Although the environment is high on the international policy agenda, development aid for the environment has declined in relation to total aid since 1996. This trend comes despite an increase in overall aid funding: from 2004 to 2005, total official development assistance (ODA) rose 32% to a record high of US$107.1 billion, though eased back somewhat in 2006 (see development setback news brief).

The United States is dependent on fossil fuels for almost all its energy supply. Coal dominates electricity generation, accounting for half of its power production, with nuclear and natural gas around one-fifth each.

Both the size and the relative incidence or frequency of the foreign-born population have increased in all OECD countries since 1995. So while there have been large increases in traditional migration countries such as the US and New Zealand, there have also been sharp rises in Denmark, Korea, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Spain, where inward migration has recently taken off.

The Korean economic wave continues forward, with strong growth and low unemployment expected in 2008-2009. But the upsurge appears to have left some younger people behind. True, at 10%, Korean youth unemployment is below the OECD average of nearer 15%, and though the country has a lower employment rate, this reflects a much lower school drop-out rate and high participation in education.

Latin Americans’ access to telecommunications services has expanded fast since the early 1990s, with a telephone density now above the world average. Chile and Argentina lead the continent, with 90 and 82 telephone lines per 100 inhabitants respectively. Fewer, albeit wide, disparities still exist.

There has been a rapid rise of goods and services exports from large emerging economies in recent years, in particular, Chinese manufactured goods and Indian business services. In 1980, goods trade between the OECD and India and China was relatively small, representing in total only 2% of total OECD trade.

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One role of development aid is humanitarian assistance to help victims of natural disasters, famine and conflict. Since 2000 the trend has been rising sharply, reaching some 6-7% of total bilateral official development assistance in 2005, or some US$7.1 billion (constant 2005 prices).

Mexico has made great economic strides over the past decade, and output growth is expected to reach 3.5-4% in 2008. However, the latest Economic Survey of Mexico says that only a renewed reform effort will raise the economy to a higher plane of growth and help close the gap with wealthier OECD countries.

Making pension systems financially sustainable in the face of population ageing has obliged governments to carry out reforms. This has meant finding savings, but also lower retirement incomes. According to the latest edition of Pensions at a Glance, most of the OECD countries surveyed saw a decline in benefits as a result of pension reforms, affecting retirement incomes of average earners, but also the poorest pensioners (see graph).

Ageing will boost demand for healthcare, but at a time when healthcare professionals are themselves ageing, how can that demand be met? Suppose a scenario with no growth in the demand for doctors in a country, and no migration either.

China is becoming one of the world’s fastest growing players on the global information and communications technology market.

We live in an age of gadgets and gigabytes. Our mobile phones have morphed into multi-tasking life-support systems, with inbuilt cameras, calendars and messaging services. Computers are ever faster child’s play, and Internet allows us 24-hour access to the rest of the world. However, all of this comes at a price: our increasing reliance upon electricity.

When a blackout hit part of New York recently, some people blamed the air conditioning, as demand soared during a heat wave. Air conditioning has caught on around the world, which means year-round demand for energy beyond cold winters, and so bigger bills and environmental costs.

There were 102 million hectares of commercially grown transgenic (or genetically-modified) crops worldwide in 2006. In 1996 that total stood at 1.7 million hectares. These figures come from the international agribiotech concern, ISAAA, which notes that soybean, maize, cotton and canola are still the main transgenic crops, and herbicide tolerance and insect resistance the dominant traits.

Some 82,900 foreign scholars were in teaching or research at US higher education institutions in the 2003-04 academic year. Most were engaged in research, although the share in teaching has increased. Two-thirds are engaged in scientific or engineering fields, with a fast-growing proportion in life and biological sciences.

The supply of medical staff also reflects global movements of labour. Indeed, there were some 1.3 million foreign born health professionals–nurses, doctors, pharmacists, dentists, etc.–living in OECD countries in 2000, according to a special report in the latest International Migration Outlook.

The OECD has only been around for half a century, but is nevertheless an ageing club. Just before it was set up in 1960, only one in twelve people was aged 65 and over on average in OECD countries.

Property prices have been soaring for several years now in many OECD cities. A few markets, in UK and US cities for instance, have seen some cooling.

Dublin’s high property prices belie the city’s relatively small population–just over 1.1 million within the county. This pales compared with the 22 million inhabitants recorded for the metropolitan region of New York, which has the largest population of all OECD urban regions, and accounts for about 8% of the total population of the US.

OECD in Figures is an original, simple to use, pocket data book. It is a primary statistical source. As with all OECD data, it is compiled and checked by our experts, so that decision-makers in government, research and business know they can rely on it. The 2006-2007 edition of OECD in Figures contains key data on OECD countries, ranging from economic growth and employment to energy, trade and migration.

Globalisation may have accelerated, but how big is international trade in a country’s income? For some major countries, the answer is not much bigger than before.

How happy are you? Economists generally rely on monetary measures like GDP per capita to answer such questions. After all, satisfying wants is a function of what we consume, and so using per capita income as a proxy for well-being makes sense.

Women political leaders remain a rarity in OECD countries. True, there is Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Helen Clark of New Zealand, and high-profile women candidates are battling it out in major election campaigns in France and the US. But did you know that women are still vastly outnumbered by men in all the world’s parliaments?

Dynamic countries tend to have a fast-growing and competitive city at their hub, even if cities accumulate social and economic disorders as well. San Francisco is the wealthiest in a new OECD ranking of 78 metropolitan regions, with income of $62,350 per head, adjusted for purchasing power parity.

A decade ago, used tyres ended up mostly in stockpiles, as an eyesore for landfill. Some 62% of old tyres went that way in 1994. Today, more are recycled for use in adhesives, insulation, brake linings, and conveyor belts, for instance.

Traditionally a male bastion in many countries, the medical profession has seen the proportion of female doctors steadily increasing, accounting now for an average of 38% of all doctors in OECD countries, up from 24% a quarter of a century ago.

Does repeating a year in school help educational performance? The 2006 Education at a Glance, an annual report, says that although many teachers and education administrators see repeating as a good way of getting children to improve, repeat students are no more likely to do well than non-repeating classmates.

Although natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions or warm ocean currents, or even the earth’s tilt, might all contribute to global warming, carbon dioxide (CO2) generated by human activity–from running homes and factories to flying planes and mowing lawns–is accepted as a major culprit.

After two years of slow growth and rising unemployment, GDP in Poland finally turned around in 2004 and is set to pick up to around 4.5% in 2006-07. According to the latest OECD Economic Survey of Poland (June 2006), the long process of convergence with EU partners may have resumed, though with GDP per head still under 45% of the EU average, there is much to be done.

The possibility of using renewable energy to produce electricity on a significant scale is a heated debate. The potential of hydropower is well established, and other sources such as geothermal, biomass, solar and wind, even ocean energy, now hold promise. Moreover, they are attractive because they reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels and help cut CO2 emissions. On a micro-scale, to heat home water for instance or run farms, these sources are starting to prove themselves.

Despite the dot.com crash of 2001, growth in broadband has been strong. Indeed, the number of broadband Internet connections in OECD countries has risen from an average of 2.9 subscribers per 100 inhabitants in 2001 to 13.6 per 100 in December 2005.

Matching jobs and qualifications is never easy. Some people inevitably work in jobs for which they are overqualified, but the rate of overqualification is higher among foreign-born populations.

Are house prices peaking? They have certainly risen strongly, even in real terms – that is, when adjusted for inflation – since the mid-1990s in most OECD countries and, as the latest OECD Economic Outlook reports, their current upswing is the longest of its kind since the 1970s.

Ireland, which has been the OECD’s fastest growing economy in recent years, also produces the most municipal waste per capita in the OECD area, at some 760 kilograms per head in 2003, according to the latest OECD Factbook.

Playing computer and video games is a booming industry, but in only a few countries is it the main reason why people go online. For instance, many Danes click online for government information, while the Swiss use the net more for job hunting.

Mexico’s economic performance has improved, but not by enough, according to the OECD Economic Survey of Mexico released late last year. Since the 1995 financial crisis, Mexico has made progress in terms of economic stability, and the economy is far more open, too. But while poverty has fallen, it remains widespread.

Pensions funds in the OECD area have grown sharply over the last decade, from US$5.9 trillion in 1994 to US$15.6 trillion by 2004, representing a compound growth rate of 10.2% per annum.

The public cost of health and long-term care in OECD countries will double by 2050 if current trends continue, a new OECD report finds. The rising medical demands of ageing and wealthier populations could send average health costs in the OECD area up from 6.7% of GDP to 12.8%. Even if governments manage to contain that rise, spending would still reach the equivalent of around 10% of GDP by the middle of the century.

Home ownership, rather than rented accommodation, has become the norm in most OECD countries over the last 20 years. In fact, Germany is the only OECD country where the owner occupation rate is well below 50% of the total.

