📈 Human Progress
In the last decades humanity has made great progress with less extreme poverty, increased health, wealth and democracy. We follow in the tradition of professor Hans Rosling.
☢️ Forty years after the disaster, Chernobyl teems with wildlife
Forty years after the accident at the nuclear power plant, the area around Chernobyl remains too dangerous for human habitation. But the wildlife has moved back in. Przewalski's horses, wolves, bears, lynx, moose, and red deer roam freely in the Chernobyl zone.
📉 WeightWatchers filed for bankruptcy because people lost too much weight
WeightWatchers did not fail because people stopped wanting to lose weight. It failed because they did lose weight, but in a different way. A way that points to a coming health revolution.
🤰 Teenage pregnancy rates have fallen sharply across the world
Globally, the number of births among teenage girls has fallen by over one-third since 2000. In Central and South Asia, the figure has dropped by over three-quarters during the same period. The decline is seen across all regions of the world, according to data from the UN.
⚰️ Deaths from indoor air pollution have fallen by 1.5 million since 1990
The annual number of premature deaths from indoor air pollution has dropped from around 4.5 million to just under 3 million per year. The decline is driven by more people gaining access to cleaner cooking fuels. Asia accounts for the largest reduction, with deaths cut roughly in half.
💵 Study: Every generation has had higher income than the previous one
Every generation over the past six decades has had higher income than the previous one. American millennials aged 36–40 had a median household income 20 percent higher than Generation X. The increase happened without more work hours – earlier generations' growth was partly driven by increased work.
🐴 World's only surviving wild horse species back from the brink of extinction
The Przewalski's horse was declared extinct in the wild during the 1970s and has been reintroduced through a conservation program launched in 1985. Przewalski's horse is the world's only surviving wild horse species and has an evolutionary history of 60 million years.
🗳️ Democracy strengthened or did not deteriorate in three quarters of the world's countries during 2025
Nearly three quarters of the world's countries received higher or unchanged scores in the 2025 democracy index. Latin America and the Caribbean broke a nine-year decline and improved their results. The global index rose by 0.02 points, one of the largest increases since 2012.
📈 Simon Abundance Index 2026: Access to basic commodities has increased by more than 500 percent since 1980
The Simon Abundance Index (SAI) measures the relationship between population and resource abundance. It rose from 100 in 1980 to 636.4 in 2025, an increase of 536.4 percent. While the world's population grew by 85 percent, personal resource abundance increased by 244 percent.
😶🌫️ The risk of developing dementia at any given age has dropped sharply
The share of older people with dementia at any given age has fallen by two-thirds over 40 years. An 85-year-old in 2024 has one-third the risk of having dementia compared to an 85-year-old in 1984.