According to the IMF's latest data, published in 2025, the world's total debt, public and private combined, stands at about $251 trillion, roughly 235% of global GDP. Public debt alone is close to 93% of world GDP. It isn't money owed to another planet: every debt is someone else's asset, whether a household, company, bank or government.
That's the estimate from a WHO-led study published in The Lancet in 2024, covering the half-century since the Expanded Programme on Immunization was launched in 1974. It works out to about six lives saved every minute, mostly infants. The measles vaccine alone accounts for around 60% of those lives.
According to the World Gold Council, about 216,000 tonnes of gold have been mined in all of human history. Because gold is so dense (19.3 tonnes per cubic metre), it would fit in a cube about 22 metres on each side, roughly the height of a seven-storey building. Strikingly, about two-thirds of it has been mined since 1950.