Our World in Data is a non-profit platform founded by economist Max Roser that aggregates, analyzes, and visualizes empirical data on global trends in development, health, environment, and technology to demonstrate measurable human progress and support evidence-based policymaking.[1] It operates as a collaborative project between researchers at the University of Oxford's Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development and the Global Change Data Lab, a UK-registered charity, drawing on datasets from thousands of academic and institutional sources worldwide.[1][2]The organization's core approach emphasizes long-term historical perspectives through interactive charts and articles, revealing declines in extreme poverty from over 90% of the global population in 1820 to under 10% today, alongside rises in life expectancy from around 30 years to over 70 years in the same period.[3][4] These visualizations counter short-term media narratives by prioritizing causal factors like technological innovation and institutional reforms in explaining improvements in literacy, vaccination coverage, and child mortality rates.[5] OWID gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic for compiling official government data on infections, vaccinations, and excess mortality into accessible tools used by millions, underscoring its role in rapid empirical synthesis amid crises.[6]While praised for open-access dissemination under permissive licenses and reliance on peer-reviewed sources, OWID has faced critique from some environmental advocates for its optimism regarding decoupling economic growth from resource use, potentially overlooking biophysical constraints despite data showing absolute declines in some pollution metrics in high-income countries.[7] Nonetheless, its methodology favors verifiable metrics over anecdotal evidence, maintaining independence through diverse grant funding without corporate or governmental editorial control.[7]
Origins and Development
Founding by Max Roser
Max Roser initiated Our World in Data in 2011 while employed in Brazil, originally conceiving it as a book compiling data and research on global development challenges.[8] As an economist with a focus on social and economic history, Roser drew from his academic training at the University of Innsbruck and key influences like Amartya Sen's analyses of human development to highlight empirical evidence of long-term improvements in living conditions, countering prevalent narratives of global stagnation or regression.[8] His motivation centered on disseminating accessible, evidence-based insights into human progress, addressing the gap where positive trends in areas such as poverty reduction and health advancements were undercommunicated relative to negative events.[8]By 2012, Roser had relocated to the University of Oxford, collaborating with economist Sir Tony Atkinson on inequality research, which prompted a shift from book format to an online blog and website to enable interactive data visualization and broader reach.[8] Self-taught in web technologies amid limited resources, Roser developed a password-protected prototype version by summer 2013, iterating on the project's name—"Our World in Data"—to encapsulate its empirical, world-focused approach after evaluating alternatives.[8]The publication launched publicly in May 2014 as a free online resource, initially hosted under the Oxford Martin School's Institute for New Economic Thinking program on global development, where Roser served as a researcher.[8][9] Early momentum included a December 2014 grant of £75,883 from the Nuffield Foundation, which supported expansion while maintaining open access to data-driven articles and charts on topics like population growth, health, and economic inequality.[8] This foundational phase established the project's commitment to rigorous, sourced data aggregation and transparent visualization, prioritizing long-run perspectives over short-term fluctuations.[8]
Early Projects and Oxford Affiliation
Our World in Data began as a personal initiative by Max Roser in 2011, while he worked as a researcher in Brazil, initially compiling research notes and data intended for a book on long-run economic development and global challenges such as poverty and health improvements.[8] The inaugural project examined the causes of famines, resulting in a novel dataset tracking global famine occurrences over the previous 150 years, which highlighted empirical patterns in food security disruptions linked to conflict, policy failures, and environmental factors rather than inherent scarcity.[8] This effort expanded to aggregating thousands of datasets on metrics like population growth, literacy rates, and mortality declines, with early visualizations emphasizing long-term progress against prevailing pessimistic narratives.[8]Roser shifted the project's format from a book to an online platform following discussions with economist Tony Atkinson in 2012, after relocating to Oxford to collaborate on inequality studies using historical income distribution data.[8] In early 2013, as a postdoctoral researcher in Oxford's Department of Economics, he launched a password-protected beta website in the summer, featuring initial interactive charts on topics including energy access and education attainment; it garnered 202 visitors in its first year, primarily from academic networks.[8] These prototypes laid the groundwork for scalable data presentation, prioritizing verifiable sources like national statistics and historical records over anecdotal evidence.The Oxford affiliation originated with Roser's 2012 move and 2013 hiring, fostering ties to the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) at Oxford, which supported the project's empirical focus on economic history.[10] By formalizing connections to university resources, including access to economic datasets, this positioned Our World in Data within an academic environment conducive to rigorous verification.[8] Later, the research team integrated with the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development, an interdisciplinary effort analyzing poverty, climate, and health through data-driven causal assessments, enhancing credibility via peer-reviewed methodologies while maintaining independence from institutional biases.[1][11]
Expansion and Key Milestones
In 2014, Our World in Data publicly launched its website in May, attracting an average of 20,000 monthly visitors over the subsequent six months and securing a £75,883 grant from the Nuffield Foundation to support operations from December 2014 to November 2015.[8][12] This period marked initial expansion beyond Max Roser's solo efforts, with the platform shifting focus to interactive visualizations of global development data. By 2015, the team grew to include web developer Zdenek Hynek in May and researchers Lindsay Lee and Mohamed Nagdy in July, alongside raising $26,086 through crowdfunding to fund further development.[8]Team expansion accelerated in 2016 with the addition of Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Jaiden Mispy in February, followed by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in August that enabled hiring and data infrastructure improvements.[8] In 2017, Hannah Ritchie joined in April to lead research efforts, while research assistants and database manager Aibek Aldabergenov were brought on, automating management of over 70,000 data variables across topics like poverty and emissions.[8][12] The platform's audience grew substantially by 2018, becoming the top Google search result for queries on key issues such as CO2 emissions, reflecting enhanced visibility and data accessibility.[8]That year, Our World in Data launched SDG-Tracker.org to monitor progress on the United NationsSustainable Development Goals, coinciding with hires like Joe Hasell and Anstey Brock, and the founding of the Global Change Data Lab as its nonprofit parent organization.[8][12] Acceptance into Y Combinator in 2019 provided $150,000 in seed funding, prompting a temporary relocation to Silicon Valley and additions like Matthieu Bergel and Bernadeta Dadonaite, while monthly visitors reached 1 million, primarily via organic search traffic.[8][12]The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed rapid growth in 2020, with the Coronavirus Data Explorer launching on May 15 to track global cases, testing, and later vaccinations, drawing Edouard Mathieu as Head of Data and spiking audience interest.[6][12] By 2021, the team expanded from 6 to 20 staff members, and the site recorded 89 million unique visitors, underscoring its role as a primary resource for empirical pandemic data.[12] Subsequent milestones included the 2022 Democracy Data Explorer integrating eight major datasets on governance indicators and a partnership with Metaculus for long-term forecasting, followed by an updated SDG Tracker in July 2023 and the introduction of "Data Insights" short analyses in March 2024.[12]
Organizational and Financial Aspects
Leadership and Team Structure
Global Change Data Lab, the UK-registered non-profit charity (No. 1186433) that publishes and maintains Our World in Data, is co-led by executive directors Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina.[9][13] Roser, the founder, serves as editor and directs the overall publication, while holding a professorship at the University of Oxford's Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development, where the research team is affiliated.[9]