Economy

Who’s Shouldering the Heaviest Load? Every country has people who work and people who don't — children too young for jobs, and older people who've left the workforce. The dependency ratio measures how many of these non-working dependants exist for every 100 people of working age. A ratio near 20 means a country is mostly

Who Actually Gets a Seat at the Table? Every country elects or appoints a parliament, but who sits in those seats varies enormously. The "women in parliament" measure simply tracks the share of seats held by women in each country's national legislature, based on World Bank and Inter-Parliamentary Union data. Some countries have pushed that

The Countries Where Smoking Never Went Out of Fashion Smoking rates have been falling almost everywhere for decades, driven down by taxes, advertising bans and public health campaigns. But that global decline hides huge gaps between countries. Some nations have pushed adult smoking rates down into single digits, while others still have close to half

The Countries Where Your Grocery Bill Is Spiralling — and Where It’s Actually Shrinking Food inflation measures how much more (or less) it costs to buy the same basket of groceries than it did a year earlier. When the number is high, a family's weekly shop eats up more of their income even if nothing

The Countries That Stopped Making Things Every economy needs someone growing food, someone building things, and someone providing services — banking, retail, healthcare, logistics, tourism. This ranking measures that last group: the share of a country's workforce employed in services rather than agriculture or industry. At the extremes, it tells a story about how far

The Countries That Sell Almost Nothing But Oil Some countries export cars, others export coffee or clothing or software. Then there's a small group of nations whose export earnings come from almost one thing alone: oil. This ranking, based on World Bank trade data, measures oil's share of total merchandise exports for each country —

When Getting a Degree Doesn’t Get You a Job Across much of the world, going to university is supposed to be a route into stable, well-paid work. But in a striking number of countries, graduates are more likely to be sitting at home unemployed than the people around them who never finished school. This metric,

Debt Piles: Which Economies Have Borrowed the Most Against What They Earn? Some countries run on debt the way a car runs on petrol — borrowed money fuels businesses, mortgages and government spending, and as long as the economy keeps growing, the debt gets paid down along the way. This ranking compares total debt (households,

The Other Tax on Your Pay That Never Shows Up in Take-Home Pay When people talk about how much tax they pay, they usually mean income tax. But in most countries, there's a second, quieter deduction sitting alongside it: social contributions. These are payments — split between employers and employees — that fund pensions, healthcare,

The Small Islands and Farm States That Live and Die by What They Grow Most countries sell a mix of things abroad — machinery, oil, services, minerals, food. But for a surprising number of nations, food exports aren't just one line item on the balance sheet; they're nearly the whole story. This ranking looks at