In most parts of the world, population growth is stagnant, even declining slightly, part of a decades-long and nearly universal shift towards smaller, healthier families. But the places where growth is still rapid continue to defy expectations about when they will “catch up.”

In 2007, the world crossed a threshold:  for the first time in human history, the majority of people lived in urban areas. Today, Africa and Asia are the only remaining continents where the rural population outnumbers urban, but they are urbanizing at unprecedented rates. This rapid growth is a double-edged sword. While urbanization spurs economic opportunity and often increases access to infrastructure, it is also widening disparities in health and development, according to a new data sheet by the Population Reference Bureau.

When Valerie Hudson evaluates the strength of a nation, whether food security, wealth, peacefulness, or quality of governance, she finds one important thread that underlies it all. “One of the most important factors in the determination of these things is in fact the situation, and security, and status of women,” said Hudson at the Wilson Center on June 24. [Video Below]

Iran is poised to reap a vast “demographic dividend” if the appropriate national and international policies are adopted, including a nuclear deal with the P5+1 (five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany).

On a warm January afternoon, Tesema Merga, a village elder in Endibir, Ethiopia, surveyed the latest improvements to the long dirt road just outside his house. Eventually this road will be paved, which will bring significant changes to the community.

The world is more connected than ever before, but also more complex. Big, transnational trends like climate change, urbanization, and migration are changing the calculus of geopolitics, while local-level inequalities persist. “[Change] seems to be spinning around us so fast,” said John Hempelmann, president of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, which honors the legacy of the late senator from Washington State. How can today’s and tomorrow’s leaders adjust to global trends? [Video Below]

A pair of recently launched data sources offers visualizations to help people understand two hot-button issues in demography: the demographic dividend and changing fertility rates.