Max Roser
Max is the founder of 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 , and the Executive Co-Director of , the non-profit organization that publishes .
Max Roser
Max is the founder of 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 , and the Executive Co-Director of , the non-profit organization that publishes .
Topics covered by Max on
Featured work
The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.
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 limits of our personal experience and the value of statistics
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.
The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it
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.
Latest work
January 21, 2025
Introducing our new trustees, Claire Melamed and Michael Blastland
December 02, 2024
US airlines have transported passengers for more than two light-years since the last plane crash
Sometimes, the most important news is when something isn’t happening.
September 02, 2024
Many of us can save a child’s life, if we rely on the best data
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
What’s the difference between mineral reserves and resources?
Every reserve is a resource, but not every resource is a reserve.
May 01, 2024
Key lessons from our work on the COVID-19 pandemic are now published in Lancet Public Health
Our peer-reviewed article outlines seven ways to publish data better.
April 29, 2024
How many children did not die thanks to progress in global health?
Thanks to improvements in global health, more than 100 million children have been saved since 1990.
March 06, 2024
We’re launching Data Insights
Discover our bite-sized format focused on one chart.
March 04, 2024
Why is improving agricultural productivity crucial to ending global hunger and protecting the world’s wildlife?
February 28, 2024
We’ve redesigned our homepage
Here’s what’s changed, what hasn’t, and some of the thinking behind the new design.
February 19, 2024
The global fight against polio — how far have we come?
A generation ago, polio paralyzed hundreds of thousands of children every year. Many countries have eliminated the disease, and our generation has the chance to eradicate it.
October 02, 2023
Welcoming Rachel Glennerster and Andrew Dilnot
September 27, 2023
Per capita, national, historical: how do countries compare on CO2 metrics?
There are many ways to measure countries’ contributions to climate change. What do they tell us?
September 26, 2023
How many animals get slaughtered every day?
Hundreds of millions of animals get killed for meat every day.
July 11, 2023
How are incomes adjusted for inflation?
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
Population momentum: if the number of children per woman is falling, why is the population still increasing?
50 years ago, the total fertility rate was five. This figure has more than halved. Yet the global population is still rising — why?
June 01, 2023
Demographic transition: Why is rapid population growth a temporary phenomenon?
Death rates fall first, then fertility rates, leading to a slowdown in population growth.
June 01, 2023
How has world population growth changed over time?
The world population has increased rapidly in recent centuries. But this is slowing.
April 18, 2023
Learning curves: What does it mean for a technology to follow Wright’s Law?
Technologies that follow Wright’s Law get cheaper at a consistent rate, as the cumulative production of that technology increases.
April 11, 2023
Mortality in the past: every second child died
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
Artificial intelligence has advanced despite having few resources dedicated to its development — now investments have increased substantially
March 28, 2023
What is Moore's Law?
Exponential growth is at the heart of the rapid increase of computing capabilities.
March 18, 2023
Two centuries of rapid global population growth will come to an end
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
Technology over the long run: zoom out to see how dramatically the world can change within a lifetime
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
AI timelines: What do experts in artificial intelligence expect for the future?
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
Artificial intelligence is transforming our world — it is on all of us to make sure that it goes well
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
The brief history of artificial intelligence: the world has changed fast — what might be next?
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
Millions of children learn only very little. How can the world provide a better education to the next generation?
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
Humans destroyed forests for thousands of years — we can become the first generation that achieves a world in which forests expand
Why has humanity destroyed such vast forests? And how can we bring this to an end?
April 07, 2022
War in Ukraine
Explore our data and resources which are relevant context for the war in Ukraine.
March 22, 2022
Malaria: One of the leading causes of child deaths, but progress is possible and you can contribute to it
We do not have to live in a world where 1,320 children die from a preventable disease every day.
March 18, 2022
The International Energy Agency publishes the detailed, global energy data we all need, but its funders force it behind paywalls. Let's ask them to change it.
