Despite large differences in farming practices across the world, plant-based protein sources still have a lower footprint than the lowest-impact meat products.

Adjusted for both population growth and aging, mortality from cancer is falling globally.

Transporting food by plane can come with a large carbon footprint. But very little of our food travels this way – just 0.16% of food miles are from air travel.

‘Eat local’ is a common recommendation to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet. But transport tends to account for a small share of greenhouse gas emissions. How does the impact of what you eat compare to where it’s come from?

The media claims we are experiencing a ‘loneliness epidemic’. What is the evidence for this?

In countries such as Denmark and Switzerland, it is very common for people to live alone; but contrary to what many believe, this does not translate into higher loneliness. Loneliness and aloneness are not the same.

One-person households are becoming increasingly common across the world. In this post we explore the data behind this trend.

38 million people had HIV/AIDS in 2020. A couple of decades ago, the chances of surviving more than ten years with HIV were slim. Today, thanks to antiretroviral therapy (ART), people with HIV/AIDS can expect to live long lives. How many lives has ART saved?

We’ve just updated all available data on the 232 indicators of our UN Sustainable Development Goals Tracker (SDG-Tracker).

Social connections matter for economic outcomes. Personal relations, even those that we maintain for non-economic reasons, often give us access to information and provide us with social collateral for economic transactions.

Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. More than three-quarters of this is used for livestock production, despite meat and dairy making up a much smaller share of the world’s protein and calorie supply.

Social networks facilitate the diffusion of ideas across individuals and firms, and because of this, they play an important role in productivity growth. In this post we explain how this works.

One-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions result from food and agriculture. What are the main contributors to food’s emissions?

Feeding the world whilst reducing food’s impact on the environment is one of our greatest challenges in the coming decades. What are food’s environmental impacts?

CO2 emissions are typically measured in terms of ‘production’. But how do emissions compare when we adjust for trade? Which countries export the most CO2 and which offshore their emissions?

There are large inequalities in the carbon footprint of people across the world. How do countries across the world compare? Where in the world do people emit the most CO2?

Which countries emit the most CO2 today? How do annual emissions vary across the world?

There’s not only significant variability in how much CO2 countries emit across the world today. There are also large differences in how much each has emitted in the past. Who has contributed most to global CO2 since 1750?

At Our World in Data we present data and research – across more than 3000 charts – on the world’s largest problems. But some metrics are core to our work: here we present 12 that are key to understanding the state of the world.