Latest

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.

Max Roser

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?

Hannah Ritchie

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?

Hannah Ritchie

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.

Max Roser

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.

Bernadeta Dadonaite

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.

Bernadeta Dadonaite and Hannah Ritchie

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.

Bernadeta Dadonaite

August 01

Article

How many people support vaccination across the world?

Here we look at results from the largest global survey to date on attitudes to vaccination across the world.

Hannah Ritchie and Samantha Vanderslott

August 01

Article

Vaccine skepticism and what to do about it

What effect do public attitudes have on vaccine coverage rates, and what can we do about skepticism toward vaccines?

Samantha Vanderslott

July 15

Article

July 07

Article

Data appendix – The fight against global poverty: 200 years of progress and still a very long way to go

An online data appendix explaining the data and methods used to estimate the historical poverty trends presented in Roser and Hasell (2021)

Joe Hasell

July 04

Article

How I use Our World in Data in my work as a high school teacher

Many lecturers and teachers use Our World in Data in their teaching. This spans a range of levels from primary school to post-graduate university education. Matthew Cone, a US high-school teacher, shares how he uses OWID with his pupils.

Matthew Cone (guest author)

July 03

Article

How I use Our World in Data in my work as a medical doctor

Our World in Data gets lots of feedback on how our work is used by policymakers, journalists, researchers and the public. But sometimes we get feedback from people who use us in ways we could never have imagined.

Dr. Jill Gordon (guest author)

June 25

Article

June 24

Article

April 26

Article

Oceans, land, and deep subsurface: how is life distributed across environments?

Where do we find life on earth? Despite being vast, the oceans are home to just 1% of life – but the majority of animals. See how the different lifeforms are split across these global environments.

Hannah Ritchie

April 25

Article

Malaria was common across half the world – since then it has been eliminated in many regions

Malaria has been eliminated from large parts of Europe, the Americas, East Asia, Australia, and the Caribbean.

Max Roser

April 24

Article

Humans make up just 0.01% of Earth's life — what's the rest?

How is life on Earth distributed across the taxonomic kingdoms? Humans make up just 0.01% of life: but we've had much larger impacts on shaping the animal kingdom. Livestock now outweighs wild mammals and birds ten-fold.

Hannah Ritchie

April 23

Article

Child mortality: achieving the global goal for 2030 would be a huge achievement – but we are currently far away

15,000 children die on average every single day. Reducing child mortality is a key target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). What would it take for the world to reach it?

Max Roser

April 18

Article

The global population pyramid: How global demography has changed and what we can expect for the 21st century

Global demographic transition signals a shift from young, growing populations to older, stable ones, reshaping societies and economies.

Max Roser

February 05

Article

How do we know the history of extreme poverty?

To estimate historical global poverty, researchers can analyze economic data and reconstruct national accounts to understand income levels and inequality in the past.

Joe Hasell and Max Roser