Over the past two decades, we’ve been reallocating our time away from offices, malls, and classrooms… and toward home and solitude. Hyunsoo Rim illustrates…
With our Covid-induced lockdowns now a moderately foggy memory for most, the last few years have turned out to be a continued normalization for many of the habits that defined the pandemic era.
Peloton bikes are now doubling as coat racks; the banana bread craze has cooled; Zoom’s share price is almost back to where it started; millions of people have gone back to clothes shopping in person; and companies like Del Monte are stuck with mountains of unsold canned fruit that’s no longer flying off the shelves.
But one seismic lifestyle change has proven far more permanent than any fitness fad or panic-buying spree — and it turns out to be part of a much longer trend that’s been building for decades: Americans are spending more time at home, and alone. And not everyone has the means to break that growing trend…
[Rim uses infographics to chart American’s use of time…]
… According to the annual American Time Use Survey (ATUS) — a self-reporting survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — an average American’s typical day still breaks down pretty much the same as it did 20 years ago. Roughly a third still goes to sleep, a fifth to leisure and sports, and, perhaps most surprising to anyone feeling burned out, just one-sixth to work. The rest goes to household chores, meals, and everything else. The survey does, of course, represent the average, with many retirees likely skewing the work figures down.
But if you look closer, the routines underneath tell a different story about how the collective American experience has changed.
Over the past two decades, Americans have gained about 30 minutesof sleep per day — now averaging over nine hours, more than ever — and spend roughly 11 more minuteson household activities such as cooking, cleaning, and pet care.
Where did those extra hours come from? It seems like we’ve carved them out of work commutes, mall trips, and in-person classes… activities that usually have us interacting with others out in public in some way.
Some of this shift can certainly be explained by demographic factors — America is an older country than it was in 2003, as birth rates have dropped. Nevertheless, on aggregate, the figures are pretty staggering for a nation of 340+ million people — and the sharp rise in the pandemic era suggests at least a decent amount of the shift is behavioral.
Indeed, in 2003, the average American spent 7.7 hours per day at home, according to the ATUS data compiled by IPUMS. By 2024, that rose to 9.1 hours, with the pandemic only accelerating the climb…
… what’s more striking is how time once spent outside or with others has steadily moved in the opposite direction…
… As more of our daily lives have moved home and online, the same shift is reshaping how we unwind. Since 2003, time spent socializing and communicating — from hanging out with family and friends to hosting events — has fallen 24%, while travel time is down 26%…
… But not everyone is experiencing the shift in the same way. As evidence for the K-shaped economy — where some groups thrive while others struggle — becomes harder to ignore, income is proving to be a strong differentiator.
In fact, households earning under $35,000 now spend about 10 hours a day at home, almost an hour and a half longer than those earning $150,000 or more. The pattern holds for time spent alone, too, with a two-hour daily gap between the lowest- and highest-income groups…
… wealthier Americans aren’t just spending less time at home; they’re more likely to pay their way out of it, with restaurant meals instead of cooking, pilates classes instead of home workouts, or washer-dryer combos instead of hours tied up in chores.
For the very wealthiest, that logic even goes further: according to a recent survey by Long Angle, nearly two-thirds of multimillionaires now outsource housekeeping, while about half pay for gardening services and two-fifths employ nannies.
Of course, time at home and alone isn’t inherently negative — as researchers note that, for many, solitude can be valued as a way to rest, think, or create. But when more of your day is taken up by unpaid chores and low-cost, home-bound leisure, that retreat indoors starts to look less like a choice…
Americans are spending more time at home and alone — and money determines who can opt out. Eminently worth reading in full: “Home. Alone.” from @sherwood.news.
* Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes (August 28, 1988)
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As we contemplate our calendars, we might recall that it was on this date in 1967 that kids across America could “go out” even as they stayed in: they were invited for the first time into Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, as the series premiered on NET (which later became PBS). The show had had earlier local incarnations in Canada, then in Pittsburgh, where the national show was birthed and produced. Michael Keaton, who worked for the Pittsburgh public television station WQED at the time, often helped out with Roger’s show. And future horror director George A. Romero worked on the show shooting short films.
