Hannah Ritchie
- Host, It Gets Good
- Deputy Editor, Our World in Data
- Senior Researcher, University of Oxford
Edinburgh
As seen in:
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Deputy Editor @OurWorldinData / Researcher at @UniofOxford / Clearing the Air: www.penguin.co.uk/books/462676/clearing-the-air-by-ritchie-hannah/9781529
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Articles by Hannah Ritchie
How much development aid is spent on climate change?
How much development aid is spent on climate change? And does this crowd out funding for other aid projects? This is a question I’ve had for a while. I care a lot about climate change. I also care a lot about basic health and development programs in the world’s poorest countries — vitamin supplementation, nutrition programs, antiretroviral treatment for HIV, and bed nets treated against malaria. These two priorities could easily come into conflict.
How much could the UK actually raise from higher taxes?
Next week, the UK government will announce its latest budget.1 Every time this comes around, there’s intense debate about what financial holes we need to fill, whether we should raise taxes or cut spending, and which taxes we should change or leave untouched. Countless numbers are flying around, and I’ve struggled to find anywhere that puts them into context. For my own sanity, I wanted to understand how large each tax lever is. Are we talking hundreds of millions, billions, tens of billions?
When do people experience mental health conditions for the first time?
The chart above uses smoothed curves from the meta-analysis published by Marco Solmi and colleagues in Molecular Psychiatry. Here are a few things to keep in mind when interpreting this data. First, the definition of onset age varied among the underlying studies in the meta-analysis. In some, it meant the age at which someone first experienced symptoms. In others, the age of diagnosis or first hospitalization.
How many people in the world identify with a particular religion?
Religious compositions vary a lot from country to country. In my own country, the United Kingdom, Christianity is the most popular, and following no religion is becoming increasingly common, particularly among young people. But I struggle to get a sense of how these differences stack up globally. The Pew Research Center publishes estimates of religious affiliation across the world. You can see the global breakdown in the chart for 2020 (the most recent year available).
One in ten people are older than 65. Three in four live under a leader who is.
Paul Biya, Cameroon’s president, is 93 years old. He leads a country where the median age is just 18. A staggering 75-year age gap. Biya is the most extreme example, but he reflects a pattern we see almost everywhere in the world. Leaders are often a lot older than the populations they govern. Three in four people globally live in a country led by someone over 65. Two in three have a leader older than 70. Most of the world lives under a leader who is past the age when most people retire.
China reduced extreme poverty fast, but Indonesia hasn’t been far behind
China is often the poster child for rapid reductions in poverty, and for good reason. In the early 1980s, over 90% of its population lived in extreme poverty, but by the early 2020s, that number had dropped to nearly zero. Some might assume that China is the only reason why global extreme poverty has declined. But that’s wrong: many countries have seen dramatic reductions in poverty, too. Indonesia is one clear example; it’s shown alongside China on the chart.
What share of plastic waste ends up in the ocean?
Many of us will have seen the stark images of plastic in the ocean: bottles and wrappers clumped together, or rubbish trapped along the coastline. But how much of the world’s plastic waste ends up in the ocean? In 2020, Gapminder asked people in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and the UK this question. They had three options to choose from: A) Less than 1% B) Less than 36% C) Less than 66% Almost nine in ten people picked B or C, thinking it was more than one-third.
The new Living Planet Index reports a 73% average decline in studied wildlife populations
The new Living Planet Index report has just been published. It estimates an average decline of 73% in studied wildlife populations since 1970. You can see this in the chart. Every two years, it hits the headlines, and I always have mixed feelings about it. I love that biodiversity loss gets its rare spot in the limelight. It’s a problem that I think doesn’t get enough attention.
A 73% average decline in wildlife populations: an overview of the 2026 Living Planet Index report
What does the Living Planet Index mean? The 2026 Living Planet Index report is published today. As in most years, it makes for a depressing read.1 The headline is a 73% average decline in wildlife populations since 1970. While these trends are extremely worrying, the numbers presented in the Living Planet Index (LPI) report are often misunderstood or misreported.
