After 1,200 years, cherry blossom record to live on despite Japanese scientist’s death Prof Yasuyuki Aono’s meticulous work charted shifting bloom dates as a marker of climate change

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...
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💰We've updated the data on government spending:

We’re looking for a writer We’re hiring a writer who can make the world’s largest problems understandable to our large Our World in Data audience.

Please help share what must be one of the best jobs ever. We are looking for a writer to join @ourworldindata.org to work with our fantastic team including @maxroser.bsky.social and @hannahritchie.bsky.social. £80k - £120k / ideally full time / location flexible
ourworldindata.org/hiring-write...

I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸

We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto.

The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.

Looking to use Claude Code as an applied economist?

This excellent series by
@paulgp.com covers how to set it up, data analysis and web scraping. Amazing work!

Looking forward to the next episodes

Albert Einstein reshaped our understanding of the universe. But what would his chances have been if he'd been born in the Central African Republic, one of the world's poorest countries?

And what could the world's poorest children grow up to be if they had his circumstances?

Census 2027: India begins counting a billion-plus people in mega exercise The two-phase exercise - the world’s most ambitious - will see three million officials count every Indian.

Woo hoo - the world’s biggest census is underway
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Line chart of the income share of the richest 1% of the population (before taxes and benefits) showing trends from 1974 to 2024 for Chile, India, the USA, France, and Finland. It shows Chile with the highest and most volatile share, peaking above 30 percent, India and the USA rising steadily to about 20 to 25 percent by 2024, and France and Finland remaining lower and comparatively stable around about 5 to 12 percent. The data source is the World Inequality Database (2026). The chart is licensed CC BY to Our World in Data.

What share of income goes to the richest 1% in your country?

How about the richest 10% or 0.1%? How has that changed over time?

The World Inequality Database (WID) is the leading source for answering questions about incomes and wealth at the very top of the distribution.

The size of the world population over the long-run. A line chart of world population from 10,000 BCE to present with a short projected extension into the 21st century. It shows a very slow, nearly flat increase for millennia, a small bump around 2,000 years ago, and a rapid exponential rise after about 1800 leading to roughly 8 billion in 2022. Key labeled milestones: about 4 million in 10,000 BCE; 595 million in 1700; 983 million in 1800; 1.6 billion in 1900; 2 billion in 1927; 3 billion in 1960; 4 billion in 1975; 5 billion in 1987; 6 billion in 1998; 7 billion in 2010; 8 billion in 2022. The chart includes a UN Population Division projection that reaches 9 billion in 2037, 10 billion in 2061, and a peak of about 10.3 billion in 2084 before declining. Annotations note that average growth from 10,000 BCE to 1700 was about 0.04 percent per year and that the mid-14th century Black Death killed between a quarter and a half of the population of Europe.

How has the world's population changed over the last 12,000 years? What do projections tell us about the rest of this century?

We've refreshed four of our most popular static charts that show you answers to these questions, updating them with the latest data from the UN. 🧵

Horizontal bar chart of the share of workers in informal employment by country (2023) where Madagascar, Angola, India, Bolivia, Peru, and Egypt have very high informal shares of about 96% to 71%, while Norway, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Poland are at the low end around 1.2% to 7.7%.

Outside rich countries, widespread informal work means unemployment rates are low—

(This Data Insight was written by @eortizospina.bsky.social.)

Last year, three-quarters of the world’s countries had unemployment rates below 10%, according to data from the International Labour Organization.

If you’re doing a PhD in economics (or have recently finished) and are thinking about what comes next, feel free to message me with a bit about yourself and what you’d like to discuss.

I’ll set up 3 × 20-minute conversations over the next few weeks 🙂

The 10 countries with the highest GDP per capita in 1910. Horizontal bar chart ranking countries by estimated GDP per capita in 1910, from highest to lowest: United States $9,600; New Zealand $8,500; Australia $8,300; Switzerland $8,000; United Kingdom $7,700; Canada $6,500; Belgium $6,500; Argentina $6,100; Netherlands $6,000; Denmark $5,900. Data source: Bolt and van Zanden – Maddison Project Database 2023. CC BY. Note: Units correspond to international-$ at 2011 prices. Figures are rounded.

Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world at the beginning of the 20th century—

(This Data Insight was written by @eortizospina.bsky.social.)

When I first visited Buenos Aires some years ago, I was struck by how grand the city's historic architecture was.

At the turn of the millennium, 2.2 billion people in the world lived in extreme poverty. In international statistics, this means they survived on less than $3 per day (in today’s money).

In the two decades that followed, this number more than halved. You can see this decline in the chart.

Teaching economics or social sciences?

Concepts like the unemployment rate or labor force participation can be tricky to explain clearly.

Our new Work & Employment page breaks these down with clear explanations and visualizations — all free to download and use in your classes and presentations.

✨ We have a whole new page on Work & Employment stats! ✨

World map showing the unemployment rate in 2025. The unemployment rate is the share of the labor force without work, but actively looking for a job and available to start soon. Figures are modeled estimates from the International Labour Organization in 2026, via the World Bank. The chart is licensed CC BY to Our World in Data.

Being unemployed isn’t the same as not having a job — at least when it comes to labor statistics.

The map shows unemployment rates around the world in 2025.

Let’s see what this number captures — and what it doesn’t 🧵

Slavery and forced labor have become less common over the last 250 years. Line chart of the number of countries that had not yet abolished large-scale forced labor. In 1789, 165 of the 174 countries covered had not yet abolished large-scale forced labor. In 2024, it was 9 countries. Annotations on important cases, such as China, the Soviet Union, and the United States, say more about the history of slavery and forced labor.

✍️ New article: Tracking historical progress against slavery and forced labor: a long-run data view

For much of history, forced labor was widespread and brutal. Tens of millions of people were made to work under the threat of violence or punishment. The situation today is very different.

Extreme poverty fell sharply worldwide – even excluding China. Line chart of global extreme poverty rate, 1990 to 2025. Extreme poverty is defined as living below the international poverty line of $3 per day; data are adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs between countries. The chart shows global extreme poverty reduced from 43% to 10%, and the series excluding China reduced from 33% to 12%, with the two lines converging by around the mid-2000s and continuing to decline toward 2025. Y axis runs from 0% to 50%; x axis runs from 1990 to 2025. Data source: World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform (2025); OurWorldInData.org/poverty. License: CC BY.

Was the global decline of extreme poverty only due to China?

The share of the world population living in extreme poverty has never declined as rapidly as in the past three decades.

Line chart of national GDP from 1990 to 2024, adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs (purchasing power parity). Key insight: China’s GDP rises steeply and overtakes the United States around the mid-2010s, reaching about $35 trillion by 2024; the United States grows more gradually to about $25 trillion by 2024. India shows strong growth to about $15 trillion by 2024. Russia, Japan, Germany, and Brazil remain much lower, roughly in the $2 trillion to $6 trillion range with small fluctuations. Data sources: Eurostat, OECD, IMF, and World Bank (2026). Note: values expressed in international dollars at 2021 prices. The chart is licensed CC BY to Our World in Data.

📊 Explore updated data on global development from the World Bank—

How are countries around the world developing — in terms of their economies, infrastructure, technology, energy use, healthcare, education, food production, and much more?

Share of population living in multidimensional poverty. A choropleth world map showing country-level shares of people deprived across health, education, and living-standards indicators. Caption below the title: "Multidimensional poverty is defined as being deprived in a range of health, education and living standards indicators." Key pattern: high shares are concentrated across much of sub-Saharan Africa, with many countries above 50% and some above 80%; parts of South Asia and a few Pacific countries also show substantial shares, while many higher-income countries are hatched for no data or show low shares. Data source: Alkire et al. (2025) - The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2025. Note: Estimates based on the most recent household survey data (between 2013 and 2023). A separate dataset is produced to monitor trends over time. CC BY.

📊 Data update: Track measures of poverty beyond income: health, education, and living standards—

The experience of poverty goes far beyond having no or low income.

Chart titled "the many costs of the Syrian civil war". It consists of eight small line charts of deaths due to fighting, all deaths, deaths of children under 5, internally displaced people, international refugees, GDP per capita, the share in extreme poverty, and the share undernourished between 2004 and 2024. It shows that the civil war didn't just kill hundreds of thousands due to fighting, but also increased deaths overall (especially those of young children), displaced millions, halved average living standards, and created extreme poverty and widespread undernourishment. Data sources include UCDP, the UN, Eurostat, OECD, IMF, World Bank, and FAO. The chart is licensed CC BY to Our World in Data.

