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Our World in Data

@ourworldindata.org
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Our World in Data is a free, nonprofit website with a mission to increase understanding of the world’s largest problems and drive informed action to solve them. Based out of Oxford University (@ox.ac.uk), founded by @maxroser.bsky.social.

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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 7h
How many people do Europe’s cancer screening programs reach? Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, publishes yearly figures on cancer screening for 36 European countries, going back to 2000.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 29/09/2026
The United States is the world’s largest oil producer. When people think about global oil, their minds often go toward countries in the Middle East. But it’s the United States that is the world’s largest oil producer. The chart shows oil production by country since 1990.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 28/09/2026
Today, we're publishing an updated version of our topic page on forests and deforestation. Humans have been cutting down forests for millennia. The world has lost one-third of its forests since the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. Half of this loss occurred in the last century alone.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 26/09/2026
Foreign aid contributions fell in 2025 amongst almost all of the top 10 donors. In 2025, the amount of foreign aid given by the world’s richest countries fell by almost a quarter. That amounted to a reduction of roughly US$50 billion.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 25/09/2026
Shortly after the end of the last great ice age — 10,000 years ago — 57% of the world’s habitable land was covered by forest. That’s 6 billion hectares. Today, only 4 billion hectares are left. The world has lost one-third of its forests, an area twice the size of the United States.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 24/09/2026
Electric car sales are growing rapidly in Turkey. If your job was to sell cars in Turkey in 2022, selling an electric one would be an unusual day at work. Just one new car out of every 100 sales was electric. By 2025, this had become a fairly normal day.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 23/09/2026
How is the world doing on the development goals it set for 2030?
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 22/09/2026
After a decade of growth, Indonesia has become the world's largest producer of processed nickel. We are all surrounded by nickel.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 21/09/2026
📝 New article on Our World in Data: How high is current immigration to the United States, in historical perspective? Ask Americans about the top concerns for the United States, and immigration is rarely far from the top of the list.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 19/09/2026
Beef production has been the largest driver of deforestation this century. Over the last two decades, around 128 million hectares of forest have been cleared to make way for agriculture and forest plantations. That’s an area five times the size of the United Kingdom.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 18/09/2026
Since the rise of humans, wild land mammal biomass has declined by 85%. Around 100,000 years ago, all of the wild land mammals on Earth summed up to around 20 million tonnes of carbon. By around 10,000 years ago, there had been a huge decline, likely in the range of 25% to 50%.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 17/09/2026
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the last Caribbean island with endemic malaria. Malaria was once endemic across much of the Caribbean. This map shows how much progress has been made: the islands in green are all malaria-free.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 16/09/2026
How fast is the world building up solar power? The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is an intergovernmental organization with 172 countries and the European Union.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 15/09/2026
Around one-fifth of adults in the world use tobacco. But large gaps often exist in smoking rates between genders. Globally, more than one-third of men use tobacco, while less than one in ten women do.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 14/09/2026
📝 New article on Our World in Data: Is organic farming better for the environment than conventional farming? One of the most common questions we’re asked about food systems is whether organic farming is better for the environment than conventional methods.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 12/09/2026
Around 5% of electricity in the United States is used for data centers — far more than the global average. Around 1.5% of the world’s electricity was used for data centers in 2025. People are often surprised by how low this number is.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 11/09/2026
Stunting is one of the leading measures used to assess childhood malnutrition. It indicates that a child has failed to reach their growth potential as a result of disease, poor health, and malnutrition. A child is defined as “stunted” if they are too short for their age.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 10/09/2026
China only just missed the income cutoff to become a high-income country this year. In July every year, the World Bank sorts countries into income groups based on their per capita gross national income (GNI) in the previous year.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 09/09/2026
The World Bank’s Worldwide Bureaucracy Indicators (WWBI) is a key dataset that helps us understand employment and wages in the public sector: how many people work there; their age, gender, and education; how their pay compares with the private sector; and more.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 08/09/2026