What impact will climate change have on malaria?
What impact will climate change have on malaria? More than 600,000 people die from malaria every year. Will climate change make this worse? Climate change could make a number of infectious diseases worse. I expected malaria would be one of them. That’s concerning, given the huge global burden that it already carries: it kills almost half a million children every year. But a more complex story emerges from the scientific literature.
Electricity generation per person in the United Kingdom has fallen by a third from its early-2000s peak
Globally, electricity generation per person has grown by more than 50% this century. In the United Kingdom, things have moved in the opposite direction. Its generation per person peaked in 2003 and has fallen by more than a third since then. You can see this in the chart, which shows generation per person since 1920. Today, levels are back to where they were in the late 1960s.
Foreign aid contributions fell in 2025 amongst almost all of the top 10 donors
In 2025, the amount of foreign aid given by the world’s richest countries fell by almost a quarter. That amounted to a reduction of roughly US$50 billion. Aid cuts in the United States — and the shutdown of its agency for international development, USAID — got the most attention, and for good reason: the US is the world’s largest aid donor in dollar terms, so its contributions make a huge difference to the global total. But many other countries cut their aid contributions, too.
Electric car sales are growing rapidly in Turkey
If your job was to sell cars in Turkey in 2022, selling an electric one would be an unusual day at work. Just one new car out of every 100 sales was electric. By 2025, this had become a fairly normal day. More than one in five new cars were electric — a more than 20-fold increase in just three years. You can see this rapid takeoff in the chart. Why did electric models become so popular?
How high is current immigration to the United States, in historical perspective?
How high is current immigration to the United States, in historical perspective? Using long-run census data to understand the scale of recent US migration trends, and how these compare to previous centuries. Ask Americans about the top concerns for the United States, and immigration is rarely far from the top of the list. It’s a topic that dominates election cycles and divides public opinion.
Beef production has been the largest driver of deforestation this century
Over the last two decades, around 128 million hectares of forest have been cleared to make way for agriculture and forest plantations. That’s an area five times the size of the United Kingdom. What has driven this deforestation? A recent paper estimated the contribution of different agricultural products over the last few decades. In the chart, you can see the breakdown. Beef production has been the largest driver by far, contributing over 40% of the total.
Five countries had more women than men in parliament in 2025
Women’s representation in national politics has increased dramatically in the last century. But men still hold more parliamentary seats in almost every country. There are five exceptions: Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Rwanda. You can see this on the map. Most countries are in brown, meaning they have a higher share of men; in many countries, they make up more than 75% of the seats (shown in darker brown). Look closely enough, and you can see the five countries in green that have more women.
Revisiting: Is organic farming better for the environment than conventional farming?
How do these two production strategies compare on carbon emissions, water pollution, biodiversity, and land use? As someone who has studied the environmental impacts of agriculture for many years, there are a handful of questions that I get over and over. One of them is whether we are right to assume that organic farming is better for the environment than conventional farming. I think this is a common assumption.
Men are more likely to use tobacco than women almost everywhere in the world
Around one-fifth of adults in the world use tobacco. But large gaps often exist in smoking rates between genders. Globally, more than one-third of men use tobacco, while less than one in ten women do. Men are more likely to use tobacco in almost every country in the world. You can see this on the chart, which plots the share of men (on the vertical axis) versus the share of women (on the horizontal axis). Nearly all countries lie above the diagonal line, which means more men do so.
Articles by Hannah Ritchie, Our World in Data
How do these two production strategies compare on carbon emissions, water pollution, biodiversity, and land use? Load more
Is organic farming better for the environment than conventional farming?
Is organic farming better for the environment than conventional farming? How do they compare on carbon emissions, water pollution, biodiversity, and land use? As someone who has studied the environmental impacts of agriculture for many years, there are a handful of questions that I get over and over. One of them is whether we are right to assume that organic farming is better for the environment than conventional farming. I think this is a common assumption.
