The World Shitscale
Is the world going to shit?
Every year from 0 to 2026, scored out of 100 on 17 measures of health, wealth, knowledge, safety, freedom and the planet. Drag through time to see the score and the reasons.
Year
2026
Score
62/100
Pretty good
How sure we are ±2 points · Modern global data
Highest score: 66 in 2011. Lowest: 16 in year 0.
Drag the slider or the chart. The shaded area is the range the true score probably sits in. The time axis stretches after 1800, where most of the change happened.
Why 2026 scores 62
Mixed signals, 2012 to 2026
Poverty and child deaths kept falling, and most people can now read. But warming passed 1.5°C for the first time in 2024, democracy has been sliding since about 2012, COVID-19 hit, and wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan pushed war deaths back up.
- Strongest factor
- Health, 87/100. Children dying before age 5: 3.7%.
- Weakest factor
- Planet, 36/100. Wildlife populations (year 0 = 100): 15.
The score through history
Scores at turning points in history, using the default weightings.
| Year | Score | Verdict | Weakest factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 16 | Pretty shit | Knowledge (2) |
| 1000 | 17 | Pretty shit | Knowledge (3) |
| 1350 | 18 | Pretty shit | Knowledge (4) |
| 1500 | 19 | Pretty shit | Knowledge (4) |
| 1800 | 23 | Pretty shit | Freedom and rights (7) |
| 1850 | 27 | Pretty shit | Freedom and rights (10) |
| 1900 | 32 | A bit shit | Freedom and rights (12) |
| 1918 | 34 | A bit shit | Freedom and rights (15) |
| 1943 | 40 | A bit shit | Freedom and rights (19) |
| 1950 | 45 | A bit shit | Freedom and rights (29) |
| 1970 | 56 | Pretty good | Knowledge (46) |
| 1990 | 61 | Pretty good | Safety (55) |
| 2000 | 64 | Pretty good | Planet (50) |
| 2011 | 66 | Pretty good | Planet (44) |
| 2026 | 62 | Pretty good | Planet (36) |
The six factors
Each factor is scored from 0 to 100 against fixed limits, from the worst plausible to the ideal, so today doesn’t get 100 by default.
Set your own weightings
Care more about the planet than about income? Drag the sliders. The percentages always add up to 100%, and the page link updates so you can share your version.
Why it feels worse than it is
Most people think it’s getting worse
In a YouGov survey of more than 18,000 people in 17 countries, published in 2016, 65% of Britons said the world was getting worse. Only 4% said it was getting better.
Most people get the basics wrong
Gapminder’s 2017 study asked what had happened to extreme poverty over the last 20 years. Only 9% picked the right answer: it almost halved. Guessing at random gets 33%.
The news covers sudden events
A plane crash takes a minute and leads the bulletin. A slow, 50-year fall in child deaths never makes the news at all.
Some things really are worse
The planet factor has never scored lower, and democracy has gone backwards since about 2012. The world can be better off than it was for most of history and still have serious problems.
Questions and answers
Is the world going to shit?
No, by most measures. With the default weightings the world scores 62 out of 100 in 2026 (“Pretty good”), up from 23 in 1800 and 16 in year 1. But the score peaked at 66 in 2011, because the planet and democracy have gone backwards since then.
What is the World Shitscale?
A score from 0 to 100 for the state of the world in every year from 0 to 2026, made by Jet Support. It combines 17 measures in six factors: health, material living standards, knowledge, safety, freedom and rights, and the planet.
How is the score calculated?
Each measure is scored from 0 to 100 against fixed limits, from the worst plausible to the ideal. Measures are averaged into six factors, which are combined with a weighted geometric mean, the method used by the UN Human Development Index. Default weights: health 20%, material living standards 20%, knowledge 10%, safety 15%, freedom and rights 15%, planet 20%. You can change them on the page.
What has got better since 1900?
Life expectancy rose from 32 to 73 years. Children dying before age 5 fell from 41% to 3.7%. Extreme poverty fell from 60% to 9.8% of people, and adult literacy rose from 21% to 88%.
What has got worse?
Mostly the planet: warming has reached +1.4°C above the 1861 to 1890 average, CO₂ is at 426 parts per million (about 280 before industrialisation), and monitored wildlife populations fell 73% between 1970 and 2022. The share of people living in a democracy fell from 52% in 2012 to 26% in 2025, and war deaths have risen since the early 2010s.
Where does the data come from?
Every yearly figure comes from Our World in Data, which compiles sources such as the UN, the World Bank, V-Dem, UCDP, the Maddison Project and the WWF Living Planet Index. Years before a measure’s data starts use published scholarly estimates or, where marked, our own rough reconstructions, and the page shows how uncertain each year's score is.
