Health & Development
All topics →Health spending, child survival, education, HDI, innovation
Research (8)
Brain Drain Tracker
Nigeria trains doctors. Britain employs them. We tracked the global brain drain — who loses talent, who gains it, and whether remittances make up the difference.
Child Survival & National Income
If you could know only one number about a country, it should be under-5 mortality. It captures income, health, education, water, and women's empowerment in a single statistic.
Education Spending vs Innovation Output
Some countries spend billions on education and produce no patents. Others spend less and lead the world in innovation. The missing ingredient isn't money — it's R&D.
The Energy-Prosperity Ladder
There is a clear energy consumption threshold countries must cross for human development. Below ~4,000 kWh per capita, every additional kilowatt-hour transforms lives. Above 10,000, you're just heating empty rooms.
Food Import Vulnerability
40 countries can't feed themselves — and the list is growing. We mapped food import dependency against arable land, population growth, and income. The vulnerable are easy to identify.
The Health-Wealth Gradient
America spends more on healthcare than anyone and lives shorter. Cuba spends almost nothing and outlives most of its neighbors. The data reveals a brutal curve of diminishing returns.
Pandemic Preparedness vs GDP
Rich countries assumed they were ready for a pandemic. They weren't. We mapped health infrastructure against income — the overperformers are poor countries with good systems.
Urbanization vs Productivity
Cities make countries rich — until they don't. We mapped the urbanization-productivity curve for every country. The S-curve is clear, and so are the outliers.
Explainers (4)
Demographic transition
The four-stage model that explains why populations explode, stabilize, and then shrink — and why most of global economics follows from it.
Food security: It's not about growing everything yourself
Why food security depends on trade routes as much as farmland — and what actually breaks it.
Purchasing power parity: why $1 isn't $1 everywhere
Nominal exchange rates lie about living standards. PPP is the correction — and it changes the global picture dramatically.
The Human Development Index: one number for 'is life getting better?'
HDI packs life expectancy, education, and income into a single score. It's useful — until it isn't.