Around 5% of electricity in the United States is used for data centers — far more than the global average
Around 1.5% of the world’s electricity was used for data centers in 2025. People are often surprised by how low this number is. While data centers are a relatively small share of global electricity demand, this is not true everywhere. You can see the differences across several world regions in the chart. The United States is home to the largest share of the world’s data centers. In 2025, they consumed around 5% of the country’s electricity. But demand is even more localized than this.
A never-ending childhood of malaria
A never-ending childhood of malaria In areas where malaria is very frequent, children can experience five or more infections a year. I’ve never had malaria, but I know several people who have. They describe it as one of the worst experiences of their life. What starts out feeling like the flu — which is bad enough — can quickly progress into something far worse. The body swings from intense fever and sweats to chills deep enough to make you shake uncontrollably.
Forget more reservoirs; should the UK just build desalination plants instead?
Forget more reservoirs; should the UK just build desalination plants instead? Posted on 1 September 2026 by Guest Author This is a re-post from By the Numbers by Hannah Ritchie A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about why the UK needs to get its act together and build some new reservoirs. It hasn’t built one in my lifetime — despite adding 10 million people — and the mismatch between winter and summer rain is probably going to get worse.
Beef production in Brazil has been the largest driver of global deforestation in recent decades
Most beef production in Brazil is to meet domestic rather than international demand. Since the turn of the century, an area of forest five times the size of my home country, the United Kingdom, has been cut down to free up land for farming.1 If we want to reduce — and ultimately end — deforestation, we need to know what’s causing it, and where. When we look at the largest drivers of this deforestation, beef production is the standout.
How often are people infected with malaria?
Malaria is an infectious disease that kills over 600,000 people a year. Most of them, children. Its high death toll is at least partly explained by the fact that there are so many infections every year: an estimated 260 to 310 million. I was curious to know how often people living in the worst-affected areas are infected with malaria. In the chart, you can see estimates of new cases per 100 people across high-burden countries. In recent decades, infection rates have declined but remain very high.
Thailand’s population may have already peaked
Many countries are in a fairly unique demographic position in history: their populations are shrinking not due to a temporary shock but to sustained structural decline. If we look at the United Nations’ population estimates and medium projections, 66 countries and territories had already passed peak population this year. Almost all of them are in Europe and East Asia. But there is one country in Southeast Asia in this position: Thailand.
Four developed countries met the UN’s target for foreign aid in 2025
In the 1970s, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution asking developed countries to contribute at least 0.7% of their national income to foreign aid. Most countries signed off on this goal, except for Switzerland and the United States. But very few countries have met this target in the fifty years since then. Even today, only a handful of countries do. In 2023, five countries met this target: Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark.
The UK needs to build more reservoirs
The UK has had an extremely dry summer. Look at photos online, and you’ll see the traditionally green parks looking like hay. Just how dry have things been? Look at data since the 1800s, and rainfall in England in July was the lowest on record, by a long way. You can see this in the bottom panel of the chart below. The rest of the UK has had more rain (I live in Scotland, where our grass is still green), but July was still the third lowest in this almost 200-year period.
Which countries have already passed peak population, and when will the rest do so?
Which countries have already passed peak population, and when will the rest do so? Falling fertility rates have created a unique scenario in human history: many countries are experiencing structural population decline. Many countries around the world are in a unique position in human history: rather than having a constant or growing population, their populations are starting to shrink. This is not a temporary decline, caused by war or famine.
Air conditioning is almost universal in the US and Japan — but not elsewhere
Many countries have been facing intense heat this summer, and with predictions of a strong El Niño on the way, next summer could be even hotter. This has ignited debate on the need for cooling methods and technologies — most prominently, air conditioning (AC). But how do rates of air conditioning usage vary across the world? Large international comparisons are hard to come by, but the International Energy Agency just published some new estimates for a select number of countries and regions.
