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.

An estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic enter our oceans each year. But the plastic we find in our surface waters is more than 100-fold lower. This is the ‘missing plastic’ problem.

Maternal mortality was much more common in the past. Today, the number of women that die in childbirth is much lower, but there are still large inequalities across the world. If we can make maternal deaths as rare as they are in the healthiest countries we can save almost 300,000 mothers each year.

The world needs ideas and innovation to make progress against the many problems we face. Creative and talented people that can contribute to this important work are everywhere, but the opportunity to develop is limited to only a small number of well-off children. As a consequence of this, we all – the entire world population – are missing out on the creativity and innovations that would enrich our world and help us move forward.

Social media sites are used by more than two-thirds of all internet users. When did the rise of social media start and what are the largest sites today?

Pregnancy and childbirth are much safer for women today than in the past. But maternal mortality rates are still high in many countries in the world. A woman is 300 to 400 times more likely to die per pregnancy in poor countries than in rich.

For most of our history, pregnancy and childbirth were dangerous for both baby and mother. Whilst maternal mortality has decreased significantly in recent decades, more than 300,000 women die from pregnancy every year.

Growing demand for seafood has placed increasing pressures on wild fish populations. One innovation has helped to alleviate some of the pressure on wild fish catch: aquaculture, the practice of fish and seafood farming. Aquaculture production has now overtaken wild fish catch.

The death of a young child has always been the most devastating tragedy mothers and fathers could experience. How common was it?

Social media platforms like Facebook reach one-in-three people in the world. What does the research tell us about the causal impact of social media use on our well-being?

Our understanding of the world is often shaped by geographical maps. But this tells us nothing about where in the world people live. To understand this, we need to look at population density. How does population density vary across the world?

In the past the average woman had five children. In the past fifty years, this number has halved as a result of women empowerment, declining child mortality and the rising cost of bringing up children.

Nearly every 4th adult in the world smokes tobacco. More than one-third (37%) of men in the world do, but just over 8% of women. How do sex differences in smoking vary across the world?