Our World in Data

All three statements are true at the same time—

We’ve put together this selection of charts and data highlights as a set of slides here: ourworldindata.org/we-have-a-new-… This is a new presentation format we’re trying out, and we’d love to know what you think! Currently it’s only available for desktop users, but we’re open to investing more — e.g., supporting mobile — if you all are finding it useful. So please let us know by replying here or emailing info@ourworldindata.org — thanks!

The page draws on data from the European Commission and the UN, which categorizes cities, towns, and rural areas in a consistent way using satellite imagery. Explore our new page: ourworldindata.org/urbanization

📃 We have a new topic page on urbanization! It brings together our writing and dozens of new charts on where and how people live. You can explore: – How populations are distributed across settlement types – Which cities are growing fastest – What living conditions in urban areas look like – How urbanization relates to broader patterns of development … and more! Here is a selection of charts and data highlights from the new page. 🧵 3.5 billion people live in cities

Explore this data in our interactive chart: ourworldindata.org/grapher/electr…

Electric cars are taking off quickly in Latin America— Five years ago, almost no one in Latin America bought an electric car. Today, the situation is different: electric cars now make up a meaningful and fast-growing share of new car sales. The chart shows this trend across several of the region’s largest car markets, alongside the US for comparison. The data tracks the share of new passenger cars sold that are electric, which includes both fully battery-electric cars and plug-in hybrids. In five years, Colombia went from nearly zero to 10%, catching up to the US. In other countries in the region, adoption took off a bit later, but is now rising fast, too. Mexico, for example, went from 2% to 7% in a single year (2024–2025). An important part of this reflects policies. Many Latin American countries, like Colombia, offer tax breaks and other incentives for buying electric cars. (This Data Insight was written by @EOrtizOspina.)

Explore the interactive version of this chart: ourworldindata.org/grapher/date-o…

Our data scientist Tuna Acisu’s successful quest to continue a 1,200-year-old climate record— How can we learn about temperatures and climate change from before thermometers even existed? One remarkable window into this is the peak bloom date of cherry trees in Kyoto, Japan, a record stretching back over 1,200 years. Because the trees bloom earlier in warmer springs, those dates act as a proxy for how the climate has changed. For decades, the record was kept by Professor Yasuyuki Aono of Osaka Metropolitan University, who meticulously reconstructed the dates by reading centuries of diaries and chronicles from Kyoto. You can see this data in the chart here. Earlier this year, when our data scientist Tuna Acisu went to update our chart with the latest bloom date, she learned that Professor Aono had sadly passed away — and that no one was set to continue his work. After several leads went nowhere, Tuna made one last appeal to our audience on social media — to all of you! We were looking for someone with botanical expertise who could identify the peak bloom from photos, or a local in Kyoto with access to bloom-specific reporting. The response was overwhelming, with over a thousand comments and shares from people trying to help. Soon after, a successor stepped forward: Dr. Genki Katata, a researcher in Japan, who will carry the dataset forward! Tuna’s appeal caught the attention of major media, with The New York Times and The Guardian both interviewing her about her role in the story. The success of Tuna’s quest to continue this important dataset is a great example of what we can achieve collectively. Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen!

Learn more in our article by @bbherre, “Women have made major advances in politics — but the world is still far from equal”: ourworldindata.org/women-politica…

Until the middle of the 20th century, few countries had political leaders that were women. These were monarchs, who rose to their positions because of their royal lineage. Since then, many more countries have had a woman as chief executive — that is, the head of state or head of government, depending on who has more power. This trend has been driven mostly by democracies. This began with Sri Lanka’s democratically elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1960. It has also included democratic leaders who were directly elected by their citizens (instead of being elected through elected representatives), with the first being Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro in 1990. The chart shows that this trend has accelerated recently. More than 40% of countries have now had a woman leader (regardless of how they gained office; the purple line), and over 30% have had a democratically elected one (green line). While there has been progress for women leaders, they remain underrepresented, especially in the highest offices.

Food trade: this tool lets you see how food — from almonds to soybeans to yogurt — gets traded around the world. You can also explore the data by country, seeing how different foods flow into and out of your chosen country. → ourworldindata.org/how-does-food-…

Migration: this tool helps us see where the world’s 280 million international migrants were born, and where they live now. → ourworldindata.org/where-do-migra…

🔧📊 We recently built four interactive tools that give you new ways to explore our rich datasets on population projections, causes of death, migration, and the food trade. Check them out! 🧵 Population projections: this tool lets you test how changes in fertility rates, life expectancy, and migration rates will change populations across the world in the 21st century. → ourworldindata.org/population-sim…

Read and subscribe here: ourworldindatabrief.substack.com/p/2026-07-03

The latest OWID Brief newsletter is out on Substack! It delivers all our recent work plus curated highlights from across Our World in Data, right to your inbox twice a month. This edition: Our new food trade data tool, heat deaths, paying for CO₂ emissions, fact-checking with Grok on X, and more. In each edition we also highlight recent Data Insights, our bite-sized nuggets on the world and how it’s changing. One of today's: The price of lighting has dropped over 99.9% since 1700.