Bertha Rohenkohl
@bertharohenkohl.bsky.social
Research and Data Economics Lead @ Our World in Data | poverty, inequality, labor. Views my own.
📝 New article — 138 million children are in child labor. What does this actually mean? Last year, the United Nations published a report estimating that 138 million children around the world are in child labor. This situation is awful, and it deserves attention.
Data on economic inequality has improved a lot, and it's more accessible than ever. But with so many options, it can be hard to know where to start. We've just published a new page with major datasets, charts, and explanations of what they measure and what they don't. Check it out! ⤵️
Our World in Data@ourworldindata.org · 4w agoWe have a new Economic Inequality topic page— Public attention to economic inequality has grown a lot over the last twenty years. At the same time, the available data has greatly improved too: it now covers many more countries and longer time periods, and is more comparable and accessible than ever
How do the rights of LGBT+ people vary around the world? 🧵 The first map shows the 38 countries that allow same-sex partners to marry, affirming their right to love and form a family. However, the majority of countries don’t recognize same-sex marriage, or outright ban it.
Interested in demography? You might like our new tool on @ourworldindata.org which lets you see how changes in fertility rates, life expectancy, and migration rates will change future populations. Have a play! You can even do it continent wide. ourworldindata.org/population-s...
Population tool: how will populations across the world change in the 21st century?
We created an interactive tool that lets you test how changes in fertility rates, life expectancy, and migration rates will change future populations.
ourworldindata.org
Congratulations to the data wizards at @ourworldindata.org who created this elegant tool so you can adjust fertility, mortality & migration rates for any country to see the impact on population sizes & age structures. This is really, really great!! Check it out!! Excellent tool, terrific write up.
Our World in Data@ourworldindata.org · 3mo agoHow will populations across the world change in the 21st century? 🔧 Explore for yourself with our new interactive tool!
Write for us! We’re looking for people to write many more pieces for us at Works in Progress – including on the story behind superglue, why there’s no syphilis vaccine, how gas turbines became efficient, and many more in this post. If you or someone you know would be interested, please pitch us :)
More articles we would like to commission
Write for Works in Progress.
worksinprogress.news
What is the most unequal country in South America? It depends on what metric you look at. One way to measure income inequality is to look at the share of all income that goes to the top income earners.
📊 Data update: How many people live in poverty around the world, and how has that changed over the last decades? The World Bank's Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) is one of the primary tools we have for answering these questions.
💰We've updated the data on government spending:
Our World in Data@ourworldindata.org · 4mo ago📊 How much do governments spend, and what do they spend it on? In the chart, we see total government spending broken down by purpose, such as health, education, and defense, relative to the size of the economy (as measured by GDP). This is shown for a selection of OECD countries.
Please help share what must be one of the best jobs ever. We are looking for a writer to join @ourworldindata.org to work with our fantastic team including @maxroser.bsky.social and @hannahritchie.bsky.social. £80k - £120k / ideally full time / location flexible ourworldindata.org/hiring-write...
We’re looking for a writer
We’re hiring a writer who can make the world’s largest problems understandable to our large Our World in Data audience.
ourworldindata.org
I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸 We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto. The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.
Looking to use Claude Code as an applied economist? This excellent series by @paulgp.com covers how to set it up, data analysis and web scraping. Amazing work! Looking forward to the next episodes
Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham@paulgp.com · 5mo agoDid a series of videos with Markus Brunnermeier on Claude Code (more to come) Video 1: Getting Started with CC open.substack.com/pub/paulgp/p...
Albert Einstein reshaped our understanding of the universe. But what would his chances have been if he'd been born in the Central African Republic, one of the world's poorest countries? And what could the world's poorest children grow up to be if they had his circumstances?
What share of income goes to the richest 1% in your country? How about the richest 10% or 0.1%? How has that changed over time? The World Inequality Database (WID) is the leading source for answering questions about incomes and wealth at the very top of the distribution.
How has the world's population changed over the last 12,000 years? What do projections tell us about the rest of this century? We've refreshed four of our most popular static charts that show you answers to these questions, updating them with the latest data from the UN. 🧵
Outside rich countries, widespread informal work means unemployment rates are low— (This Data Insight was written by @eortizospina.bsky.social.) Last year, three-quarters of the world’s countries had unemployment rates below 10%, according to data from the International Labour Organization.
Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world at the beginning of the 20th century— (This Data Insight was written by @eortizospina.bsky.social.) When I first visited Buenos Aires some years ago, I was struck by how grand the city's historic architecture was.
At the turn of the millennium, 2.2 billion people in the world lived in extreme poverty. In international statistics, this means they survived on less than $3 per day (in today’s money). In the two decades that followed, this number more than halved. You can see this decline in the chart.
Teaching economics or social sciences? Concepts like the unemployment rate or labor force participation can be tricky to explain clearly. Our new Work & Employment page breaks these down with clear explanations and visualizations — all free to download and use in your classes and presentations.
Our World in Data@ourworldindata.org · 6mo agoBeing unemployed isn’t the same as not having a job — at least when it comes to labor statistics. The map shows unemployment rates around the world in 2025. Let’s see what this number captures — and what it doesn’t 🧵
✨ We have a whole new page on Work & Employment stats! ✨
Our World in Data@ourworldindata.org · 6mo agoOn our new Work and Employment topic page, we bring together the key labor market indicators — from unemployment rates and participation, to informality and much more — and explain what they mean in clear terms and with helpful diagrams. → ourworldindata.org/work-employm...
Being unemployed isn’t the same as not having a job — at least when it comes to labor statistics. The map shows unemployment rates around the world in 2025. Let’s see what this number captures — and what it doesn’t 🧵
✍️ New article: Tracking historical progress against slavery and forced labor: a long-run data view For much of history, forced labor was widespread and brutal. Tens of millions of people were made to work under the threat of violence or punishment. The situation today is very different.
Was the global decline of extreme poverty only due to China? The share of the world population living in extreme poverty has never declined as rapidly as in the past three decades.
📊 Explore updated data on global development from the World Bank— How are countries around the world developing — in terms of their economies, infrastructure, technology, energy use, healthcare, education, food production, and much more?
📊 Data update: Track measures of poverty beyond income: health, education, and living standards— The experience of poverty goes far beyond having no or low income.
The Syrian civil war has killed hundreds of thousands, displaced millions, and caused poor health and widespread poverty— Most of our work on war and peace focuses on the people killed directly in the fighting.
This is a very nice new short series from @voxdev.bsky.social First episode on conditional cash transfers - looking forward to the next ones 🎬
VoxDev@voxdev.bsky.social · 7mo ago🆕 Conditional cash transfers: Do they work? We are really excited about our new video series - Economics Unpacked! In our first episode, @susanwparker-mx.bsky.social and @jnaritomi.bsky.social discuss Progresa in Mexico, and Bolsa Familia in Brazil.
The world dedicates a Poland-sized area of land to producing liquid biofuels such as bioethanol & biodiesel. Is there a more efficient way to generate energy? Putting solar panels on the land used for biofuels, e.g., would produce enough electricity for all cars and trucks worldwide to go electric.