Work may drive growth, but for most people, more free time contributes to well-being, as long as it is not accompanied by lower income. Still, one often-heard remark about the gap in economic performance between OECD countries is that US workers may earn more money but they work longer hours, whereas Europeans prefer more leisure to more work, or indeed, more money, and so are better off.

Poverty is multifaceted by nature, making cross-country comparisons difficult. Some countries may have a large poverty rate but a high turnover in and out of poverty, implying short poverty spells by many people. Also, poverty incidence may be low in aggregate terms, but with only a low probability of getting out of poverty permanently.

Is there a connection between health spending and life expectancy? Not necessarily. As the latest edition of the OECD in Figures 2005 points out, the Japanese have the highest life expectancy in the OECD area, but their health spending, at nearly 8% of GDP, is far from being the highest. The US on the other hand has the highest health spending at some 15%, yet it clocks in at just 22nd when it comes to life expectancy–Americans can nevertheless expect to live past 77. The lowest spender is Korea (5.6% of GDP), with a life expectancy also of 77 years.

Construction of Finland’s first nuclear reactor in three decades got under way in September 2005. When completed, the French-built third generation reactor will be the first in western Europe since 1991. Is this the beginning of a new expansion phase?

Should water-scarce countries import water-intensive products and cultivate less water-intensive ones? After all, since all goods contain a certain amount of water in their production, exporting farm produce is rather like exporting water, albeit in virtual form. A thousand litres of water may be needed to produce a kilo of wheat, but five to ten times more is needed for a kilo of meat.

Many governments have made deliberate efforts to cut back on their civil service employment in recent years, both to contain public expenditure and also as part of wider regulatory reforms. Public servant jobs in central, regional and local administrations have decreased, sometimes sharply, in several countries, but have risen markedly in a few others, including Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain. Staffing has risen at regional or local levels in some countries, such as Japan and the US.

The global meat sector has suffered from bad press in recent years, with sales affected by trade bans and consumer caution in light of scares from the likes of mad-cow disease (BSE) and avian flu.

Anyone driving across different countries will be struck by the different qualities of national road networks. Yet, even the smoothest asphalt requires frequent maintenance, often at great cost in terms of money, traffic disruptions and so on.

One characteristic of globalisation is the growing interdependency of countries and regions in all areas of international transactions. Take imports. According to the latest OECD Economic Globalisation Indicators, between 1995 and 2003 the share of demand met by imports in the OECD area increased from 34% to 41% for goods, and from 35% to 48% for services. Imports to the EU from other OECD countries remained very high, albeit easing slightly to 71% between 1995 and 2003.

Suicide rates have fallen in most OECD countries, but have risen sharply in others. The highest rates occur in Hungary, Finland, Japan and Korea, with the lowest in Spain, UK, Italy and Greece. Some 130,000 deaths occurred in OECD countries in 2002. Suicides are up to four times greater among men than women.

The 2005 UN World Summit achieved some notable breakthroughs for development. All countries committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and Australia announced new aid targets to add to those of the EU and the G8 in the run up to the summit.

World steel production has grown at just under 2% per year–more than twice the rate of growth for the OECD as a whole–from 1990 to 2003. Experience within the OECD has been mixed with falling production in several countries, especially the Czech Republic, Poland and the UK, and strong growth in Korea, Mexico and Turkey and, from a low base, in Austria and Finland.

The development of wind power has accelerated in recent years, thanks to lower costs and better technology. Within the 19 countries participating in wind energy projects in the International Energy Agency (IEA), a sister organisation of the OECD, wind energy has now seen an average growth rate of 28% over the last nine years. According to the latest IEA Wind annual report, at end-2004, total wind capacity reached 47.9 GW.

Can governments afford the pensions promised to future retirees? After all, higher life expectancy means pensions have to be paid for a longer time. The OECD’s new comprehensive “pension wealth indicator” works out the lump-sum equivalent of all the pension income a worker can expect to receive, taking into account pension level, retirement age and life expectancy in the respective country.

Beyond the haves and have-nots of mobile handsets, PCs or hand-held IT devices, there is a deeper, and perhaps more debilitating, layer to the digital divide. And that is the availability (or lack) of basic network infrastructure in low-income economies.

Can the Kyoto protocol, which came into force on 16 February this year, work? Although natural phenomena such as large volcanic eruptions, ocean currents, the likes of El Niño or even changes in the earth’s tilt might all be contributing factors, carbon dioxide (CO2) generated by human activity–whether running homes and factories or driving cars and lawnmowers–is cited as a major culprit in the rise of global temperatures.

The US was the highest per capita drug spender in 2003, at more than US$700 per person, followed by France at just over $600, and Canada and Italy at about $500 each.