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
The future is vast – what does this mean for our own life?
If we manage to avoid a large catastrophe, we are living at the early beginnings of human history.
March 03, 2022
Nuclear weapons: Why reducing the risk of nuclear war should be a key concern of our generation
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 history of the end of poverty has just begun
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
The IEA wants to make their data available to the public – now it is on governments of the world’s rich countries to make this happen
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
What is the COVID-19 Stringency Index?
December 09, 2021
Global economic inequality: what matters most for your living conditions is not who you are, but where you are
How much does it matter to be born into a productive, industrialized economy?
December 07, 2021
Causes of death globally: what do people die from?
To make progress towards a healthier world we need to have a good understanding of what health problems we face today.
December 01, 2021
The ‘Energy Ladder’: What energy sources do people on different incomes rely on?
3-in-10 people in the world do not have access to clean cooking fuels. What do they use instead?
November 25, 2021
Data review: how many people die from air pollution?
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
How do death rates from COVID-19 differ between people who are vaccinated and those who are not?
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
Extreme poverty: How far have we come, and how far do we still have to go?
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
Missing data on energy: our list of datasets that are needed but are not available
What are the key datasets on global energy that the world needs, but are not publicly available?
November 03, 2021
Fossil fuel subsidies: If we want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions we should not pay people to burn fossil fuels
Repealing subsidies is not easy, but it is possible – and the world is slowly making progress in this direction
November 02, 2021
Access to basic education: almost 60 million children of primary school age are not in school
The world has made a lot of progress in recent generations, but millions of children are still not in school.
July 21, 2021
Child mortality: an everyday tragedy of enormous scale that we can make progress against
We live in a world in which ten children die every minute.
July 14, 2021
Smoking: How large of a global problem is it? And how can we make progress against it?
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
Energy poverty and indoor air pollution: a problem as old as humanity that we can end within our lifetime
three 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
Hygiene and Handwashing
How many people lack access to basic handwashing facilities?
June 07, 2021
Why do we need to know about progress if we are concerned about the world's largest problems?
Why have we made it our mission to publish “research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems”?
June 01, 2021
The argument for a carbon price
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
What is economic growth? And why is it so important?
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
How much economic growth is necessary to reduce global poverty substantially?
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
Global poverty in an unequal world: Who is considered poor in a rich country? And what does this mean for our understanding of global poverty?
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 economies that are home to the poorest billions of people need to grow if we want global poverty to decline substantially
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
is now tracking Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccinations across the world
We are building a global dataset on COVID-19 Vaccinations. Explore the latest data for all countries.
December 17, 2020
Renewable Energy
Renewable energy sources are growing quickly and will play a vital role in tackling climate change.
December 16, 2020
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations
December 10, 2020
The world’s energy problem
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
History of
The history of how we got started and how we’ve grown as a team.
December 01, 2020
Why did renewables become so cheap so fast?
In most places, power from new renewables is now cheaper than new fossil fuels.
November 26, 2020
Breaking out of the Malthusian trap: How pandemics allow us to understand why our ancestors were stuck in poverty
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
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Hospitalizations
October 29, 2020
Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries?
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 not just about child mortality, life expectancy increased at all ages
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
Exemplars in Global Health: Learning from the most successful countries in the world
July 20, 2020
Our history is a battle against the microbes: we lost terribly before science, public health, and vaccines allowed us to protect ourselves
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
Energy Production and Consumption
Explore data on how energy production and use varies across the world.
June 23, 2020
CO₂ emissions by fuel
Coal, oil, gas or flaring: where do our CO₂ emissions come from? How are emissions from these fuels changing over time?
June 10, 2020
Greenhouse gas emissions
Which countries emit the most greenhouse gases each year? How do they compare per person?
June 10, 2020
Breakdown of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide emissions by sector
How much does electricity, transport and land use contribute to different greenhouse gas emissions?
