births. All the growth that remains arrives from somewhere else — and the data shows the handover happened years before the politics noticed.
  • The Paired Ledgers of Refugee Geography — Origin counts and hosting counts describe different sides of displacement. Across many decades of first and latest observations, the countries carrying the greatest weight change with the measure.

The Brief