Thread by @MaxCRoser

1] A thread on what you can find on OurWorldInData.org

– Our focus are the severe problems the world faces: Poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, inequality.

– Our mission is to provide the data and research that is needed to make progress against them.

2] The world is still awful in many ways.
– But we know it is possible to change the world and make progress. (That’s what our history tells us).
– In many important ways the world got much better. And the world can be much better.

[In more detail here
ourworldindata.org/much-better-aw…]

3] Here is how we describe our mission: OurWorldInData.org/About

In case you read @tylercowen and @patrickc's recent plea for progress studies (theatlantic.com/science/archiv…) – it is very similar to that.

@tylercowen @patrickc 4] In our daily work we focus on each big problem and ask where does the world stand today and what can we do about it.

One current focus is child mortality.

This is where the world is today: 15,000 children die every day. 5.4 million death a year.
ourworldindata.org/child-mortalit…

@tylercowen @patrickc 5] We know that we can make progress against child mortality.

Much progress has been achieved. The mortality rate is more than 10-times lower than it was in the past ourworldindata.org/child-mortalit…

And the large global differences show that we can do much better ourworldindata.org/global-inequal…

@tylercowen @patrickc 6] To reduce child mortality further we need to know where children are dying.

Here is @_HannahRitchie answering that question
ourworldindata.org/where-are-chil…

@tylercowen @patrickc @_HannahRitchie 7] And we need to know what children dying from today.

Here is our new colleague @bdadonaite’s post about that:
ourworldindata.org/what-are-child…

If you are interested in our work, follow her on Twitter!

@tylercowen @patrickc @_HannahRitchie @bdadonaite 8] And then we focus on each killer of children.

A large one – and an absolutely, unacceptable one in 2019 – are diarrheal diseases.
Diarrheal disease still causes every tenth child death. Half a million children in one year.
ourworldindata.org/childhood-diar…

@tylercowen @patrickc @_HannahRitchie @bdadonaite 9] What can we do about children dying from diarrheal disease?

Recently we made incredible progress thanks to incredibly basic therapy: a mix of water, sugar and salt.
We got to the moon before we found this therapy. Since then it saved 70 million lives.
ourworldindata.org/oral-rehydrati…

@tylercowen @patrickc @_HannahRitchie @bdadonaite 10] Past progress however doesn’t mean that we can continue to expect the same for the future.
So we read the research that studies the potential of this intervention. Researchers think ORT still has huge potential.

Here is @bernadeta’s post about it:
ourworldindata.org/how-many-lives…

@tylercowen @patrickc @_HannahRitchie @bdadonaite @bernadeta 11]ORT won’t save all lives. But there are more ways to save children from diarrheal disease.

Since 2006 there is a virus against the rotavirus that causes diarrheal disease
ourworldindata.org/rotavirus-vacc…

@tylercowen @patrickc @_HannahRitchie @bdadonaite @bernadeta 12] Then we study to the next cause of child deaths.
Malaria is another major killer responsible for 7% of all child deaths.

My post on how insecticide-treated bed nets have averted 663 million cases since 2000 and how we (and you) can do much more ourworldindata.org/malaria-net-re…

@tylercowen @patrickc @_HannahRitchie @bdadonaite @bernadeta 13] And our goal is to do this for all the other big problems we face.

Famines ourworldindata.org/famines
Global poverty ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
Air pollution ourworldindata.org/air-pollution
Hunger ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-und…
CO₂ emissions ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-…
Mental health, education, …

@tylercowen @patrickc @_HannahRitchie @bdadonaite @bernadeta 14] It will surely take us many years to do this well.
And we hope it will be extended and update for many decades so that it stays useful for a very long time.

We are a small team. In full-time equivalents we are 4 researchers & fewer than 2 web developers.

But we are hiring.

@tylercowen @patrickc @_HannahRitchie @bdadonaite @bernadeta 15] We are looking for a web developer ourworldindata.org/jobs

The ideal candidate would be passionate about our mission, ideally be based in Oxford/London (but remote is possible), and would have brought skills (front-end, back-end, design, and ideally data viz and database)

@tylercowen @patrickc @_HannahRitchie @bdadonaite @bernadeta 16] And we have a post-doctoral position in our team @UniofOxford for a global health and demography researcher.

@_HannahRitchie wrote about why she joined @OurWorldInData and why you might be a good fit for our team ourworldindata.org/health-colleag…