Population, food and progress
How many people, how much food, how long people live, and how many of this record's achievements, for the world or any country, on one chart. Turn each measure on or off, put any of them on a second axis on the right, compare up to six places, or add a line for a formula of your own, such as food per person.
Use the names below with + - * /, ^ for powers, brackets, and log(), ln(), sqrt(), abs() or exp(). The formula is worked out for each place and each year where all of its values exist.
Names you can use
Where the numbers come from
Population from 1950 is the UN's World Population Prospects 2024, with its medium projection to 2100 drawn as a fainter line. Before 1950 it is Our World in Data's long-run series, which combines HYDE 3.3 and Gapminder. These are estimates, not census counts: before 1800 they are a model reconstruction at steps of 100 to 1,000 years, and before 1950 every country is shown within its present borders.
Food production is FAO's gross value of food production in constant 2014-16 international dollars, which adds every food crop and livestock product by its value, so wheat, meat and fruit can be totalled. Food per person is the food available for eating, in kilocalories per person per day, from FAO's food balance sheets. FAO changed its method in 2010; the switch lowers world values by about 25 kcal. Cereal and meat production in tonnes, from FAOSTAT, can be used in formulas. FAO's figures start in 1961 and cover 190 of the 197 countries here; the smallest states, such as Monaco and the Vatican, aren't reported separately.
Life expectancy at birth is Our World in Data's long-run series: the UN's World Population Prospects 2024 from 1950, and before that the Human Mortality Database, Zijdeman and colleagues (2015) for countries and Riley (2005) for the world. Early figures are sparse and swing with wars, famines and epidemics. Obesity is the WHO's estimate of the share of adults (18 and over) with a body-mass index of 30 or more, age-standardised so countries with older or younger populations can be compared, from 1980 to 2024. Both were downloaded on 20 October 2026 and are in the bucket under research/health/ with their checksums.
FAO reports countries that have since split up, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, as one country until they dissolved, and their successors from then on, so Russia's food figures start in 1992. Those former countries can be added as places of their own. Entries are the cumulative count of this record's entries credited to each country.
The files were downloaded on 20 October 2026 from FAO, the UN and Our World in Data by the automated research pass described on the method page. They are in the bucket under research/food-population/ with their checksums and the scripts that built them.