How are mental illnesses defined?
Mental illnesses are a range of conditions that significantly affect people’s lives. What are their symptoms?
Latest:Our latest articles, updates and announcements
We published a new topic page on Influenza
Explore global data on influenza cases, deaths, and vaccinations.How is food insecurity measured?
Billions of people suffer from food insecurity. What does it mean to be food insecure?We published a major overhaul of our work on Technological Change
Explore our updated charts, data, and writing on Technological Change across the world.Learning curves: What does it mean for a technology to follow Wright’s Law?
Technologies that follow Wright’s Law get cheaper at a consistent rate, as the cumulative production of that technology increases.We published a redesign of our work on the Internet
Explore our updated design, charts, and writing on global data on the Internet.Mortality in the past: every second child died
The chances that a newborn survives childhood have increased from 50% to 96% globally. This article asks how we know about the mortality of children in the past and what we can learn from it for our future.How does age standardization make health metrics comparable?
Age standardization is a statistical method used to compare disease rates, or other health indicators, between populations while accounting for differences in their age structure.Suicide rates vary around the world
Suicide rates can be reduced with greater understanding and support for people at risk.Artificial intelligence has advanced despite having few resources dedicated to its development – now investments have increased substantially
The available resources have increased substantially. We should expect that the field continues to advance rapidly.What is Moore's Law?
Exponential growth is at the heart of the rapid increase of computing capabilities.Two centuries of rapid global population growth will come to an end
Global population has increased rapidly over the past century. This period of rapid growth is temporary: the world is entering a new equilibrium and rapid population growth is coming to an end.What is the ozone layer, and why is it important?
Over the last 50 years, holes in the ozone layer have opened up. Why does that matter for life on Earth?We published a redesign of our work on the Ozone Layer
We published a redesign of our work on the ozone layer. Explore all of our writing and charts in one place.Our World in Data will rely on data from the WHO to track confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths
Johns Hopkins University will stop publishing data on confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our team will replace our entire time series with WHO's data on 8 March 2023.How we choose which topics to work on, and which metrics to provide
On Our World in Data, we present thousands of metrics on hundreds of topics. How do we choose them?We just redesigned our work on Waste Management
Explore data visualizations on waste management.We published a redesign of our work on the Environmental Impacts of Food
We published a major redesign of our work on the Environmental Impacts of Food. Explore all of our data and research in one place.Technology over the long run: zoom out to see how dramatically the world can change within a lifetime
It is easy to underestimate the magnitude of this change. Understanding this can help us see how different the world could be in the future.What does it mean for a species to be at risk of extinction?
We need to focus on the most threatened species to protect them from extinction. But what does it mean for a species to be at risk, and how is it measured?We published a redesign of our work on Light at Night
On this page, you can find data, visualizations, and writing about changes in efficiency, price, and access to lighting.