A number in the news

Short, dated posts that hold a current headline against the long data record.

• India ranks above China at the latest population endpoint — World Bank indicators show a reversal in the two countries’ population ranking while distinguishing total size from annual growth.
• One inflation measure, sharply different scales — The latest annual observations place the United States and United Kingdom in the low single digits, Türkiye in the tens and Argentina in the hundreds.
• Internet use trails mobile subscriptions across three African countries — The latest World Bank observations show different internet-use and mobile-subscription rankings for Kenya, Nigeria and Ethiopia.
• Renewable power shares rose in three of five countries from 1990 to 2021 — World Bank endpoints show higher renewable shares for Germany, China and the United States, but lower shares for India and Brazil.
• Three in four people are online. The last quarter is the hard part. — Twenty years ago about one person in six used the internet; the S-curve has since climbed past 73 percent — and it is now visibly flattening at the top.
• Two-thirds of humanity now lives below replacement — The world's average fertility rate still clears the replacement bar — but the average conceals that most of the world's people already live under it.
• The world without power is down to one region — Since 2000 the number of people living without electricity has halved, to about 680 million — and nearly nine in ten of them now live in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Four million refugees went home last year — The world's refugee count has fallen for two years running, and 2025's drop was the steepest in the seventy-five-year record. The reasons run through Damascus, Kabul — and the limits of welcome in Tehran and Islamabad.
• The grid spent 13 years getting less green — Renewables' share of the world's electricity fell from 1990 to 2003 before wind and solar turned it around — the most underrated U-turn in the energy data.
• The 28-year life-expectancy gap is down to 16 — In 1960 a North American could expect to outlive a sub-Saharan African by nearly three decades. The distance has almost halved — because the bottom rose.
• Korea's Fertility Rate Falls Below One — South Korea's fertility rate has dropped below one child per woman — less than half of replacement, and the sharpest edge of a birth dearth spreading across the rich world.
• The peace dividend goes into reverse — As NATO lifts its spending targets, Europe's military budgets are reclaiming a share of GDP they surrendered when the Cold War ended.