Bertha Rohenkohl

How over- and underrepresented are different causes of death in the media?

Another way to visualize this data is to measure how over- or underrepresented each cause is.

To do this, we calculate the ratio between a cause’s share of deaths and its share of news articles.

How Wolbachia bacteria could help us tackle some of the world’s most neglected tropical diseases A common bacterium can dramatically reduce the spread of dengue fever and other tropical diseases.

In a new article, @hannahritchie.bsky.social explains the Wolbachia method and how it promises to finally give humanity an effective tool against several neglected tropical diseases: ourworldindata.org/wolbachia-ne...

A fun chart game that primarily sources its data from Our World in Data!

Chartle - A daily chart game Guess the country in red by analysing today's chart

Launch day 🚀

We’ve just released @chartlecc.bsky.social - a daily chart game!

Your job is to guess which country is represented by the red line in today's chart. You get 5 tries, no other clues!

Play today, come back tomorrow for a different chart with new data and share with your chart friends 📈

📚 The new school year is starting in many places. If you’re a teacher, student, or parent, here are a few ways Our World in Data might be useful to you right now 🧵

Our work is used in classrooms around the world — from top universities to local schools.

The international poverty line has changed, it’s now $3 a day.

Our new article explains what changed in the World Bank's latest update and what the new data tells us about global poverty

⤵️
ourworldindata.org/new-internat...

A chart comparing income inequality before and after taxes and government benefits for five countries: Japan, Canada, Germany, the US, and South Africa. Inequality is measured here with the Gini coefficient, one of the most common ways to measure inequality. It summarizes the distribution of incomes within a country into a single number ranging from 0 to 1, where higher values indicate higher inequality. The chart shows the Gini coefficients before and after taxes and benefits in five countries: Japan, Canada, Germany, the US, and South Africa, using the latest available data point for each. Income inequality is lower after taxes and benefits. But by how much varies across countries. For example, Germany and the US have the same Gini before taxes and benefits, but after that redistribution, income inequality is lower in Germany than it is in the US. The data source is the Luxembourg Income Study (2025) and the chart is Creative Commons BY license, published by Our World in Data.

When discussing data on income inequality, it's important to be clear about what’s being shown.

Two measures are often used: income *before* people have paid taxes and received benefits from the government, and income *after* government redistribution via taxes and benefits. 🧵

Check out these really exciting new features! 🌎

The image presents a line graph illustrating the shift in Greece's electricity generation sources over time, from 1990 to 2024. There are two main lines: one representing coal and another representing solar and wind energy. Initially, the coal line begins around 60% in 1990, gradually declining to 50% in 2014. A sharp drop occurs after that, leading to a low of about 6% in 2024. In contrast, the solar and wind line starts very low, around 2% in 1990, and rises steeply after 2015, almost tripling to approximately 43% by 2024. Key notes are emphasized in the graph: one states that in 2014, about half of Greece's electricity was generated by coal, while another indicates that only 15% came from solar and wind sources at that time.

Greece is turning its back on coal and replacing it with solar and wind.

Today's data insight: ourworldindata.org/data-insight...

Data from @ember-energy.org.

Lots of discussion today about regional investment. You can use our @theifs.bsky.social public spending tool to explore how much the government currently spends in each region of the UK, what it spends it on, and how that has changed over time: ifs.org.uk/calculators/...

The image displays a horizontal bar chart comparing GDP per capita among various countries using two different measurements: international dollars and market dollars. At the top, the United States is shown with a GDP per capita of $74,578 in both measurements (the US is the benchmark country). Below that, Spain follows with a GDP per capita of $32,950 in market dollars and $47,142 in international dollars. Brazil's GDP per capita is indicated as $8,388 in market dollars and $19,018 in international dollars. India's figures are $2,548 in market dollars and $9,160 in international dollars. Burkina Faso is shown with $894 in market dollars and $2,482 in international dollars. Annotations indicate how many times poorer each country is compared to the US in both measurements. The data source is the World Bank, and the notes mention that figures are expressed in constant 2021 prices. The chart was created by Our World in Data and is licensed under CC-BY.

How can we compare people’s incomes across countries?

What are international dollars? International dollars are used to compare incomes and purchasing power across countries and over time. Here, we explain how they’re calculated and why they’re used.

International dollars show up a lot in global statistics. But they’re not an actual currency.

They are a way to adjust for differences in the cost of living, helping us compare incomes and how far money goes in different countries.

Read our new explainer ⤵️
ourworldindata.org/internationa...

Chart shows the effects of Sure Start on academic achievements by age, SEN support by age, probability of hospitalisation by age and criminal behaviour up to age 16.

NEW: Sure Start generated widespread, long-lasting benefits for children in education, health, absences, and SEND.

Every £1 of up-front spending on Sure Start could generate around £2 in total benefits over the long run.

THREAD on our new ‪@nuffieldfoundation.org‬-funded report:

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Measles vaccines save millions of lives each year Measles once killed millions every year. Vaccines changed this, preventing disease, long-term immune damage, and deadly outbreaks.

Measles once killed millions every year. Vaccines changed this, preventing disease, long-term immune damage and deadly outbreaks.

In this article @scientificdiscovery.dev & @spoonerf.bsky.social explain how vaccines were developed and their impact on saving lives. ourworldindata.org/measles-vacc...

