Society

For the academic year of 2023/2024, the University of Oxford was ranked as the best university in the world, with an overall score of 98.5 according the Times Higher Education. Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology followed behind. A high number of the leading universities in the world are located in the United States, with the ETH Zürich in Switzerland the highest ranked neither in the United Kingdom nor the U.S.

The global terrorism index systematically ranks countries of the world according to their terrorist activity. In 2023, Burkina Faso ranked first on the global terrorism index with a score of 8.57 points, making it the country most affected by terrorism on Earth. Israel ranking second is explained by the Hamas attack in October 2023, which killed over 1,200 people and caused the outbreak of the war in Gaza. In 2022, the Democratic Republic of the Congo suffered from the highest number of terrorist attacks and the highest number of fatalities from terrorist attacks.

Additional information on the Global terrorism index

The Global Terrorism Index is an annual ranking produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace. As even the definition of terrorism is hotly debated, it is essential to highlight that the methodologies used to measure terrorism are also contested. The Global Terrorism Index ranks 163 countries on four indicators weighted over five years. These four factors are: the number of terrorist incidents per year, the number of fatalities caused by terrorists per year, the number of injuries caused by terrorists per year, and total property damage caused by terrorism per year.

Terrorism comes in a number of forms from a variety of groups with differing intentions. Taliban regaining power in Afghanistan in 2021 can help explain the high ranking of Afghanistan, but the country has been plagued by terrorist activities for many decades. The operation of numerous groups alongside or in conflict with the Islamic State and the Taliban have led to Afghanistan falling victim to a high number of attacks. Moreover, IS now operates across several countries and regions, including in Burkina Faso.

On the non-human casualty side of the index, property loss is an important metric as loss of shelter or livelihood has a long lasting impact on those who survive the attack physically unharmed. The high percentage of attacks in advanced economies in the most expensive terrorist attacks by insured property loss demonstrates the limitation of using comparative financial data. Although the insured losses are lower in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, this does not suggest the impact of property loss is lower. The instability in these countries often makes insurance unaffordable for most citizens.

The number of people aged 100 years or more (centenarians) worldwide is expected to increase significantly over the coming decades. While there were short of 170,000 centenarians in 2000, this number is predicted to increase to over 20 million by 2100. As people on the planet live longer, global life expectancy increases.

As of 2023, more than one million different types of insects had been discovered around the world. Flowering plants consist out of 369,000 discovered organisms. By comparison, the number of discovered mammals reached roughly 6,600 different types.

In 2023, the violent crime rate in the United States was at 374.4 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. However, the total rate of property crime was far higher, at 1,916.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

In the middle of 2023, about 60 percent of the global population was living in Asia.

The total world population amounted to 8.1 billion people on the planet. In other words 4.7 billion people were living in Asia as of 2023.

Global population

Due to medical advances, better living conditions and the increase of agricultural productivity, the world population increased rapidly over the past century, and is expected to continue to grow. After reaching eight billion in 2023, the global population is estimated to pass 10 billion by 2060.

Most of the future population increase is expected to happen in Africa. The countries with the highest population growth rate in 2024 were mostly African countries. While around 1.47 billion people live on the continent as of 2024, this is forecast to grow to 3.9 billion by 2100. This is underlined by the fact that most of the countries wit the highest population growth rate are found in Africa. The growing population, in combination with climate change, puts increasing pressure on the world's resources.

In 2023, around 37.75 million undergraduate students were enrolled in degree programs at public colleges and universities in China. 20.67 million students were studying in bachelor's degree programs, while 17.08 million were enrolled in more practically oriented short-cycle degree programs. The number of graduates from these programs reached around 10.47 million in 2023. On a postgraduate level, there were almost 3.9 million master's and doctor's degree students studying at public institutions in China in 2023. 

Since the beginning of the reform era in 1979, the number of students enrolled at institutions of tertiary education in China has increased tremendously. While the gross enrollment rate in tertiary education ranged at only 3.4 percent in 1990, it reached 60 percent of related age groups in 2023. This is the result of a thorough governmental plan aimed at increasing the number of specialists China needed for its economic development. The quality of university education in China also increased a lot throughout these years. Nowadays, two Chinese institutions, Tsinghua University and Peking University, regularly reach the highest positions in international university rankings, while a broad group of institutions are continuously improving into the midfield of international universities. However, competition for admission to the elite universities is fierce and the quality of many lower level colleges is not comparable to higher international standards.

China generally differentiates between universities, providing four-year bachelor, master and doctorate programs, and higher vocational colleges, providing more practically oriented three-year, short-cycle degree programs. In addition, it is possible to obtain degrees at public institutes for adult education and from online and self-learning courses provided by public institutions. The number of students enrolled in degree programs at all different levels of public tertiary education in China reached more than 47.6 million in 2023. In addition to public institutions, there is also a growing number of students enrolled at private colleges and universities. However, these private institutions are generally not as esteemed and work on a lower level than their public counterparts.

In 2022, there were nine hurricanes tracked in the Atlantic basin, up from two recorded a year earlier. 2020 had recorded the second most active hurricane season in the displayed period. It only ranked behind 2005, when 15 hurricanes were recorded in the region. Between 1990 and 2021, there were on average seven hurricanes tracked per year in the Atlantic. In the same period, 54 hurricanes made landfall in the U.S.

The highest position of executive power has been held by a woman in just 62 countries since 1960. Since Sirimavo Bandaranaike was first elected Prime Minister of Sri Lanka in 1960, the number of women in power has grown slowly, with the fastest growth coming in the past 15 years. As of September 2024, there were 11 countries led by women, with Mexico electing their first female president in 2024, while long-serving figures such as Shiekh Hasina of Bangladesh and Katrín Jakobsdóttir of Iceland have left office. Despite growing numbers of women leaders decades, there has never been more than 17 countries with women in the highest positions of power in a single year, which is less than 10% of the number of men who have held these positions (as today, there are 193 UN member states).

The women who have served the longest consecutive terms in these positions are Angela Merkel of Germany (16 years, 16 days), Dame Eugenia Charles of Dominica (14 years, 328 days), and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia (12 years, 6 days). The longest combined non-consecutive terms were held by Indira Gandhi of India (16 years, 15 days) and Bangladesh's Sheikh Hasina (20 years, 234 days). Just 14 countries have had more than one woman in the highest position of executive power, and most of these countries can be found either in the Indian sub-continent or in Europe. Of these 14, Finland, Moldova, New Zealand, and the UK are the only countries to have had three female leaders, although the unique federal system of Switzerland has had five women serve in nine annual-terms as President of the Swiss Confederation. 

The first democratically elected female Prime Minister was Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, who took over the leadership of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party when her husband was assassinated in 1959. Bandaranaike successfully led her party to victory in three elections, in 1960, 1970 and 1994, however constitutional changes in the 1980s meant that her final term as Prime Minister was spent in a more ceremonial role, while the President now held the real executive power (although the President at this time was also a woman; Bandaranaike's daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga).