europe

Trains are a great way to travel around Europe and new high-speed lines are being built all the time. Switzerland is the best country overall when it comes to train, be it for the punctuality, cleanliness of trains and stations, organisation or ease of use. The Netherlands probably comes second...

I was wondering what Europe would look like if the various separatist movements had their way. I checked the list of active separatist movements in Europe and selected only the regions with reasonable claims of independence based on the percentage of population supporting independence. This is...

Over 10 years ago I wrote an article called What differentiates Europeans from Americans: the cultural gap across the Atlantic. I last updated it 5 years ago to add some more differences I had forgotten. One thing I did not mention, as it's not strictly speaking a difference between the US and...

Tax rates vary hugely between countries. When it comes to personal income tax, some countries have flat rates regardless of income size, while others have progressive rates. But while some progressive rates start from 0%, others start much higher (like in Belgium, from 25%). Some countries have...

GDP per capita is often used as a proxy to determine how much people earn in average in a country. In many cases it can be a relatively good approximation, but sometimes it's completely wrong. This is because the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measure of all the money produced in a country...

Here is my latest map based on data from the World Bank. The map shows the percentage of people aged 15+ who have an account with a bank or other financial institution that provides mobile money services. It doesn't necessarily mean that those people are using mobile banking or other mobile...

I have been meaning to start a thread like this for many years. I thought it might be too provocative, but I see how many Americans themselves are dissatisfied with their own country and the situation seems to be getting constantly worse. To many outside observers it has been clear for quite...

Tautalus posted an interesting graph showing what percentage of Europeans identified with their nationality and/or "Europeanness". This dates back to 2015, so for more up to date information I checked the latest Eurobarometer on Values and identities of EU citizens (published in November...

The European Union has been encouraging the development of the Trans-European high-speed rail network (TEN-R) for over two decades. The idea is to link most of Europe's major cities with highspeed trains so as to reduce air travel as much as possible by 2030 in order to help achieve the goals in...

Some 70 countries worldwide now use eID cards. Belgium and Finland were the first countries to introduce them in 2003, followed by Sweden (2005), the Netherlands (2006) and Spain (2006). In 2007, Estonia became the first country to allow electronic voting for parliamentary elections. Nowadays...

Palaeogenomics of Upper Palaeolithic to Neolithic European hunter-gatherers Abstract Modern humans have populated Europe for more than 45,000 years1,2. Our knowledge of the genetic relatedness and structure of ancient hunter-gatherers is however limited, owing to the scarceness and poor...

Numbeo is a well-known website to compare stats on quality of life, cost of living, property prices, and also the feeling of safety or insecurity of respondents all over the world. You'll find a list of the main European cities by crime index here. I was not satisfied with only 150 cities, so I...

I have made a series of map using the data from Numbeo as of late 2022. The maps do not show the actual crime rate, but the fear of crimes being committed. So this reflects the sense of insecurity of the population, which is as important as the actual crime rates. The advantage of Numbeo is...

I have made maps showing the death rate from various types of cancer in and around Europe. Some types of cancer are clearly linked to the lifestyle. Lung cancer rates do not only depend on the percentage of smokers, but also on air quality. As you can see here, the Balkans have the worst...

I have expanded the Food & Drink Maps section. I made a map of overall alcohol consumption per capita with the 2010 data from the WHO. At that time Slavic people drank the most. I made a new map with data from 2016 and the trend changed somewhat. Many Slavic countries reduced their...

When comparing countries and cultures, few people think of the fact that the frequency of basic emotions can vary widely depending on the society where one lives. Using Gallup's State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report I created maps showing the percentage of respondents that felt anger...

I have been working on a lot of new maps for the Economic & Wealth Maps page of this site. There are now over 50 maps, with more coming soon. The one that took me the longest to make is the GDP per capita at Purchasing Power Standard (PPS) by NUTS2 region. What is interesting here is how...

If you have G25 coordinates, you can use this program to generate your European heatmap. Here is one generated using a Romanian's coordinates: Thanks to Jerome Hamon for inspiring me to write this program after seeing their Taux de Similitude. And just for France, here is another one...

I have made two new maps. The first one represents the total number of civilian firearms in a country divided by the population. It is not the same as the gun ownership rate (second map), as some individuals own more than one gun. In the USA there are over 120 firearms for 100 people, by the...

The French Vinci Motorways Foundation for responsible driving ("Fondation VINCI Autoroutes pour une conduite responsable") published its annual study (for the 12th year) on the most and least stressed drivers in Europe (based on of survey of 11 countries). Belgians came on top as the most...