Latin America's Median Age Rises Faster Than Europe's

Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world at the beginning of the 20th century— (This Data Insight was written by Esteban Ortiz-Ospina.) When I first visited Buenos Aires some years ago, I was struck by how grand the city's historic architecture was. This is something that strikes many tourists: parts of the city feel closer to Paris than you’d expect from a country whose income level today is more similar to my home country of Colombia than to France. This chart helps put that observation in perspective. It shows the ten richest countries in the world in 1910, according to GDP per capita estimates from economic historians. By this measure, Argentina was among the world’s richest countries in 1910, ahead of several Western European countries, including Germany and France. It also stood clearly ahead of its peers in Latin America at the time. But over the course of the 20th century, Western European economies grew far faster, especially after the Second World War, and Argentina fell behind. A long-run perspective like this shows how much of a difference economic growth can make within just a few generations. Explore long-run data on GDP per capita for all countries: https://lnkd.in/etxpae48 Subscribe to our newsletter to receive Data Insights like this directly in your inbox: https://lnkd.in/gd_4ubhw

China only just missed the income cutoff to become a high-income country this year. In July every year, the World Bank sorts countries into income groups based on their per capita gross national income (GNI) in the previous year. In this year’s update, China was very close to entering the high-income group: its GNI per person was $14,230; just short of the World Bank’s high-income threshold of $14,375. The chart puts this in perspective. The bars show GNI per person for countries with at least 25 million people, ordered from poorest to richest. Beyond income, China is already comparable to high-income countries in many dimensions. Its spending on research and development as a share of GDP, for example, is higher than in many European countries. It’s also a global leader in several technology fields, including clean energy and artificial intelligence. But in other ways, China is closer to middle-income countries. Its productivity, measured by GDP per hour worked, for example, remains much lower than in high-income countries. (written by Esteban Ortiz-Ospina)

How fast is the global economy growing, and where might it be headed next? One of the most widely cited sources to help answer these questions is the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook. The report harmonizes national data, allowing cross-country comparisons and a global perspective. The IMF also adds its own near-term projections. In its latest release, the IMF projected global GDP growth of 3.1% in 2026 and 3.2% in 2027 — a downgrade from earlier this year. The revision falls almost entirely on emerging markets and developing economies. Forecasts for advanced economies are largely unchanged. Keep in mind that these forecasts are revised at each release, sometimes substantially. Our colleague Pablo Arriagada recently updated our chart with the IMF’s latest release; the next one is expected in October. Explore the data for all countries in the interactive version of this chart: https://lnkd.in/eSUVatN3

📝 New article — Which countries have already passed peak population, and when will the rest do so? Many countries around the world are in a unique position: rather than having a constant or growing population, their populations are starting to shrink. This is not a temporary decline, but a structural one caused by falling birth rates. If we look at the United Nations’ population estimates and medium projections, 64 countries and territories had already passed peak population in 2026. Most of them are in Europe and East Asia. In the coming decades, many more countries are expected to join them. By the 2050s, much of South America is projected to have passed the peak. By the 2060s, much of South Asia may do so. This includes the world’s most populous country today: India. But all of these projections are sensitive to the UN’s assumptions about future demographic changes: fertility rates, life expectancy, and migration rates over many decades. If things turn out differently, this peak could come much earlier or later, depending on the country. Take the example of migration. Many more high-income countries would already have shrinking populations without migration. The UN projects that the United States will not reach peak population, even by the end of the century. But if we were to assume zero migration in the US, its population would peak soon and would shrink by 60 million by 2100.

