Critical mineral prices rebounded sharply through 2025-26: cobalt up 130%, lithium more than doubling, and tungsten surging sixfold as export controls exposed how concentrated supply chains put $6.5 trillion in downstream production at risk.
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Extreme poverty has dropped a lot in the past thirty years. Still, 826 million people live on less than $3 a day. As poverty gets more concentrated in the world’s countries, progress is slowing down.
For the first time in the history of tracking food crises, two locations in the world are suffering from famine at the same time; this is the situation in Gaza and one region in Sudan.
Global FDI has fallen back to 2005 levels after peaking in 2007, while remittances to developing economies have surged, quietly becoming a steadier, more important source of finance for the world's poorest countries.
The percentage of countries classified as low-income countries decreased from 30% in 1987 to 11% today. Six nations have moved up their rankings this year, and no countries went down. What is striking is the entirely different process by which each country has arrived at this new level of income.
Global slum dwellers crossed 1 billion by 2022, even as urbanization accelerates, the clearest sign yet that city growth is outrunning the planning and infrastructure needed to keep pace.
Extreme poverty has dropped a lot in the past thirty years. Still, 826 million people live on less than $3 a day. As poverty gets more concentrated in the world’s countries, progress is slowing down.
For the first time in the history of tracking food crises, two locations in the world are suffering from famine at the same time; this is the situation in Gaza and one region in Sudan.
Global FDI has fallen back to 2005 levels after peaking in 2007, while remittances to developing economies have surged, quietly becoming a steadier, more important source of finance for the world's poorest countries.
The percentage of countries classified as low-income countries decreased from 30% in 1987 to 11% today. Six nations have moved up their rankings this year, and no countries went down. What is striking is the entirely different process by which each country has arrived at this new level of income.
Global slum dwellers crossed 1 billion by 2022, even as urbanization accelerates, the clearest sign yet that city growth is outrunning the planning and infrastructure needed to keep pace.
