Most of us are wrong about how the world has changed (especially those who are pessimistic about the future)
The majority of people believe that the share of people in extreme poverty is rising. The opposite is true.
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Our World in Data for teaching – what we are learning from your feedback
The past and future of global change – Max's slides for his talk at the UN
How rapidly the world is changing, and what further changes are needed to reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.How is literacy measured?
An overview of how literacy is defined, and how estimates compare to other measures of educational achievement.Long-run trends in military spending and personnel: four key facts from new data
Do most countries devote resources to maintain armies even when they are not immersed in a critical conflict? How are military capabilities changing in the 21st century?The missing economic measure: wealth
Gross domestic product (GDP) is increasingly seen as an incomplete measure of economic activity. Another measure gaining traction as a supplement to GDP is national wealth.Shrink emissions, not the economy
Decoupling emissions from the economy is possible.How and why should we study ‘economic complexity’?
The Economic Complexity Index offers insights into how diversified and sophisticated a country's export profile is. This matters for economic growth and development potential.Learning for our Millennium? The changing face of education access, quality and uptake in Ethiopia
Understanding education challenges and progress in Ethiopia through the Young Lives Study.Definitions of world regions
Which countries make up the world regions commonly used in our charts?A sense of units and scale for electrical energy production and consumption
How does the electricity output of different sources compare?How new vaccines can help with our antibiotic dependence
New vaccination technology could reduce our reliance on antibiotics.How many people does synthetic fertilizer feed?
Are emerging economies deindustrializing too quickly?
As today’s developed countries grew richer, they experienced a process of ‘structural transformation’. Are developing countries following a similar process?Is organic really better for the environment than conventional agriculture?
Depending on the measure, organic farming can sometimes have higher environmental impacts than conventional farming.How much of the world’s land would we need in order to feed the global population with the average diet of a given country?
Historical poverty reductions: more than a story about 'free-market capitalism'
The reduction of poverty has also happened because public spending and redistribution have increased significantly.Income inequality and happiness inequality: a tale of two trends
How could it be that happiness inequality falls with rising income inequality?Collective pessimism and our inability to guess the happiness of others
We tend to underestimate the average happiness of people around us. One possible explanation is that we are positive about ourselves, but negative about those we don't know."Life Expectancy" – What does this actually mean?
How is life expectancy calculated, what does it mean, and what’s the difference between period and cohort life expectancy?Yields vs. land use: how the Green Revolution enabled us to feed a growing population
Crop yields across the world have increased dramatically over the last half-century. But has this kept up with a growing population?