This chart shows the dramatic fall in the price of computer storage between 1956 and 2023. It relies on the data carefully collected by the computer scientist John C. McCallum.
In the last 70 years, the price for a unit of storage has fallen by almost ten orders of magnitude. The data is plotted on a logarithmic scale on the vertical axis. The line follows an almost straight path, indicating an exponential reduction in price. solid state disk ssd
A 256-gigabyte storage capacity — commonly found in standard laptops sold today — would have cost around 20 billion dollars in the 1950s. (That’s in today’s prices.)
And cost has not been the only improvement: modern solid-state drives offer much faster and more reliable data access than early magnetic and hard disk drives.
Read more on the exponential growth of computing capabilities →
When I was born in 1993, one-third of people in the United Kingdom said they “would not want homosexual neighbors”. Today, that’s less than 5%.
As you can see in the chart, the acceptance of same-sex relationships has increased in many other countries, too. This data comes from the Integrated Values Survey .
Attitudes to homosexuality tend to be far more positive in Western Europe and North and South America than in other parts of the world. In many countries across Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, the majority of surveyed respondents still say they would not want homosexual neighbors.
Explore the data on attitudes to homosexuality across the world →
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has led to increased military spending not only in the two countries themselves but also in other neighboring countries.
The chart, using inflation-adjusted data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute , shows that Russia has increased its military spending to support the invasion, while Ukraine has expanded its budget tenfold to defend itself.
The war has also motivated several of Russia’s other neighbors to increase their military spending. For instance, in 2023, Poland almost doubled its military spending from 15 to 27 billion US$, and Finland raised its budget from 4.5 to 6.9 billion US$.
Other neighboring countries, like Lithuania and Estonia, have so far not made increases as dramatic but have returned to the longer-term expansion of their military budgets.
Some Western European countries, especially Denmark , have also already increased their military spending after Russia’s invasion.
Explore military spending data for every country →
The chart shows how incomes are spread in several countries in different world regions. The data comes from the excellent Luxembourg Income Study .
Blue points show the monthly after-tax income of someone who falls just inside the richest 10% of their country's population. Red points show the income of someone who falls just inside the poorest 10%. To allow for comparisons, all incomes are shown in international dollars , which account for differences in cost of living across countries.
The ratio between these two numbers gives us a measure of inequality known as the “P90/P10 ratio”.
In Norway, a country with very low inequality, this ratio is around 3. A person just inside the richest 10% has a monthly income of $5,490 — a little more than 3 times the $1,760 earned by someone just inside the poorest 10%.
In the United States, inequality is much higher, and the ratio is twice as large — around 6. The chart shows that the richest 10% are much richer than those in Norway, with incomes above $7,440. But, the poorest are also poorer, with incomes of less than $1,240.
In many countries, the ratio is between 4 and 6. But in the most unequal countries, it is much higher. In South Africa, the ratio is 22. Those in the bottom decile are among the poorest people in the world, living on less than $110 per month. In contrast, the richest 10% earn $2,490 or above — higher than the incomes of half the UK population and nearly a third of the US population.
Explore incomes across the distribution for other countries in our dedicated Data Explorer →
Cobalt is a critical element in many lithium-ion battery technologies, which are used in most consumer electronics such as mobile phones and laptops; and more recently, in electric vehicles.
Almost three-quarters of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
However, the DRC produces virtually none of the world’s refined cobalt — the mineral used in final products. Most of the world’s refined cobalt is made in China.
You can see this in the chart, which shows each country’s share of global mined and refined cobalt production in 2021. This data comes from the US Geological Survey (USGS) and British Geological Survey (BGS).
While lithium-ion battery technologies that use cobalt are dominant today, alternative battery chemistries that don’t use cobalt are emerging.
Explore more data on which countries produce the world’s critical minerals →
Most electoral democracies are younger than the oldest people who live in them.
The chart shows that almost two dozen democracies are younger than 18 — as young as the children in these countries. Others are only as old as their young adults. This is based on data from Regimes of the World.
In these younger democracies, most people have experienced life under authoritarian rule, and older people lacked democratic political rights for most of their lives.
A larger group of countries have been electoral democracies for one to three generations. In these countries, children and young adults have only known life in a democracy, but their parents and grandparents have experienced non-democratic rule.
Only ten countries have been democratic for more than 90 years. In these places, democracy is older than almost all of their citizens.
Read more in our article on the age of democracies →
Obesity rates have increased across the world over the last 50 years, but at varying speeds and from different starting positions.
The chart shows the change in the share of adults who are defined as “overweight” or “obese” across a range of countries. It is based on the latest data from the World Health Organization (which only goes up to 2016).
Rates have increased worldwide — from Australia and the United States to India and Nigeria — but tend to be higher in richer countries where food supplies are more plentiful and affordable for the population.
This is measured based on body mass index (BMI), which takes account of someone’s height and weight. It’s a crude measure, but it gives us quick insights into how people’s metabolic health is changing.
Explore global data on overweight and obesity rates →
New petrol and diesel cars are becoming a rarity in Norway.
In 2023, 93% of new cars sold in the country were electric. This is shown in the chart, based on data from the International Energy Agency .
This is a rapid increase from a decade ago when just 6% of new cars were electric.
Here, “electric cars” include fully battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars (which have a smaller battery and also have a combustion engine). But in Norway, battery-electric cars now dominate : in 2023, 85% were fully electric, compared to just 8% of plug-in hybrids.
Explore the data for other countries in our dedicated article →
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