South Korea has doubled its productivity since 2000, overtaking Japan— The economist Paul Krugman once said, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything”. When workers can produce more value in the same amount of time, economies can grow faster, and living standards can rise. The chart shows the productivity metric published by the Penn World Table for South Korea and Japan. It measures gross domestic product (GDP) per hour of work. Since 2000, South Korea’s productivity has more than doubled, narrowing what was once a vast gap with Japan. It has now even surpassed its neighbor. Many forces affect productivity, but one stands out in Korea’s case: its commitment to innovation. The country spends nearly 5% of GDP on research and development, among the highest shares in the world, and it files far more patents per million people than any other nation. (This Data Insight was written by Simon van Teutem.) Explore productivity growth for more countries in our newly updated data from the Penn World Table: https://lnkd.in/e4KHYeNF

China’s Great Leap Forward caused a dramatic spike in child deaths— Child mortality rates in China have fallen from more than 20% in 1950 to less than 1% today. But this steady progress was interrupted in the late 1950s during the “Great Leap Forward”. This was China’s national plan to industrialize rapidly, but it resulted in widespread famine and economic turmoil. As the chart shows, child mortality rates spiked in China over this period, with up to one in three children dying before reaching the age of five. This change was so dramatic that it is also clearly visible in the global trend. This data comes from the UN’s World Population Prospects. (This Data Insight was written by Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Arriagada.) Explore child mortality for all countries in our interactive chart: https://lnkd.in/eK6TERri

📊 Data update: We now show the latest GDP growth projections from the IMF In the spring and fall each year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) publishes its World Economic Outlook. The latest report was published this past October. The report helps us understand how economies around the world have grown over the past decades, and how they are projected to grow in the coming years. You can see this in the chart for four of the world’s largest economies: the US, China, Germany, and Japan. This update was led by Pablo Arriagada. Explore the data for all countries in the interactive version of this chart: https://lnkd.in/gNdykBmt

The median age in China has rapidly caught up with the United Kingdom— In 1965, the median age in the United Kingdom was almost twice that of China. Half of the people in the UK were younger than 34 years, and half were older. In China, this midpoint was just 18 years. Within just a few generations, that age gap has closed. As you can see in the chart, the median age in both countries is now 40 years. Both populations have aged, but the increase was far faster in China. In the 1950s and early 1960s, China’s median age fell partly because of a fall in child mortality: birth rates remained high, and more children survived. After that, the rapid increase is largely explained by a steep fall in fertility, and therefore in births. Before then, high birth rates meant that large cohorts of children were continually entering the population, keeping it young. When births fell, fewer children were added each year, and the large, earlier generations grew older. China’s median age is expected to continue rising quickly: under the UN’s medium projections, it will be 10 years older than the UK's by 2050. (This Data Insight was written by Hannah Ritchie.) Explore more data on how the age structure of populations is changing across the world: https://lnkd.in/dPxKYqz

Over the past 6 months, economic and financial commentators have noted the appearance of a K-shaped economy in the US, in which spending is growing in the hands of a rich few but shrinking or stagnant among lower-income consumers. This visual highlights that spending divergence between the top 1% or top 10% versus the bottom 50% of domestic spenders is profoundly a US trend amongst G7 nations. The US has, in fact, been an outlier in terms of spending inequality amongst developed countries since 2005. As the US is the world’s richest economy, and is responsible for 1/3 of total global consumption, the implications are that global spending power is becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small group of wealthy Americans. Explore the data at https://lnkd.in/gysTtuys Voronoi App Visual Capitalist

Growth of global GDP per capita has been remarkably steady over the past three decades— (This Data Insight was written by Esteban Ortiz-Ospina.) This chart shows global GDP per capita, adjusted for inflation. Looking at the world economy from this perspective, it is the steadiness of this change that stands out to me. Average incomes per person have risen at a fairly constant pace of roughly 2% per year, interrupted only by the 2008–09 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic. One reason this is noteworthy, in my view, is that national economies changed a lot during the same period. Some economies slowed, many others grew, and more generally, some major political shifts took place. Yet when all of this is aggregated, the global average followed a remarkably smooth upward track. The line in the chart ends in 2024, so it does not yet capture more recent developments. But a few recent articles look at data for 2025 and point to the same stability. Past trends may not continue in the future. But this data reminds us that global economic aggregates can develop more steadily than the headlines might make us think. Read more about what economic growth is and why it is important: https://lnkd.in/gk6vB3a