June 10, 2020
CO₂ emissions
How much CO₂ does the world emit? Which countries emit the most?
June 03, 2020
Best practices for governments reporting COVID-19 testing data
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
Excess mortality during the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19)
May 07, 2020
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Testing
May 05, 2020
Mortality Risk of COVID-19
May 02, 2020
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Cases
May 01, 2020
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Deaths
March 23, 2020
We teamed up with Kurzgesagt to make a video about the COVID-19 pandemic
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
The Spanish flu: the global impact of the largest influenza pandemic in history
March 01, 2020
The rise of maximum life expectancy
Predictions of a maximum limit of life expectancy have been broken again and again.
November 11, 2019
Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture
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
We won the Lovie Award!
September 26, 2019
Clean Water
Clean and safe water is essential for good health. How did access change over time? Where do people lack access?
September 25, 2019
Sanitation
Safe sanitation is essential to reduce deaths from infectious diseases, prevent malnutrition, and provide dignity.
September 20, 2019
Access to Energy
Access to electricity and clean cooking fuels are vital for a good standard of living and good health.
September 19, 2019
Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this
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
How often did parents see their children die?
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
Until the late 1960s, the total fertility rate was five — since then, it has halved
In the past fifty years, the total fertility rate has steeply declined as a result of women’s empowerment, declining child mortality, and the rising cost of bringing up children.
August 28, 2019
Global Inequality of Opportunity
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
Why do some terrorist attacks receive more media attention than others?
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
Which countries achieved economic growth? And why does it matter?
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
Malaria was common across half the world – since then it has been eliminated in many regions
April 23, 2019
Child mortality: achieving the global goal for 2030 would be a huge achievement – but we are currently far away
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
The global population pyramid: How global demography has changed and what we can expect for the 21st century
February 05, 2019
How do we know the history of extreme poverty?
January 25, 2019
is at Y Combinator
October 08, 2018
Twice as long — life expectancy around the world
Life expectancy has doubled over the last two centuries around the world. How has this happened?
October 03, 2018
The Internet's history has just begun
September 20, 2018
Now it is possible to take stock - did the world achieve the Millennium Development Goals?
September 12, 2018
The map we need if we want to think about how global living conditions are changing
By showing us where the people in the world are, cartograms help us understand global living conditions better.
July 27, 2018
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.
July 10, 2018
The past and future of global change – Max's slides for his talk at the UN
June 28, 2018
Why are there differences between reported and estimated cases of smallpox?
Historical cases of smallpox were underreported to authorities. What was the extent of underreporting, and how do researchers adjust for this?
February 27, 2018
Optimism and Pessimism
Why are so many people pessimistic about the future? And what can this tell us about tackling the world’s largest problems?
December 07, 2017
The Dataset of Famines
A global dataset of famine deaths from 1860 to 2016.
November 22, 2017
A sense of units and scale for electrical energy production and consumption
June 16, 2017
Healthcare Spending
How is healthcare financed? How much do we spend on it? What are the returns?
April 17, 2017
The history of global economic inequality
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
What do poor people think about poverty?
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
Education Spending
How is education financed? How much do we spend on it? What are the returns?
June 13, 2016
How to embed visualizations in your article
May 04, 2016
What men and women want in marriage
May 01, 2015
Life expectancy increased in all countries of the world
March 19, 2015
Reduction of cases and deaths of vaccine-preventable diseases in the US
February 20, 2014
The global decline of the fertility rate
The total fertility rate has halved in sixty years — what are the causes of the decline?
December 02, 2013
How has inequality in the United Kingdom changed over the long run?
Historical and contemporary sources can provide us with a picture of inequality in the UK over the last 700 years.
December 02, 2013
How unequal were pre-industrial societies?
Research by Milanovic, Lindert, and Williamson gives us some insight into how incomes were distributed in the distant past.
August 02, 2013
Data review: ethnographic and archaeological evidence on violent deaths
What quantitative data is there about violent deaths in non-state societies?