For the first time ever, China's CO₂ emissions are falling due to clean energy growth, rather than reduced power demand.

Almost half (48%) of new cars sold in China in 2024 were electric.

From the IEA's latest Global EV Outlook.

You can explore more data here:
ourworldindata.org/electric-car...

A stacked bar chart showing the share of total government spending by category for a selection of OECD countries. The data is from 2022, the latest year available. The countries are Finland, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Greece, the UK, Chile, Australia, South Korea, and the US. The categories are Social protection, Health, Education, Economic affairs, Public services, Other (which includes public safety, environment, housing, and recreation/culture), and Defense. For some categories, such as public services, the share spent is fairly similar across countries: it ranges from a low of 9% in Japan to a high of 15% in the US and Finland. In other categories, such as social protection, the difference across countries is much larger: from a low of 21% in the US to a high of 44% in Finland.

What do governments spend money on?

A chart illustrates the improvement of AI systems in performing longer software tasks over time. The horizontal axis spans from 2019 to mid 2025, marking the development of various AI models, such as GPT-2, GPT-3, GPT-3.5, and several iterations of GPT-4. The vertical axis indicates the length of time in minutes that tasks take human professionals. Key points highlighted include: - "GPT 3.5 (which came out in Spring 2022) could only do tasks that take humans a few seconds, such as selecting the right file" - "OpenAI's o3(which came out in April 2025) can do tasks on its own that take humans 20 minutes," such as finding and fixing small bugs in code - The observed trend shows a rapid progression in AI capability Accompanying notes indicate that the data is based on 170 tasks across fields like software engineering and machine learning. The source for this data is the Model Evaluation & Threat Research (METR) from 2025, presented under a Creative Commons attribution license.

The length of software tasks AI systems can do on their own has been increasing quickly

Unemployment rate Share of the labor force without work but available for and seeking employment.

Like this chart: ourworldindata.org/grapher/unem...

Check out the updated econ data from the IMF on @ourworldindata.org ⬇️

Bar chart comparing estimated death tolls for a range of flu pandemics.

How many people died in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918–1920?

How a data journalist at The Economist, Sondre Solstad, uses Our World in Data A story of how our work helps journalists who use data.

Did you know that many journalists around the world rely on our work for their stories?

Giving journalists and others what they need to do good work is a key part of our impact.

In a new article, we share how a data journalist at The Economist, @sondreus.bsky.social, uses Our World in Data:

Government Spending What do governments spend their financial resources on?

We've updated our data on government spending 📊

You can explore how much countries spend relative to the size of their economies, how this has changed over time, and how spending is split across governments' priorities like health, education, and more:

➡️ ourworldindata.org/government-s...

A bar chart titled "Global deaths from famines, 1870-2023" that displays total deaths per decade from famines estimated to have killed 100,000 people or more. Notable points include the "Great Leap Forward" in China, marked to show an estimated 36 million deaths from 1958 to 1962, and famines during World War II claiming approximately 25 million lives across the USSR, Europe, and Asia. The late 19th and early 20th centuries show significant famines occurring in Russia, India, China, and other regions. The text notes that the largest famines from the 1970s and 80s took place in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Ethiopia. The chart indicates that since 1990, major famines have occurred in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, North Korea, Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan. The chart is from Our World in Data. The data source is the World Peace Foundation's Historic Famines Dataset.

How many people died in large famines over the past 150 years?

📊 We've updated the data in many of our charts on famine, including a big update from the World Peace Foundation (@worldpeacefdtn.bsky.social).

This update was led on our team by @bastianherre.bsky.social and Veronika Samborska.

What does global poverty look like if we rely on the notions of poverty in rich countries like Denmark, the US, or Germany?

And how should this perspective inform our aspirations for the future of global poverty?

A bar chart illustrating the number of people living in poverty in Latin America in 2023. The chart highlights that Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico account for 59% of the population living on less than $3.65 per day, totaling 52.2 million individuals. Brazil is represented by the longest bar, showing 23.5 million people, followed by Venezuela with 15.5 million and Mexico with 13.2 million. Other countries displayed include Colombia (10.2 million), Guatemala (5.8 million), Peru (4.3 million), and several others, with the smallest bars indicating very few affected, such as Uruguay (0.1 million) and Costa Rica (0.3 million). The chart provides a clear visual representation of poverty levels across the region. Data source: Chang, Evans and Rivas Herrera (2024), Inter-American Development Bank. Note: Data in international dollars at 2017 prices, adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs between countries. The graph is licensed under CC BY.

Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico account for 59% of people living in poverty in Latin America

Japan’s cherry trees have been blossoming earlier due to warmer spring temperatures The peak flowering of cherry trees in Kyoto, Japan, has been recorded since the ninth century. Yasuyuki Aono and colleagues from the Osaka Prefecture University collated this data from historical diar...

You can read Fiona's data insight here:
ourworldindata.org/data-insight...

One of my favourite OWID charts has been updated! 🌸

Japan’s cherry trees have been blossoming earlier due to warmer temperatures

by @spoonerf.bsky.social

Educators at many levels, from middle school to postgraduate, find our work helpful for their teaching.

Check out our recently updated "Teaching with OWID" page for materials, FAQs, tips, and more: ourworldindata.org/teaching

And if you have any feedback or suggestions, we love to hear it!