30% of the world’s CO₂ emissions have a carbon price
What we pay for something in a shop often doesn’t reflect its true cost. Producing goods causes damage through carbon emissions that drive climate change, but the receipts for that damage rarely show up in the price. The costs are often hidden and diffuse, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. One way to make people pay the full cost is to introduce a carbon price. This can take the form of a carbon tax or a trading system, which caps emissions and lets companies buy and sell permits.
How primary energy is measured has changed across our charts
The Energy Institute no longer uses the substitution method to estimate primary energy. Here’s why that matters for our charts on energy. By Hannah Ritchie (writing) and Pablo Rosado (data) August 7, 2026 Some of the most popular charts on Our World in Data are about energy production and consumption: how much energy countries produce, how they compare per person, and what sources this energy mix comes from. But when people talk about “energy”, they’re not always talking about the same thing.
Is Europe having a bad wildfire year?
Is Europe having a bad wildfire year? Posted on 4 August 2026 by Guest Author This is a re-post from By the Numbers by Hannah Ritchie Over the last week, this chart of wildfire burn in Europe has been doing the rounds on social media and traditional media outlets. Carbon Brief goes through some of this coverage here. The underlying narrative is that Europe is having its lowest wildfire year on record, which is quite at odds with the huge wildfires we see from France and Spain on the news.
What has driven deforestation in the 21st century?
Most recent deforestation has been in the tropics; what are forests being cut down for? Over the last two decades, the world has cut down forests at a rate of roughly one Costa Rica per year.1 The largest driver of deforestation has been the expansion of agriculture. This has been true for millennia, and it remains the case today. But which products, in particular, have been responsible?
Is Europe having a bad wildfire year?
Over the last week, this chart of wildfire burn in Europe has been doing the rounds on social media and traditional media outlets. Carbon Brief goes through some of this coverage here. The underlying narrative is that Europe is having its lowest wildfire year on record, which is quite at odds with the huge wildfires we see from France and Spain on the news. But this data and the media headlines are not as contradictory as they first appear.
Most of the world’s fastest-growing megacities will soon be in Africa
Many cities across East Asia and Latin America have grown quickly over the last few decades. Since 1950, São Paulo’s population has grown sixfold. Shanghai’s nearly tenfold. This rapid growth is now ending. São Paulo is near its population peak, and Shanghai is projected to peak around 2050. The fastest-growing megacities are now emerging elsewhere. In the chart, you can see various examples: Karachi in South Asia, and Dar es Salaam, Addis Ababa, and Luanda in Africa.
Foreign aid given as a share of national income
This dataset provides main aggregates of DAC members' and other provider countries' official development assistance (ODA) flows and grant equivalents, as well as other resource flows to developing countries. Retrieved on July 27, 2026 Citation This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below. OECD (2026).
Three-quarters of eggs produced in the United Kingdom are free-range
Growing up in the United Kingdom in the 1990s and early 2000s, almost all the eggs in our supermarket came from battery hens, those raised in small wire enclosures. The living conditions in these cages are terrible. Birds get the space equivalent of an A4 sheet of paper. They don’t have the room to carry out their natural behaviors, such as nesting, perching, or dust bathing. That has changed in recent decades.
Clearing the Air
A Bill Gates, Financial Times, Sunday Times BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Pragmatic and undoomy' GUARDIAN 'Essential reading' RUTGER BREGMAN 'Read this book -- now' MARK LYNAS We can’t afford to delay climate action, but with all the shouting and disagreement it’s hard to know where to turn. In her new book, bestselling environmental star Hannah Ritchie answers 50 key climate questions once and for all, clearing the air so we can get on and fix things.
How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?
How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use? Data centers consume around 1.5% of global electricity, but demand is very geographically concentrated. Few — if any — technologies have been adopted as quickly as artificial intelligence (AI). Since that computation runs on electricity, discussions around AI often return to what this means for energy demand. These concerns tend to take three forms.
