Researcher @ourworldindata. I work to make research on democracy and conflict easier to access and understand. he/him
I liked this blog post by Jed Kolko, about why official statistics get revised.
There are things to rightly be concerned about with data revisions. But often, they are a good thing: they correct errors, make the data more comparable, or improve its coding.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/major-data-revisions-are-coming
And if you now would like to check out the page, here is the link:
If you spot any errors or have any suggestions, please respond to this thread or email me at bastian@ourworldindata.org. I look forward to hearing from you!
If you think the page could be interesting to others: like this thread, share it, or tell them about it! Thanks a lot!
We are very grateful to the OECD for collecting most of the data we show on the page, and the people who gave very helpful feedback on drafts of it.
Special credit goes to my colleagues, in particular Pablo Arriagada for his excellent data work.
In total, the page has 30 interactive charts, accompanied by both detailed and simple descriptions of the data.
We also have a few charts related to successful aid programs:
PEPFAR, which has saved millions of lives from HIV and AIDS.
GAVI, which has vaccinated hundreds of millions of children.
The Carter Center, which has led the near eradication of guinea worm disease.
The page also has numerous charts that break down the many forms of assistance:
- By official and private donors
- By sector
- By grants and loans
- By aid for emergencies and longer-term development
- By income group
We also have charts that show how much countries receive in foreign aid from wealthier countries: in absolute terms, as a share of national income, and per capita.
The page has charts showing how much wealthy countries give in foreign aid, expressed both in absolute amounts and as a share of their national income.
We show the data both in the new reporting method of grant equivalents and the old one of net amounts, for a longer-term view.
We at Our World in Data now have a topic page on foreign aid!
It allows you to explore data on who gives and receives foreign aid, the different types of assistance, and a few examples of when it has been successful.
A thread on what the page has in store:
Their work was truly formative for me, and I was thrilled to have James as my doctoral advisor.
I always appreciated how open he was to my research challenging his work.
Congratulations to him, Daron Acemoglu, and Simon Johnson!
If you think this thread could be interesting to others: like it, repost it, or tell them about it!
Do you have any questions or suggestions? Then please send me a message here or email me at bastian@ourworldindata.org.
I look forward to hearing from you!
I am grateful to the many researchers who create the conflict and peace data we use across our work at Our World in Data.
Special thanks to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program whose data I used for most of the visualizations in this thread.
To read more about war and peace, visit our topic page:
If you now would like to see more charts on peace and conflict, check out our Conflict data explorers:
https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace#explore-data-on-armed-conflict-and-war
While the decline in violence has been uneven across countries, relationships between countries have become more peaceful around the world.
Violent rivalries have steadily declined, and bilateral cooperation has spread.
Some countries are much more affected by conflict than others.
In a large number of countries, few to no people die due to conflicts.
Other countries, however, see dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of deaths per year.
After World War II, hundreds of thousands of people died in conflicts each year.
Conflict deaths surged again in the 1970s and 1980s, though peaking at lower levels.
They fell to much lower levels in the 1990s and have stayed below previous peaks in the decades since — if barely.
Armed conflict is a rare cause of death in most years.
It is even less common than other causes of violent death, such as homicides and suicides.
However, the number of conflict deaths can change a lot from year to year.
Among armed conflicts, conflicts between states are rare; intrastate conflicts and one-sided violence are more frequent; and non-state conflicts have become the most common type of conflict.
