Newsletter · Aug 22, 2026
America spends the most on health — and lives less — and 4 more charts
Health
America spends the most on health — and lives less
Health spending per person vs life expectancy across 57 countries in 2023. The U.S. spends about $12,100 a head — the most of any country — yet 31 nations that spend less live longer.
Chartive Editorial
Economy
CEOs out-earn workers 325 to 1
How many times more the average big-company CEO is paid than a typical U.S. worker — up from about 21-to-1 in 1965 to roughly 325-to-1 in 2025, after peaking at 408-to-1 in 2021.
Chartive Editorial
History
The nuclear arms race peaked in 1986
Warheads in military stockpiles. Cold-War rivalry drove the American and Soviet arsenals to about 64,000 combined by the mid-1980s; they have since fallen by roughly 85%, though thousands remain.
Chartive Editorial
Society
The world learned to read
The share of people who can read and write has risen from about 12% in 1820 to roughly 88% today — from one in eight adults to nearly nine in ten.
Chartive Editorial
Economy
Extreme poverty is retreating
The share of the world living on less than $3 a day (2021 prices) has fallen from about 43% in 1990 to roughly 11% — from more than four in ten people to about one in nine.
Daniel Okafor
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