Fertility rates across many countries have converged, despite starting from very different levels
In the thirty years since I was born, fertility rates in my country, the United Kingdom, have not changed much. In 1993, the fertility rate was 1.8 births per woman. Thirty years later, it had dropped only slightly, to 1.6 births. Elsewhere, the change has been much more dramatic; fertility rates have dropped sharply and are now similar to those in the UK. You can see this in the chart, which shows the change in fertility rates from 1993 (in purple) to 2023 (in blue).
Hoe wordt voedsel over de wereld verhandeld?
Van welke landen zijn we vooral afhankelijk voor al die verschillende voedingsmiddelen? Om het antwoord op die vraag inzichtelijk te maken, ontwikkelde mijn collega Sophia Mersmann een interactieve visualisatie. Die laat voor uiteenlopende voedingsmiddelen de handelsstromen zien, van het producerende land naar het land waar het product wordt geconsumeerd. Zo kun je zien hoe en waar voedsel over de wereld wordt verhandeld.
Share of employment in agriculture
The World Development Indicators (WDI) database, published by the World Bank, is a comprehensive collection of global development data, providing key economic, social, and environmental statistics. It includes over 1,500 indicators covering more than 200 countries and territories, with data spanning several decades. WDI serves as a vital resource for policymakers, researchers, businesses, and analysts seeking to understand global trends and make data-driven decisions.
Total electricity generation per person | Electricity mix
This dataset contains yearly electricity generation, capacity, emissions, imports and demand data for European countries. You can find more about Ember's methodology in this document. Retrieved on April 24, 2026 Citation This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below. Ember – Yearly Electricity Data Europe (2026).
Electricity generation from nuclear | Electricity mix
This dataset contains yearly electricity generation, capacity, emissions, imports and demand data for European countries. You can find more about Ember's methodology in this document. Retrieved on April 24, 2026 Citation This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below. Ember – Yearly Electricity Data Europe (2026).
How does food get traded around the world?
Our interactive tool helps you see where food is exported from and where it goes. By Hannah Ritchie (conceptualization & writing), Sophia Mersmann (visualization), Pablo Rosado (data), and Marwa Boukarim (design) June 29, 2026 My local supermarket here in Scotland is full of foods that were grown and produced elsewhere: bananas from South America, cocoa beans from West Africa, and citrus fruits from my southern neighbors in Europe. This is the case in many parts of the world.
Obesity rates in Pakistan have tripled in the last 20 years
In the 20th century, obesity was a health problem that mostly affected today’s rich countries. In the 21st century, it has emerged as a health challenge almost everywhere. Many low- and middle-income countries have seen rapid increases in the share of people defined as overweight or obese. In the chart, you can see this rise for Pakistan. In the last 20 years, the share of adults defined as overweight has more than doubled, and the share defined as obese has more than tripled.
How much deforestation is your country importing through trade?
Deforestation is nearly always reported and measured based on the country where it happens. In high-income countries, deforestation rates are now very low (we did most of our forest clearing a century or more ago to make space for agriculture). On net, many are gaining forest through planting and natural regeneration. But consumers also contribute to deforestation through imports.
How much are people across the world paying for their carbon emissions?
Around 30% of the world’s emissions have some carbon price, but how much extra are people paying? By Hannah Ritchie (writing) and Pablo Rosado (data) June 22, 2026 Recently, I was in a meeting with a group of people who do not normally spend much time in the same room: environmentalists, climate scientists, and economists.
Tobacco use in India has halved this century
At the turn of the millennium, one-in-five adults in India smoked tobacco, and almost half of all adults were using any form of tobacco, including products that are chewed or sniffed. But over the past two decades, rates of both have roughly halved. You can see this in the chart. Some countries have seen a decline in smoking among men, but a rise among women. This is not the case in India: tobacco use has fallen substantially for both sexes. This decline has huge implications.
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