In these nine African countries, average incomes have more than doubled since 1990. Economic growth is most important for the world's poorest people, and most of the world’s poorest live on the African continent. Are Africa’s economies growing? The picture is mixed.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 07/09/2026
📝 New article on Our World in Data: A never-ending childhood of malaria. Read accounts from those who have had a severe case of malaria, and many will describe it as one of the worst experiences of their life.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 05/09/2026
Five countries had more women than men in parliament in 2025. Women’s representation in national politics has increased dramatically in the last century. But men still hold more parliamentary seats in almost every country. There are five exceptions: Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Rwanda.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 03/09/2026
More Indians live in the Gulf states than in the US, UK, and Canada combined. In 2024, around 18.5 million people born in India lived abroad. For the world’s most populous country, that’s not a lot: just over 1% of the population.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 03/09/2026
Hannah Ritchie's second book, "Clearing the Air", is out in paperback in the United Kingdom. After publishing "Not the End of the World" in 2024, Our World in Data’s Deputy Editor, @hannahritchie.bsky.social, published her second book last year.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 02/09/2026
Moore’s Law is the observation that the number of transistors on computer chips doubles approximately every two years. It is not a law of nature, but an observation of a long-term trend in how technology is changing. Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel, first described it in 1965.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 01/09/2026
Money spent on building data centers in the US has grown 5-fold since late 2022. The United States is home to thousands of data centers.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 31/08/2026
📊 New data: World Development Indicators, July 2026 release The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the World Bank’s compilation of statistics on global development.
A thumbnail image showing the landing page for the World Bank's World Development Indicators dataset
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 31/08/2026
📝 New article on Our World in Data: Beef production in Brazil has been the largest driver of global deforestation in recent decades. The largest driver of deforestation globally is the expansion of agricultural land.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 29/08/2026
How often are people infected with malaria? (This Data Insight was written by @hannahritchie.bsky.social.) Malaria is an infectious disease that kills over 600,000 people a year. Most of them, children.
Horizontal arrow chart of new malaria cases per 100 people in selected high-burden countries where it compares values in 2000 and 2023 to show declines over time. The chart shows cases falling from about 41 to 49 in 2000 down to roughly 28 to 36 in 2023, with most worst-affected countries still around 30 cases per 100 people. Source: IHME, Global Burden of Disease (2025). License: CC BY.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 27/08/2026
Drowning is a common cause of death among children — the world has made progress, but more can be done. (This Data Insight was written by @eortizospina.bsky.social.) More than 100,000 children under the age of 15 died from drowning in 2023. I found this statistic staggering when I first saw it.
Line chart of estimated global drowning death rates per 100,000 children for ages under 5 and ages 5 to 14 from 1980 to 2023, where both lines decline steadily and the under-5 rate remains consistently higher than the 5 to 14 rate. Source: IHME, Global Burden of Disease (2025). License: CC BY. Note: estimates include unintentional drownings (ponds, wells, bathtubs) and exclude drownings in floods, boat accidents, suicides, and homicides.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 25/08/2026
Meat preferences vary a lot across different countries. America’s most popular type of meat is chicken. In Argentina, it’s beef. And in Japan, it’s seafood. There are large differences in the popularity of meat types across the world.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 24/08/2026
How does the World Bank classify countries by income? Researchers and policymakers often need to compare countries by income, which means having clear criteria for who counts as "rich" or "poor".
Choropleth map of World Bank income groups in 2025 where countries are classified as low, lower-middle, upper-middle, or high income and the map shows high-income countries clustered in North America, Europe, Australia and parts of East Asia, while many low-income countries are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia. Data source: World Bank (2026). License: CC BY.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 24/08/2026
📝 New article on Our World in Data: The rise of electoral democracy. Most people around the world think democracy is a good way to run a country, but they are often dissatisfied with how it is working in practice and are concerned about where it is heading.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 22/08/2026
Thailand’s population may have already peaked. Many countries are in a fairly unique demographic position in history: their populations are shrinking not due to a temporary shock but to sustained structural decline.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 21/08/2026
The latest OWID Brief newsletter is out on Substack! It delivers all our recent work plus curated highlights from across Our World in Data, right to your inbox twice a month. This edition: Peak population, child labor, drivers of deforestation, air conditioning, and more.