Space exploration is making headline news again, thanks to the Cassini-Huygens mission to Titan. Such public attention is vital, not just because it helps the industry to move on from major setbacks, such as the Columbia tragedy in 2003. A look behind these spectacular space missions shows an industry that has been bedeviled by cost overruns and painful reductions in public financial support.

With oil prices historically high and worries about global warming, greater attention is being paid to renewable energy potential. Take solar energy, for instance, which is already used for water heating and cooling systems.

Despite the rising number of Internet users and websites, from online stores to blogs, as on any main street, a hard core of Internet sites dominate the landscape. Take shopping in both the UK and the US. Around 30% of all visits go to eBay, far ahead of the next most visited site, which is Amazon. The share of visits is more spread out after that.

Despite the legal wrangles over online entertainment, trading in audio and video on the Internet remains high, particularly among young people. The downloading of video and other files increased sharply in 2002-2003, helped by a rise in improved file-sharing systems, and new DVD and CD burning technologies.

Oil prices have been spiking, but so have prices of other energy sources, like uranium, the fuel for nuclear energy. Overproduction in the 1980s caused uranium prices to fall and by 1994 they had reached their lowest level in 20 years.

On vous rappellera (Don’t call us, we’ll call you!): this is the title of French writer Sophie Talneau’s book in which she satirises the difficulties young French people meet when looking for work. Nearly half of new graduates spend at least a year out of work. Only 30% of France’s 15-24 year-olds employed, one of the lowest rates in the OECD.

Can immigration help solve the effects of the projected long-term decline in the labour force of OECD countries?

OECD inhabitants are living longer and healthier lives. But while health is an important driver of welfare expenses, the cost of elderly care also has a major impact on budgets. When the cohorts of the babyboom generation reach the oldest age groups over the next three decades, demand for long-term care will rise steeply. That is why many OECD countries have stepped up services that allow older people to stay at home as long as possible. Home care now accounts for more than 30% of public resources in more than a third of the OECD countries.

Is the world becoming more dangerous? Many people seem to think so, citing terrorism, organised crime and even computer viruses. However much this fear may lie in the mind, demand for security-related goods and services has been rising. The annual turnover of the private security industry worldwide is growing at 7-8% per year and is now worth some US$100-120 billion, according to The Security Economy.

If ever there was a controversial icon from the statistics world, GDP is it. It measures income, but not equality, it measures growth, but not destruction, and it ignores values like social cohesion and the environment. Yet, governments, businesses and probably most people swear by it. According to François Lequiller*, head of national accounts at the OECD, part of the problem is that perhaps we expect too much from this trusty, though misunderstood, indicator. He explains.

GDP is a perfect example of the muddle that reading league tables can cause. This is a relatively straightforward measure of output and gives an idea of how well-off a country is, compared with competitors and past performance. But it has to be handled carefully.

Jobseekers and employers are putting the internet to work, with recruitment agencies such as Jobsite.co.uk in Britain, Cadremploi.fr in France, and Pasonet.ne.jp in Japan offering not only listings, but tips on filling out resumes and conducting a successful interview. These are on top of popular search engine listings, like Yahoo!’s Hotjobs.

Unemployment is historically low in many OECD countries, and is below 10% in all but a few of them. But the picture for households, rather than just individuals, is less positive. According to Society at a Glance 2005, even in the UK, where unemployment is in low single figures, in 2000 as many as 13% of people lived in households headed by a person of working age where no one had a job.

Easy to compare economic statistics on OECD countries.

If governments stick with the policies in force as of mid-2004, the world’s energy needs will be almost 60% higher in 2030 than they are now, requiring a cumulative global investment of over $500 billion. This is the sobering message of the latest World Energy Outlook 2004, published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), a sister organisation of the OECD. However, the projected rate of demand growth, at 1.7%, is slower than the average of the past three decades of 2%.

Firms everywhere know that to lift earnings and stay competitive they should produce more, and more efficiently. So they try to raise the productivity of their labour and their capital. But it is the combination of these two factors together that policy interest is turning to. This is multi-factor productivity (MFP), also sometimes called total factor productivity, and it is becoming a valuable yardstick of performance.

Although health systems are funded by public and private finance in all OECD countries, the public sector remains the main source everywhere, except in the US and Mexico, accounting for an average of 72.5% of health spending in 26 OECD countries.

Reaching the Millennium Development Goals by the internationally agreed date of 2015 will require a major funding effort. If commitments from the OECD countries that make up the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) are upheld, then official development assistance (ODA) should rise.

