We won the Lovie Award!
The Lovie Award is the European internet award awarded by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
October 16
Article
Latest
Our latest articles, data updates, and announcements
October 07
Article
How do CO2 emissions compare when we adjust for trade?
Which countries are net importers and exports of emissions? How much CO2 is ‘offshored’?
October 04
Article
Where in the world do people emit the most CO2?
There are large inequalities in the carbon footprint of people across the world. How do countries across the world compare? Where in the world do people emit the most CO2?
October 03
Article
Who emits the most CO2 today?
Which countries emit the most CO2 today? How do annual emissions vary across the world?
October 01
Article
Who has contributed most to global CO2 emissions?
Our impact on climate change is not just about emissions that occur today. How much we emitted in the past also matters.
September 26
Article
12 key metrics to understand the state of the world
Our World in Data is home to thousands of charts. But some metrics are core to our work: here we present 12 that help us understand the state of the world.
September 24
Article
Where does our plastic accumulate in the ocean and what does that mean for the future?
An estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic enter our oceans each year. But the plastic we find in our surface waters is more than 100-fold lower. This is the 'missing plastic' problem.
September 20
Article
If we can make maternal deaths as rare as they are in the healthiest countries, we can save almost 300,000 mothers each year
Maternal mortality was much more common in the past. Today, it is much lower — but there are still large inequalities across the world.
September 19
Article
Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this
The world needs ideas and innovation to make progress. Creative and talented people are everywhere, but the opportunity to develop is limited to only a small number of well-off children. The world loses out as a result.
September 18
Article
The rise of social media
Social media sites are used by more than two-thirds of Internet users. How has social media grown over time?
September 13
Article
The world now produces more seafood from fish farms than wild catch
Growing demand for seafood has placed increasing pressures on wild fish populations. One innovation has helped to alleviate some of the pressure on wild fish catch: aquaculture, the practice of fish and seafood farming. Aquaculture production has now overtaken wild fish catch.
September 12
Article
How often did parents see their children die?
The death of a young child has always been the most devastating tragedy mothers and fathers could experience. How common was it?
September 09
Article
Are Facebook and other social media platforms bad for our well-being?
What does the research tell us about the causal impact of social media use on our well-being?
September 06
Article
Which countries are most densely populated?
To understand people’s geographical distribution, we need to look at population density. How does this vary across the world?
September 03
Article
Until the late 1960s, the total fertility rate was five — since then, it has halved
In the past fifty years, the total fertility rate has steeply declined as a result of women’s empowerment, declining child mortality, and the rising cost of bringing up children.
September 02
Article
Who smokes more, men or women?
Nearly one-in-four adults in the world smokes tobacco. More than one-third of men, but just over 8% of women do. How do sex differences in smoking vary across the world?
September 02
Article
In which countries do people smoke the most?
One-in-five (20%) of adults in the world smoke tobacco. But where in the world is smoking most common?
August 28
Article
Global Inequality of Opportunity
Today’s global inequality of opportunity means that the good or bad luck of where you were born matters most for your living conditions. We look at how this chance factor is the strongest determinant of your standard of living, whether in life expectancy, income, or education.
August 27
Article
Oral rehydration therapy: a low-tech solution that has saved millions of lives
The world has made significant progress in recent decades in reducing deaths from diarrheal diseases, particularly for children. One of the most successful interventions has been oral rehydration therapy (ORT): a simple salt, water and sugar solution. We look at what ORT is, how it was developed, and how many lives it might have saved.
August 22
Article
Rotavirus vaccine - an effective tool that prevents children dying from diarrhea
Rotavirus is the leading cause of diarrheal deaths in children. There is, however, an effective tool against it: the rotavirus vaccine.
August 16
Article
More than half a million children die from diarrhea each year. How do we prevent this?
Despite being treatable and preventable, 1.6 million people died from diarrheal diseases in 2017; one-third were children under five years old. This makes it one of the largest killers of children. Here we look at where and why children are dying from diarrheal diseases, and what we can do to stop this.