Line chart of annual death rates from road injuries per 100,000 people where trends for the United States and Germany are compared from 1980 to 2023, showing a steady long-term decline for Germany to low single digits by 2023 and a decline then plateau with a modest rise for the United States. Data source: IHME, Global Burden of Disease (2025). License: CC BY.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 20/08/2026
Four developed countries met the UN’s target for foreign aid in 2025. In the 1970s, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution asking developed countries to contribute at least 0.7% of their national income to foreign aid.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 19/08/2026
What is the best way to reduce our diet’s carbon footprint? Many argue that comparisons based on global averages overlook the large variation in the footprints of foods across the world.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 18/08/2026
Guyana’s oil-driven economy has seen the world’s fastest growth in GDP per capita in recent years. Guyana, a small country in South America, has seen the fastest growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the world over the past decade.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 17/08/2026
📝 New article — Which countries have already passed peak population, and when will the rest do so? Many countries around the world are in a unique position: rather than having a constant or growing population, their populations are starting to shrink.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 17/08/2026
The number of whales killed globally peaked in the 1960s— Global whale populations fell dramatically over the 20th century due to human hunting. Some whale species were pushed to the brink of extinction.
Bar chart of the number of whales killed globally per decade where the totals rise from 1900 to a peak in the 1950 to 1960 decades, then fall steeply to near zero by the 1990 to 2020 decades. Data source: Rocha et al. (2014); International Whaling Commission (2026). License: CC BY.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 15/08/2026
Rich countries spend, on average, the equivalent of $7,300 per person on healthcare each year. This includes public and private expenditures. In low-income countries, the equivalent is only around $125 per person.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 13/08/2026
Air conditioning is almost universal in the US and Japan — but not elsewhere. Many countries have been facing intense heat this summer, and with predictions of a strong El Niño on the way, next summer could be even hotter.
Horizontal bar chart of the share of households with air conditioning in 2025 where it compares adoption across countries and regions to highlight large differences. It shows very high prevalence in Japan (93%) and the United States (90%), high in China (79%), and much lower shares in Southeast Asia (29%), Europe (23%), and India (16%). Source: International Energy Agency (2026). License: CC BY.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 12/08/2026
How much income would it take from the richest 10% of people in the world to match that of the poorest 10%? Our colleague Pablo Arriagada calculated the answer using data from the World Bank's Poverty and Inequality Platform.
Pie chart of income shares where a 1.9% slice of post-tax income from the richest 10% equals the entire annual income of the poorest 10%. Source: World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform (2025). License: CC BY.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 11/08/2026
Road deaths in the United States have fallen much more slowly than in other rich countries. Most high-income countries have reduced road deaths substantially over the past decades.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 10/08/2026
📝 New article — 138 million children are in child labor. What does this actually mean? Last year, the United Nations published a report estimating that 138 million children around the world are in child labor. This situation is awful, and it deserves attention.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 10/08/2026
30% of the world’s CO₂ emissions have a carbon price. What we pay for something in a shop often doesn’t reflect its true cost. Producing goods causes damage through carbon emissions that drive climate change, but the receipts for that damage rarely show up in the price.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 06/08/2026
Morocco now gets almost a quarter of its electricity from renewables, but still relies heavily on coal. Renewables supplied around 6% of Morocco’s electricity in 2000; by 2025, that share was four times as high.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 06/08/2026
It’s easy to underestimate how much the world can change within a lifetime. Considering how dramatically the world has changed can help us see how different it could be in a few years or decades. Read more in the article by @maxroser.bsky.social: ourworldindata.org/technology-l...
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 05/08/2026
How close is the world to eradicating guinea worm disease? Guinea worm disease, also known as “dracunculiasis”, is a painful and debilitating parasitic infection. The guinea worm’s larvae can invade a person’s stomach and intestines when they drink contaminated water, such as from a stagnant pond.
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Our World in Data @ourworldindata.org · 04/08/2026
Cereal yields have increased in all regions, but Africa lags behind. Improved crop yields have allowed the world to feed billions more people while sparing forests and other land from agriculture. Global yields of cereal crops have tripled since 1961.
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