Luxembourg had the highest GDP per head in 2003, at over $50,000, above the US, Norway and Ireland, according to the recently published annual pocket data book, OECD in Figures 2004.

How much do our knowledge-based societies actually invest in knowledge? One way to find out, according to OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard published in May, is to work out the sum of three spending areas: R&D, higher education (public and private) and software. The figures are reworked where possible to avoid overlap between, say, education and R&D.

Who would question the value of numbers? They can add credibility to an argument, clinch a deal, or simply illuminate an issue. But they can also deceive, through misreading or even manipulation. Can we really rely on the statistics we read? In the build-up to a major international forum on “Statistics, Knowledge and Policy”, to be held 10-13 November in Palermo, Italy, we asked Enrico Giovannini, the OECD's chief statistician, for an “unofficial” view.

The light from the reading lamp in your living room demonstrates home delivery at its most convenient – but did you know that the electricity to power the lamp may have come from another country? Most of the time we do not even think about the complex networks that keep the lights and heating going in a cold snap or the air-conditioning in a heat wave. It takes an event such as the massive power blackout that affected more than 50 million people in the US and Canada in August to remind us.

Record numbers of people are moving to OECD countries to find jobs or join their families, despite an economic downturn in some countries. More than a million permanent immigrants entered the US in 2001 and 2002, some 25% more than in 2000, according to the latest issue of the OECD’s Trends in International Migration.

Nanotechnology R&D continues to grow in priority on national science agendas in OECD countries, both in terms of public and private funding. The United States, Europe and Japan each spend between US$500 million and $1 billion a year on nanotechnology R&D.

Online marketing is thriving in response to the pervasive shift to young and hip internet users from yesterday’s couch potatoes. After falling 18% during 2002, online advertising experienced an upturn, with revenues expected to have increased 12% during 2003 to around US$6.6 billion, some of the largest brands having increased their online marketing budgets.

How far has the OECD economy travelled in the last two hundred years? According to economic historian, Angus Maddison, GDP per capita worldwide has risen more than eightfold since 1820, compared with a fivefold increase in population, though the rate of growth has been uneven by time and by country.

While energy demand in IEA countries has increased steadily since 1973, with only two interruptions, energy savings have been substantial, according to Oil Crises and Climate Challenges: 30 Years of Energy Use in IEA Countries. Compared to 1973, it takes a third less energy to produce a unit of GDP, thanks in part to improved energy efficiency.

Are computers really everywhere? Not in some schools. Governments have invested heavily in the past 20 years to make computers and the Internet available in schools in the most advanced OECD countries, but their use by teachers and students is disappointing, a new report says.

World production of crude steel rose by 6.1% in 2002 to total 902.2 million tonnes, with the OECD accounting for more than half of the total. But the OECD’s 53.3% share was lower than its 55.2% showing in 2001, with output rising by 2.5%.

Major aid donors have increased their aid efforts, but still have a long way to go if they are to reach the levels they pledged at the UN Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002, a new OECD report says. International aid rose significantly in 2002 for the first time in several years, to US$58 billion from US$52 billion in 2001 at current prices and exchange rates, according to the latest edition of the OECD’s annual Development Co-operation Report.

Biotechnology is one of the fastest-growing areas of scientific research, the latest OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard shows.

Supermarket bills may seem to be getting ever higher, but OECD people devote a great deal less of their income to buying food, and a huge amount more to transport and communications, than your 17th century ancestors, a new historical look at statistics shows.

More new drugs, and with a higher price tag, have pushed pharmaceutical expenditure up in OECD countries in the past decade. The higher cost of drugs has increased the share of the total health budget devoted to pharmaceuticals in most OECD countries, the latest edition of the OECD’s Health at a Glance shows.

Tax revenues fell slightly across much of the OECD area for the second year in a row, the latest edition of the OECD Revenue Statistics shows. Tax revenues (including revenues from compulsory social security contributions) as a percentage of GDP declined in 16 of the 27 OECD countries which reported data, with EU countries showing most of the drop.

E-government can improve efficiency, increase citizen involvement and help achieve reform – but it is not enough just to open up a website and wait for visitors to start flooding in. Ireland tops the list of OECD countries when it comes to providing government services online, for instance, but actually using online services is apparently far more popular in Sweden.

Improving productivity is a goal in any business or economy, but a real difference in performance comes from the increase in productivity that comes from combining labour and capital. This relationship came into focus during the new economy boom as economists tried to explain how new technology and human capital worked together to lift growth potential to higher levels.