The Syrian civil war has killed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions, and caused poor health and widespread poverty—

Most of our work on war and peace focuses on the people killed directly in the fighting.

This is a very nice new short series from @voxdev.bsky.social

First episode on conditional cash transfers - looking forward to the next ones 🎬

How much energy can be produced on global land currently used for liquid biofuels? Bar comparison showing energy per year from land currently used for liquid biofuels: Biofuels for transport — 1,400 TWh per year; Solar panels on the same land — 32,000 TWh per year. Side annotations: 31,000 TWh shown for context as the amount of electricity the world generated in 2024; 7,000 TWh per year shown as the amount of electricity the world would need to power all of its cars and trucks if they were electric. Note: This assumes the world uses 32 million hectares of land to grow crops for liquid biofuels, based on net land use which subtracts land allocated to co-products such as animal feed, and assumes solar PV uses 1 hectare of land per GWh. Data source: Energy Institute; Cerulogy; Ember; and author calculations. Chart is licensed CC BY to Our World in Data.

The world dedicates a Poland-sized area of land to producing liquid biofuels such as bioethanol & biodiesel. Is there a more efficient way to generate energy?

Putting solar panels on the land used for biofuels, e.g., would produce enough electricity for all cars and trucks worldwide to go electric.

Global Education Education has expanded widely, but large gaps in learning quality still trap many children in poverty and inequality. Explore our writing and data on global education.

ourworldindata.org/global-educa...

Interested in more data like this?

My colleagues have just updated many charts and the main page on Global Education! ✨👇

An image with 6 charts showing the world as 100 people over the last two centuries. The charts cover poverty, basic education, literacy, democracy, vaccination, and child mortality. As one example, 79 out of 100 people globally were living in extreme poverty in 1820. By 2018, that had decreased to 9 people. Data sources: Poverty: Michailis Moatsos (2021). - Education: Wittgenstein Center (2023), World Bank (2023), van Zanden, J. et al. (2014). - Literacy: van Zanden, J. et al. (2014) and UNESCO. - Democracy: regime classification by Skaaning et al. - Vaccination: WHO - Child mortality: up to 1960 own calculations based on Gapminder; UN-IGME thereafter. - Credit: OurWorldInData.org, licensed under CC-BY-SA, author Max Roser.

The world as 100 people over the last two centuries

Government spending by function Share of total government spending by purpose of government activity. Categories are based on the Classification of the Functions of Government (COFOG).

Explore how other OECD countries spend their budgets: ourworldindata.org/grapher/gove...

A timeline titled "The Golden Age of Antibiotics" shows when each antibiotic drug class was first available for medical use, with example antibiotics labeled. Classes are color-coded by their source: actinomycetes, other bacteria, fungi, or synthetic. Milestones include the first antibiotics (arsphenamines in 1910), as well as the discovery of many actinomycetes-derived antibiotics, such as streptomycin, and sulfonamides, penicillins, and tetracyclines. Data: Hutchings, Truman, Wilkinson (2019). Created by Saloni Dattani for Our World in Data.

✍️We published a new topic page on medicine and biotechnology—

For much of human history, people relied on trial and error to find cures for diseases and health conditions using natural plants and remedies, with little idea of which ingredients worked or why.

World choropleth map showing the value of merchandise imports from China divided by gross domestic product, expressed as a percentage for 2024 (services are not included). A shaded scale runs from 0% to 10% with legend ticks at 0%, 2%, 4%, 6%, 8%, and 10%; darker shading indicates a larger share. China is marked with a distinct fill and some countries are hatched to indicate no data. Overall pattern: higher shares are concentrated in parts of Southeast Asia, Mongolia and nearby economies, several countries in Africa, and parts of Central and Eastern Europe; North America, much of South America, and Australia show relatively low shares. Data source shown in the footer: IMF (2025); World Bank and OECD national accounts (2025). Licensed CC BY.

In most countries, imports from China account for less than 10% of GDP, even where China is the top partner—

China is the top source of imports for many countries.

🎯 Our Sustainable Development Goals tracker is now up to date!