Max is the founder of Our World in Data and began working on this free online publication in 2011. Today, he serves as the publication’s editor and leads the team as its co-director.
He is the Professor of Practice in Global Data Analytics at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, the Programme Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development, and the Executive Co-Director of Global Change Data Lab, the non-profit organization that publishes Our World in Data.
Max is the founder of Our World in Data and began working on this free online publication in 2011. Today, he serves as the publication’s editor and leads the team as its co-director.
He is the Professor of Practice in Global Data Analytics at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, the Programme Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development, and the Executive Co-Director of Global Change Data Lab, the non-profit organization that publishes Our World in Data.
Topics covered by Max on Our World in Data
It is wrong to think these three statements contradict each other. We need to see that they are all true to see that a better world is possible.
The world is huge; to get a clear idea of what our world is like, we have to rely on carefully collected, well documented statistics.
Very few think the world is making progress. In this article, we look at the history of global living conditions and show that the world has made immense progress in important aspects.
December 02, 2024
Sometimes, the most important news is when something isn’t happening.
September 02, 2024
There are many ways to improve the world, but their cost-effectiveness varies immensely. You can achieve a lot more if you rely on the best data on where to donate.
July 29, 2024
Every reserve is a resource, but not every resource is a reserve.
May 01, 2024
Our peer-reviewed article outlines seven ways to publish data better.
April 29, 2024
Thanks to improvements in global health, more than 100 million children have been saved since 1990.
March 06, 2024
Discover our bite-sized format focused on one chart.
March 04, 2024
February 28, 2024
Here’s what’s changed, what hasn’t, and some of the thinking behind the new design.
February 19, 2024
A generation ago, poliomyelitis paralyzed hundreds of thousands of children every year. Many countries have now eliminated the disease, and our generation has the chance to eradicate it entirely.
October 02, 2023
September 27, 2023
There are many ways to measure countries’ contributions to climate change. What do they tell us?
September 26, 2023
Hundreds of millions of animals get killed for meat every day.
July 11, 2023
Adjusting incomes for inflation is crucial if we want to learn how standards of living are changing. How is this adjustment done?
June 02, 2023
50 years ago the average woman in world had five children. This figure has more than halved. Yet the global population is still rising – why?
June 01, 2023
Death rates fall first, then fertility rates, leading to a slowdown in population growth.
June 01, 2023
The world population has increased rapidly in recent centuries. But this is slowing.
April 18, 2023
Technologies that follow Wright’s Law get cheaper at a consistent rate, as the cumulative production of that technology increases.
April 11, 2023
The chances that a newborn survives childhood have increased from 50% to 96% globally. How do we know about the mortality of children in the past? And what can we learn from it for our future?
March 29, 2023
March 28, 2023
Exponential growth is at the heart of the rapid increase of computing capabilities.
March 18, 2023
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.
February 22, 2023
It is 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 the world could be in a few years or decades.
February 07, 2023
Many AI experts believe there is a real chance that human-level artificial intelligence will be developed within the next decades, and some believe that it will exist much sooner.
December 15, 2022
How AI gets built is currently decided by a small group of technologists. As this technology is transforming our lives, it should be in all of our interest to become informed and engaged.
December 06, 2022
Despite their brief history, computers and AI have fundamentally changed what we see, what we know, and what we do. Little is as important for the world’s future and our own lives as how this history continues.
June 01, 2022
Research suggests that many children – especially in the world’s poorest countries – learn only very little in school. What can we do to improve this?
April 20, 2022
Why has humanity destroyed such vast forests? And how can we bring this to an end?
March 22, 2022
We do not have to live in a world where 1,320 children die from a preventable disease every day.
March 18, 2022
For energy security and progress on climate change we need open data on energy. The funders of the IEA can make this happen.
March 15, 2022
If we manage to avoid a large catastrophe, we are living at the early beginnings of human history.
March 03, 2022
The consequences of nuclear war would be devastating. Much more should – and can – be done to reduce the risk that humanity will ever fight such a war.
January 11, 2022
The decline of global poverty is one of the most important achievements in history, but the end of poverty is still very far away.
January 06, 2022
We are just one step away from unlocking the world's energy data for everyone. This would be a massive achievement for progress on energy and climate.
December 24, 2021
December 09, 2021
How much does it matter to be born into a productive, industrialized economy?
December 07, 2021
To make progress towards a healthier world we need to have a good understanding of what health problems we face today.
December 01, 2021
3-in-10 people in the world do not have access to clean cooking fuels. What do they use instead?
November 25, 2021
This data review presents published estimates of the global death toll from air pollution and provides the context that makes them understandable.
November 23, 2021
To understand how the pandemic is evolving, it’s crucial to know how death rates from COVID-19 are affected by vaccination status.
November 22, 2021
The world has made immense progress against extreme poverty, but it is still the reality for almost one in ten people worldwide.
November 08, 2021
What are the key datasets on global energy that the world needs, but are not publicly available?
November 03, 2021
Repealing subsidies is not easy, but it is possible – and the world is slowly making progress in this direction
November 02, 2021
The world has made a lot of progress in recent generations, but millions of children are still not in school.
July 21, 2021
We live in a world in which 10 children die every minute.
July 14, 2021
Every year, around 8 million people die prematurely as a result of smoking. But there are things we can do to prevent this.
July 05, 2021
About 3 billion people in the world do not have access to modern energy sources for cooking. Millions die from indoor air pollution every year.
July 01, 2021
How many people lack access to basic handwashing facilities?
June 07, 2021
Why have we made it our mission to publish “research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems”?
June 01, 2021
We are paying a price for fossil fuels, but that price is not paid by those that burn the fossil fuels – we need to change that.