Can I use the data?
Yes. Download every year’s scores as CSV or the full data and method as JSON from this page. Please credit “The World Shitscale, Jet Support” and Our World in Data (CC BY 4.0).
How the score works
- Each measure is a worldwide figure for that year. Between data points, values are interpolated.
- Each measure is scored from 0 to 100 against fixed limits. Measures that span huge ranges (income, war deaths, nuclear warheads) use a log scale.
- The measures are averaged into six factors.
- The factors are combined with a weighted geometric mean, the method the UN’s Human Development Index uses. A collapse in one factor drags the whole score down, and gains elsewhere can’t fully hide it.
Figures are rounded and approximate. Before about 1800, most are scholarly estimates, and a few (wildlife before 1970, forests before 1990, hunger before 1970, murder before 2000) are our own rough reconstructions. Every estimate is marked “est.” next to its value. Where a measure’s latest data is older than the year shown, its latest value is carried forward and labelled with its year. Happiness isn’t included because it has only been measured worldwide since about 2005.
Download every year’s scores (CSV) Get the data and method (JSON)
Data last updated 14 November 2026.
Sources for all 17 measures
Health · Life expectancy at birth
Estimates: Before 1770: scholarly estimates of 24 to 27 years for pre-modern societies.
Health · Children dying before age 5
Estimates: Before 1800: about 45%, in line with Gapminder's earliest estimates.
Material living standards · Living in extreme poverty
- Our World in Data: Extreme poverty, cost of basic needs (Moatsos 2021) (1820–1989)
- Our World in Data: Extreme poverty, $3 a day (World Bank PIP) (1990–2026)
Estimates: Before 1820: about 82 to 85%, just above Moatsos' 1820 figure.
Material living standards · Average income per person
- Our World in Data: GDP per capita (Maddison Project Database 2023) (1820–2022)
- Maddison Historical Statistics
Estimates: Before 1820: Maddison's world estimates for years 1, 1000, 1500, 1600 and 1700, rescaled to 2011 prices.
Material living standards · Undernourished
- Our World in Data: Prevalence of undernourishment (FAO) (2000–2024)
- Our World in Data: Undernourishment in developing countries since 1970 (FAO) (1970–1999)
Estimates: 1970 to 1999: FAO's developing-country figures scaled to a world level. Before 1970: our rough estimate.
Knowledge · Adults who can read
Estimates: Before 1820: 3 to 8%, rising slowly after the printing press.
Knowledge · Average years of schooling
Estimates: Before 1870: under half a year, falling towards zero.
Safety · War deaths
- Our World in Data: Deaths in wars (Project Mars) (1800–1945)
- Our World in Data: Death rate in state-based conflicts (PRIO; UCDP) (1946–1988)
- Our World in Data: Death rate in armed conflicts (UCDP) (1989–2025)
- Our World in Data: World population (to turn deaths into rates)
Estimates: Before 1800: our estimate at the same level as Project Mars' 1800s figures, with peaks for the late Roman wars, the Mongol conquests and the Thirty Years' War.
Safety · Murder rate
- Our World in Data: Homicide rate (UNODC) (2000–2024)
- Our World in Data: Homicide rates in Western Europe (Eisner)
Estimates: Before 2000: our estimate, guided by Eisner's long-run European data (much higher in the Middle Ages).
Safety · Nuclear warheads in the world
Freedom and rights · People living in a democracy
Estimates: Before 1789: zero. No country was a democracy by V-Dem's definition.
Freedom and rights · Human rights index (0 to 1)
- Our World in Data: Human rights index (V-Dem) (1789–2025)
Estimates: Before 1789: 0.2, slightly below V-Dem's earliest world figure. Slavery and forced labour were legal almost everywhere.
Freedom and rights · Countries where women can vote
Planet · Warming above the 1861 to 1890 average
Estimates: Before 1850: 0°C. Reconstructions show no sustained global warming before industrialisation.
Planet · CO₂ in the atmosphere
Planet · Wildlife populations (year 0 = 100)
Estimates: Before 1970: our rough reconstruction (100 in year 0, 55 by 1970). From 1970, the Living Planet Index's 73% decline applied to that 55.
Planet · Forest area
- Our World in Data: Forest area (FAO) (1990–2025)
Estimates: Before 1990: our estimate based on Williams' long-run forest history (about 5.6 billion hectares in year 0).
All yearly figures are downloaded from
Our World in Data
(CC BY 4.0) by tools/build-shitscale-series.py, which
anyone can re-run. Survey figures:
YouGov (2016),
Gapminder (2017).
Send feedback or a suggestion
Spotted a wrong number, think a factor is missing, or disagree with our default weightings? Tell us here.