From the piece featured below: “GDP per capita in Madagascar is about the same today as it was in 1950. As a consequence, the number of people in extreme poverty increased in line with the country’s population growth” (image source)
It’s easy to feel hope in the advances that the world has made in eraditcating extreme poverty over the last several decades. But as Max Roser writes, unless the poorest economies start growing, this period of progress against the worst form of poverty is over…
In the last decades, the world has made fantastic progress against extreme poverty. In 1990, 2.3 billion people lived in extreme poverty. Since then, the number of extremely poor people has declined by 1.5 billion people.
This means on any average day in the last 35 years, about 115,000 people left extreme poverty behind.1 Leaving the very worst poverty behind doesn’t mean a life free of want, but it does mean a big change. Additional income matters most for those who have the least. It means having the chance to leave hunger behind, to gain access to clean water, to access better healthcare, and to have at least some electricity — for light at night and perhaps even to cook and heat.
Can we expect this rapid progress to continue?
Unfortunately, we cannot. Based on current trends, progress against extreme poverty will come to a halt. As we’ll see, the number of people in extreme poverty is projected to decline, from 831 million people in 2025 to 793 million people in 2030. After 2030, the number of extremely poor people is expected to increase.
To understand why the rapid progress against deep poverty will not continue into the future, we need to know why the world made progress in the past.
Extreme poverty declined in the last three decades because, back in the 1990s, the majority of the poorest people on the planet lived in countries that subsequently achieved very fast economic growth. In Indonesia and China, more than two-thirds of the population lived in extreme poverty. But these economies then grew rapidly, so that by today, the share has declined to less than 10%. Other large Asian countries — including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines — also achieved strong growth, and as a consequence, the share living in extreme poverty declined rapidly. Much of the progress happened in Asia, but conditions in other regions improved too: the share living in extreme poverty also declined in Ghana, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Panama, Bolivia, Mexico, Brazil, and many other countries.
This chart shows the economic change in these countries over the past decades. As incomes increased, the share of people in extreme poverty declined.
Share of population living in extreme poverty vs. GDP per capita, 1990 to 2024 (World Bank, Eurostat, OECD, IMF)
What is different today is that the majority of the world’s poorest people are stuck in economies that have been stagnating for a long time.Consider the case of Madagascar. In the long run, the country has not seen any growth at all: GDP per capita in Madagascar is about the same today as it was in 1950. As a consequence, the number of people in extreme poverty increased in line with the country’s population growth. In richer countries, it is possible to reduce poverty by reducing inequality through redistribution, but a country like Madagascar cannot reduce its share of people in extreme poverty through redistribution. This is because the mean income is lower than the poverty line; if everyone had the same income, everyone would be living in extreme poverty.
The situation is similar in other countries, as the chart below shows: in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Malawi, Burundi, and the Central African Republic, more than half of the population lives in extreme poverty. As their economies have stagnated, the deep poverty that most people live in has remained largely unchanged for decades.
This is why we have to expect the end of progress against extreme poverty based on current trends. If the poorest economies remain stagnant, hundreds of millions of people will continue to live in extreme poverty.
Share of population living in extreme poverty, 1992-2022 (World Bank)
I’m always skeptical when people say that we are at a juncture in history where the future looks much different than the past. But when it comes to the fight against extreme poverty, I fear it is true. Today, the majority of the world’s poorest people are living in economies that have not achieved economic growth in the recent past… Based on current trends, we have to expect the end of progress against extreme poverty…
… It’s no news that we should expect an end to progress against extreme poverty. This article is an update of an article I published in 2019, in which I wrote the same: the fact that the poorest economies are not growing means that the rapid progress against extreme poverty seen in the last decades will end.
Although this prospect has been known for years, it has hardly received the attention it deserves. Progress against extreme poverty was one of humanity’s most outstanding achievements of the past decades — the end of it would be one of the very worst realities of the coming ones.
Importantly, however, these projections are not predictions; their purpose is not to describe what the world in 2030 or 2040 will certainly look like. These projections describe what we have to expect based on current trends; they tell us about our present world rather than the reality of tomorrow. Current trends don’t have to become future facts: many countries left extreme poverty behind in the past, because they had a moment at which they broke out of stagnation.
What these projections tell us, however, is that if the poorest countries do not start to grow, a very bleak future is ahead of us: a future in which extreme poverty remains the reality for hundreds of millions for many years to come…
As we put our shoulders to the wheel, we might spare a thought for a man who contributed mightily to our capacity to feed humanity, Kenneth V. Thimann; he died on this date in 1997. A microbiologist, he was a pioneer in plant physiology (especially the hormones that control the development of plants). Building on the thinking of Frits Went, he identified the first plant hormone to be discovered– the first auxin, a class of growth hormones, and revealed its chemical structure– which proved very important to agriculture and its yields.