May 13, 2021
The goods and services that we all need are not just there; they need to be produced. Growth means that their quality and quantity increase.
March 15, 2021
I study the data on today's global inequality to calculate the minimum aggregate growth that is required to reduce global poverty substantially.
March 05, 2021
What does global poverty look like if we rely on the notions of poverty in countries like Denmark, the US, or Germany? And how should this perspective inform our aspirations for the future of global poverty?
February 22, 2021
The majority of the world today is poor: 85% of the world live on less than $30 per day. If we are to alleviate global poverty, we need economic growth.
January 08, 2021
We are building a global dataset on COVID-19 Vaccinations. Explore the latest data for all countries.
December 17, 2020
Renewable energy sources are growing quickly and will play a vital role in tackling climate change.
December 16, 2020
December 10, 2020
The world faces two energy problems: most of our energy still produces greenhouse gas emissions, and hundreds of millions lack access to energy.
December 01, 2020
In most places, power from new renewables is now cheaper than new fossil fuels.
November 26, 2020
For much of human history, our ancestors were trapped in an economy in which incomes were determined by the size of the population. The Industrial Revolution ended this Malthusian economy and made it possible for a country to leave abject poverty behind.
November 01, 2020
October 29, 2020
Americans have a lower life expectancy than people in other rich countries despite paying much more for healthcare. What factors may explain this?
September 23, 2020
It’s often argued that life expectancy across the world has only increased because child mortality has fallen. But this is untrue. The data shows that life expectancy has increased at all ages.
August 21, 2020
July 20, 2020
For most of our history, we were losing terribly against the microbes. Only recently did we turn the battle in our favor. Vaccines were a major breakthrough.
July 10, 2020
Explore data on how energy production and use varies across the world.
June 23, 2020
Coal, oil, gas or flaring: where do our CO₂ emissions come from? How are emissions from these fuels changing over time?
June 10, 2020
Which countries emit the most greenhouse gases each year? How do they compare per person?
June 10, 2020
How much does electricity, transport and land use contribute to different greenhouse gas emissions?
June 10, 2020
How much CO₂ does the world emit? Which countries emit the most?
June 03, 2020
Not all countries report their data in a helpful way. To help official providers of testing data, we set out some simple recommendations based the best reporting practices across the countries included in our testing dataset.
May 22, 2020
May 07, 2020
May 05, 2020
May 02, 2020
May 01, 2020
March 23, 2020
We worked with the Youtube channel, Kurzgesagt, to make a video on the COVID-19 pandemic and what to do about it.
March 04, 2020
March 01, 2020
Predictions of a maximum limit of life expectancy have been broken again and again.
November 11, 2019
More than three-quarters of global agricultural land is used for livestock, despite meat and dairy making up a much smaller share of the world's protein and calories.
October 16, 2019
September 26, 2019
Clean and safe water is essential for good health. How did access change over time? Where do people lack access?
September 25, 2019
Safe sanitation is essential to reduce deaths from infectious diseases, prevent malnutrition, and provide dignity.
September 20, 2019
Access to electricity and clean cooking fuels are vital for a good standard of living and good health.
September 19, 2019
The world needs ideas and innovation to make progress. Creative and talented people are everywhere, but the opportunity to develop is limited to only a small number of well-off children. The world loses out as a result.
September 12, 2019
The death of a young child has always been the most devastating tragedy mothers and fathers could experience. How common was it?
September 03, 2019
In the past the average woman had five children. In the past fifty years, this number has halved as a result of women empowerment, declining child mortality and the rising cost of bringing up children.
August 28, 2019
Living conditions are vastly unequal in different places in our world today. Today’s global inequality of opportunity means that what matters most for your living conditions is the good or bad luck of your place of birth. We look at how where you’re born is the strongest determinant of your standard of living, whether in life expectancy, income, or education.
July 01, 2019
Attacks that kill more people, target the government, have Muslim perpetrators, and perpetrators that get caught receive more attention, especially in major media sources.
June 25, 2019
South Koreans are on average 32-times richer than in 1950; Romanians 20-times; Chinese 16-times. Other countries stagnated and remained poor. We look at how incomes have changed around the world and why it matters.
April 25, 2019
April 23, 2019
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?
April 18, 2019
February 05, 2019
January 25, 2019
October 08, 2018
Life expectancy has doubled over the last two centuries around the world. How has this happened?
October 03, 2018
September 20, 2018
September 12, 2018
By showing us where the people in the world are, cartograms help us understand global living conditions better.
July 27, 2018
The majority of people believe that the share of people in extreme poverty is rising. The opposite is true.
July 10, 2018
June 28, 2018
Historical cases of smallpox were underreported to authorities. What was the extent of underreporting, and how do researchers adjust for this?
February 27, 2018
Why are so many people pessimistic about the future? And what can this tell us about tackling the world’s largest problems?
November 22, 2017
June 16, 2017
How is healthcare financed? How much do we spend on it? What are the returns?
April 17, 2017
The inequality in people’s living conditions across the world is extremely large. How did the world become so unequal, and what can we expect for the future?
April 08, 2017
Some have a romantic view of what life on extremely little is like. But we see from survey data that this is romantic view is not shared by those living in poverty themselves.
June 22, 2016
How is education financed? How much do we spend on it? What are the returns?
June 13, 2016
May 04, 2016
May 01, 2015
March 19, 2015
December 02, 2013
Historical and contemporary sources can provide us with a picture of inequality in the UK over the last 700 years.
December 02, 2013
Research by Milanovic, Lindert, and Williamson gives us some insight into how incomes were distributed in the distant past.
August 02, 2013
What quantitative data is there about violent deaths in non-state societies?
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