The good, the bad and the ugly.
Twelve numbers, one source, twenty years apart. Most of what you hear about the world is a direction of travel with no number attached. These have numbers.
Every figure pulled from the World Bank Open Data API on 21 September 2026. Latest reading against the same measure twenty years earlier.
Almost nobody believes this half.
Ask a room of people whether global poverty has risen or fallen in twenty years and most will say risen. Here is the actual series.
Two people in three who were in extreme poverty in 2004 are not in it now. It is the largest fall in material deprivation in recorded history, and it happened inside one working career.
World Bank, SI.POV.DDAY · 2024Nearly halved. Whatever else is true about the last two decades, a child born today is far more likely to reach school age than one born when you started work.
World Bank, SH.DYN.MORT · 2024Your addressable market went from one person in six to three in four. If you have ever wondered why a small business in Melbourne can sell to Manchester, this is the number underneath it.
World Bank, IT.NET.USER.ZS · 2025Close to the lowest on the series. Good for the people in work, and the reason hiring has felt harder than it used to for most of the last five years.
World Bank, SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS · 2025Forty per cent richer per head, after inflation, in twenty years. The average human being has materially more money than at any point in history.
World Bank, NY.GDP.PCAP.KD · constant 2015 US$ · 2025Roughly a billion people connected to power for the first time. Every one of them is a customer, an employee or a competitor who was not there before.
World Bank, EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS · 2024The engine is slowing.
None of these are catastrophes. They are the conditions you will be running a business inside for the next decade, and they point the opposite way to the decade behind you.
The world is growing about a third more slowly than it was. Plans that assume the tide keeps lifting the boat are assuming something the data stopped supporting a while ago.
World Bank, NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG · 2025Replacement is 2.1. The world is now within a rounding error of not replacing itself. Every growth assumption built on more people arriving has a shelf life, and this is it.
World Bank, SP.DYN.TFRT.IN · 2024The other side of the same coin. More retirees, fewer workers funding them, and in your own market a wave of owners reaching the age where the business has to be sold or closed.
World Bank, SP.POP.65UP.TO.ZS · 2025Double the rate of a decade ago. Money is no longer free, and pricing decisions you could defer for years now have to be made annually.
World Bank, FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG · 2025Two that shrink under a second look. One that doesn’t.
The two numbers everyone quotes here are quoted in absolute dollars and absolute tonnes. Measured per person, or against the size of the economy, both largely dissolve. The third one does not move at all.
In cash it went from $1.08tn to $2.65tn, which reads as rearmament. As a share of what the world produces it moved eight hundredths of a percentage point. The headline was inflation and growth, not a new arms race.
World Bank, MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS and MS.MIL.XPND.CD · 2024Total emissions rose 37 per cent. Per person they rose nine. The difference is 1.65 billion more people, a billion of whom got electricity for the first time. Still the wrong direction, and far less dramatic than the headline.
World Bank, EN.GHG.CO2.MT.CE.AR5 ÷ SP.POP.TOTL · 2024This one survives every adjustment you throw at it. Real income per person rose 72 per cent in thirty years. The things people own rose far more. That gap is the whole story of who got wealthier and how.
World Bank, CM.MKT.LCAP.GD.ZS · 2025Numbers beat vibes.
The same discipline I apply to a set of accounts: find the series, read it, write down what it says, and attach the source so you can check me.
Method. Every figure on this page came from the World Bank Open Data API on 21 September 2026, queried by series code for the world aggregate. Where a 2025 reading exists it is used; otherwise the most recent published year is shown and labelled. The comparison is the same series twenty years earlier, except inflation, where ten years is the more honest comparison because 2005 sat in a different monetary regime.
Real, and per person, wherever it changes the answer. Two of these cards were originally written in absolute dollars and absolute tonnes, and both told a far more dramatic story than the adjusted series does. Defence spending looks like it has nearly tripled until you measure it against the size of the economy. Emissions look up 37 per cent until you divide by a population that grew by 1.65 billion. Where an absolute number and a per-person number disagree, both are shown.
What is not here. No forecasts, no modelling, and nothing of my own. These are published development and national-accounts indicators. If a number here surprises you, the series code is on the card — go and look.
What it means for a business. Bigger, richer, better-connected markets than any generation has had. Growing more slowly, ageing, and with the cost of money back in the equation. Broadly: demand is real, but it will not arrive on its own, and the decade that rewarded simply being in the market is behind us.
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What does this mean for your numbers?
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