The current populations of India and China, visualized
… and that data can be even more useful if we can visualize it. Andrew Zolli introduces a new opportunity…
Whether we’re contending with food shocks, responding to disasters, preventing the next pandemic, helping communities adapt to a changing climate, or just delivering basic governmental services, one constant runs through it all: people. Where we live, how we move, when we gather or flee – these human patterns shape the arc of every modern challenge. Without a deep and dynamic understanding of those patterns, meaningful action becomes not just harder, it becomes guesswork.
That’s why I’m so excited about our ongoing collaboration with colleagues at the Microsoft AI for Good Lab and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation to develop the world’s most up-to-date, highly accurate, high resolution #population density maps. Harnessing the power of Planet’s high-frequency, high-resolution satellite imagery, the AI for Good team’s artificial intelligence expertise, and IHME’s deep demographic modeling capabilities, these population maps allow us to estimate how many people we’re likely to find in every 40 sq meter patch of Earth, in every country of the world. And because the underlying data is updated quarterly, they also allow us to see change over time.
This week, we announced the completion of the first phase of this work at the United Nations AI For Good Global Summit, held in Geneva. We’ve been piloting the use of these population maps as part of the UN’s Early Warnings For All Initiative, which seeks to ensure that everyone on Earth is protected from hazardous weather, water, and climate events. In an early use-case, by overlaying population data with maps of mobile connectivity, we’ve been able to identify unconnected populations that might not be reachable in a crisis.
And that’s just one of what are likely hundreds – even thousands – of ways this kind of population data can be put to work. Knowing where people are settling, and how those patterns are changing, is foundational to everything from public health campaigns to the design of infrastructure and services. If we want to reduce wildfire risk, for example, we need to understand where human communities are pressing into forested frontiers. If we want to evacuate people ahead of an oncoming storm, we need to know how many lives are in harm’s way. And if we want to ensure people aren’t displaced by unlivable heat, we have to overlay human presence with climate exposure.
You can learn more and sign up to explore a coarser (but compelling!) (40km/pixel) visualization of the population data. At the AI for Good Summit, we also announced an Early Access Program for a carefully selected number of trusted organizations who will explore applications of the data and give feedback. If that sounds like it might be of interest, please contact services@healthdata.org…
As we get down with data, we might spare a thought for a spiritual ancestor of Planet’s, Denis Diderot; he died on this date in 1784. A philosopher, art critic, and writer, he is best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d’Alembert.
The Encyclopédie is most famous for representing the thought of the Enlightenment. According to Denis Diderot in the article “Encyclopédie”, the Encyclopédie‘s aim was “to change the way people think” and for people to be able to inform themselves and to know things. He and the other contributors advocated for the secularization of learning away from the Jesuits. Diderot wanted to incorporate all of the world’s knowledge into the Encyclopédie and hoped that the text could disseminate all this information to the public and future generations. Thus, it is an example of democratization of knowledge.
It was also the first encyclopedia to include contributions from many named contributors, and it was the first general encyclopedia to describe the mechanical arts. In the first publication, seventeen folio volumes were accompanied by detailed engravings. Later volumes were published without the engravings, in order to better reach a wide audience within Europe…
For the late French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Thomas Robert Malthus was an indispensable guide to the agrarian past. Le Roy Ladurie applied Malthus’s argument that population grows faster than subsistence to the archives of Languedoc, where, in the empirical detail of parish registers, cadastral surveys, tax rolls and price series, he perceived ‘the immense respiration of a social structure’ over the course of three centuries. In the 15th century, after the Black Death, the region’s population was at a historic low. Land was left fallow, and villagers complained about the encroachment of wild animals and forests on crops and pasture. Nature was taking its revenge for the great land colonisation movement of the Middle Ages. Civilisation recovered, but growth in a world of limits was ultimately self-defeating. The prosperity of the 16th century soon gave way to famine, drought, war and plague. It was only after modern technology unlocked the productive capacities of the earth that society was able to escape this cycle of expansion, crisis and renewal. Acknowledging his intellectual debt, Le Roy Ladurie pointed out the irony that the ‘Malthusian curse’ should lift just as it was being discovered in England in 1798. ‘Malthus was a clear-headed theoretician of traditional societies,’ he conceded, ‘but he was a prophet of the past; he was born too late in a world too new.’
