Esteban is the Executive Co-Director of Our World in Data alongside Max Roser. In tandem, they lead Global Change Data Lab, the non-profit organization responsible for publishing Our World in Data.
Esteban is also an Honorary Researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development, where his research and writing cover topics including economic development, public sector analysis, education, and a wide range of related issues.
Prior to joining the team at Our World in Data, Esteban was a Departmental Lecturer in Economics at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, from 2013 to January 2016.
Esteban completed his doctoral studies at the University of Oxford (DPhil Economics).
Esteban is the Executive Co-Director of Our World in Data alongside Max Roser. In tandem, they lead Global Change Data Lab, the non-profit organization responsible for publishing Our World in Data.
Esteban is also an Honorary Researcher at the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development, where his research and writing cover topics including economic development, public sector analysis, education, and a wide range of related issues.
Prior to joining the team at Our World in Data, Esteban was a Departmental Lecturer in Economics at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, from 2013 to January 2016.
Esteban completed his doctoral studies at the University of Oxford (DPhil Economics).
In order to make progress against poverty in the future, we need to understand poverty around the world today and how it has changed.
Our peer-reviewed article outlines seven ways to publish data better.
People are living longer across the world, but large differences remain. Explore global data on life expectancy and how it has changed over time.
See all our data, visualizations, and writing on economic growth.
How many are homeless? How did homelessness change over time?
How has democracy spread across countries? Are we moving towards a more democratic world? Explore global data and research on democracy.
See all our data, visualizations, and writing on economic inequality.
How has the protection of women’s rights changed over time? How does it differ across countries? Explore global data and research on women’s rights.
How big are the inequalities in pay, jobs, and wealth between men and women? What causes these differences?
Suicide rates can be reduced with greater understanding and support for people at risk.
Trust is essential for effective cooperation. How does trust vary between different societies and locations and what matters for levels of trust?
How common is corruption? What impact does it have? And what can be done to reduce it?
Migration has been an important source of economic development and poverty reduction. Explore data on global migration.
How much time do people across the world spend working? How have working hours changed over time, and what do these changes matter for people’s lives? Explore data and research on working hours.
More than half of the world is online. But the internet is still young.
Being able to read and write opens up the world of education and knowledge. When and why did more people become literate? How can progress continue?
How do people across the world spend their time? How do daily activities differ across countries, and how do these differences matter for people’s lives? Explore data and research on time use.
How is the institution of marriage changing? What percentage of marriages end in divorce? Explore global data on marriages and divorces.
How does women’s labor force participation differ across countries? How has it changed over time? What is behind these differences and changes?
Self-reported life satisfaction differs widely between people and between countries. What explains these differences?
In this topic page, we explore data on loneliness and social connections and review available evidence on the link between social connections and well-being.
The media claims we are experiencing a ‘loneliness epidemic’. What is the evidence for this?
In countries such as Denmark and Switzerland, it is very common for people to live alone; but contrary to what many believe, this does not translate into higher loneliness. Loneliness and aloneness are not the same.
Social connections matter for economic outcomes. Personal relations, even those that we maintain for non-economic reasons, often give us access to information and provide us with social collateral for economic transactions.
Social networks facilitate the diffusion of ideas across individuals and firms. Because of this, they play an important role in productivity growth.
The primary way to measure working hours is with surveys, but the data can have limitations that are important to understand.
Workers in richer countries tend to work fewer hours than those in poorer countries.
Working hours for the average worker have decreased dramatically over the last 150 years.
Social media sites are used by more than two-thirds of Internet users. How has social media grown over time?
What does the research tell us about the causal impact of social media use on our well-being?
There is a cross-country correlation between democracy and health. Is there good evidence to suggest it is causal?
We are one of the few non-profits that Y Combinator has decided to accept.
How did international trade and globalization change over time? What do they look like today? And what are their impacts?
What do governments spend their financial resources on?
An overview of our research on global health.
See all our data, visualizations, and writing on global education.
Taxes are the most important source of government revenue. Who is paying how much and how do tax systems differ?
Why and where do children work? How did child labor change over time?
How large are countries’ militaries? How much do they spend on their armed forces? Explore global data on military personnel and spending.
An overview of how literacy is defined, and how estimates compare to other measures of educational achievement.
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 Economic Complexity Index offers insights into how diversified and sophisticated a country's export profile is. This matters for economic growth and development potential.
As today’s developed countries grew richer, they experienced a process of ‘structural transformation’. Are developing countries following a similar process?
The reduction of poverty has also happened because public spending and redistribution have increased significantly.
How could it be that happiness inequality falls with rising income inequality?
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.
How is life expectancy calculated, what does it mean, and what’s the difference between period and cohort life expectancy?
How is healthcare financed? How much do we spend on it? What are the returns?
Most of the advanced economies of the world have been deindustrializing for decades and have moved into a new ‘post-industrial’ phase of development. This post asks how they got there.