Yet the spectre of Malthus continued to haunt industrial modernity. No sooner had the Great Exhibition of 1851 encouraged Victorians to embrace material gratification without guilt than William Stanley Jevons began to warn of the imminent exhaustion of the nation’s coal supply. Drawing explicitly on Malthus, Jevons argued that the increased demand on resources from a growing population was forcing mines into deeper and more inaccessible seams. ‘We shall begin as it were to see the further shore of our Black Indies,’ he warned. ‘The wave of population will break upon that shore, and roll back upon itself.’ John Maynard Keynes, who made no secret of his admiration for Malthus, attributed the First World War and the Russian Revolution to overpopulation and global competition for food. The ‘great acceleration’ of the second half of the 20th century, a period of unprecedented energy consumption, economic prosperity and demographic growth, produced its own peculiar versions of Malthusian catastrophism, from the neoliberal to the cosmological (the American scientist Garrett Hardin seriously entertained ‘interstellar migration’ as a solution to ‘the population problem’). When the first edition of the Essay on the Principle of Population appeared in 1798 there were just over ten million people in Britain and life expectancy was under forty. We are a long way from Malthus’s Britain, and further still from Le Roy Ladurie’s Languedoc. Why does a theory of scarcity endure in an age of abundance?…
* Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population
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As we ponder the prospect of progress, we might might send chilly birthday greetings to a man who helped breach some of the limits about which Malthus worried: Carl von Linde; he was born on this date in 1842. A scientist, engineer, and businessman, he discovered the refrigeration cycle, invented the first industrial-scale air separation and gas liquefaction processes, and laid the foundation for the development of the refrigerator and ultimately the cold chain— the supply chain that uses refrigeration to maintain perishable goods (meat and produce, pharmaceuticals, and other heat-sensitive goods) in transit, often across the globe.
There’s much discussion today of falling fertility rates and the prospect of a shrinking population. In her terrific newsletter, Your Local Epidemiologist, Katelyn Jetelina explores the (real) reasons why, and what can be done…
In the U.S.—and across much of the world—fertility rates are falling, and populations are projected to shrink.
The reasons people are worried vary. Some fear a loss of global influence or long-term human survival. Others approach the issue through religious, political, or ideological lenses—or just out of curiosity. Whatever the motivation, the question keeps coming up: What can we do?
In response, the new administration—guided in part by Project 2025—is considering financial incentives to encourage people to have more children. Ideas include education, like on menstrual cycles, or a “National Medal of Motherhood” to mothers with six or more children, as well as financial incentives like a $5,000 cash baby bonus or Fulbright scholarships reserved for mothers.
Globally, paying families to have children has yielded mixed results. In Russia, for example, payments ($10,000) have increased fertility rates by about 20%. However, in Canada during the 1970s, similar efforts yielded only a short-term increase.
So no—we don’t need to blindly throw spaghetti at the wall. We have the evidence: if we want people to have more children, we need to create a society that actually supports parents…
[Jetelina unpacks the dynamics at play: access to affordable health care, the lack of support for new parents, the cost of raising a child, the climate of fear of maternal mortality, and the dismantling of programs that support women…]
… People aren’t having fewer children because they don’t care about family, faith, or their future, or the future of this country. They’re having fewer because the system makes it too hard, too risky, and too expensive. A $5,000 payment is a drop in the bucket compared to what is required of families in this day and age.
If the government wants to be part of the solution, it shouldn’t just throw out incentives. It should invest in the foundation: affordable care, parental leave, safe childbirth, and supportive systems.
Let’s focus on what matters: building a society where families can thrive. If we do that, everything else—including birth rates—may just follow…
As noodle on nativity, we might spare a thought for Edouard Van Beneden; he died on this date in 1910. An embryologist, cytologist and marine biologist, he made discoveries concerning fertilization in sex cells and chromosome numbers in body cells. His studies (of the roundworm Ascaris) showed that sexual fertilization results from the union of two different cell half-nuclei. Thus a new single cell is created with its number of chromosomes derived as one-half from the male sperm and the other half from the female egg. Van Beneden also determined that the chromosome number is constant for every body cell of a species. His theory of embryo formation in mammals became a standard scientific principle.
Edouard van Beneden in front of the Aquarium et musee de zoologie in Liège, Belgium (source)
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