Roser was born inKirchheimbolanden, Germany, a village close to the border with France. In 1999, he and a friend won a prize in the German youth science competitionJugend forscht with a model of a self-navigating vacuum cleaner.[5]Der Spiegel reported that he travelled the length of theNile from the mouth to the source, and that he crossed theHimalayas and theAndes.[6]
In 2012, economist and inequality researcherTony Atkinson hired Roser at theUniversity of Oxford where he collaborated withPiketty, Morelli, and Atkinson.[8] In 2015, he established a research team at the University of Oxford which is studying global development.[9]
In 2015 Roser said that there are three messages of his work: "The world is much better; The world is awful; The world can be much better".[14] He listedglobal poverty,inequality,existential risks, human rights abuse, and humanity's environmental impact among the world's most severe problems.[1][15]
He wrote "The mission of this work has never changed: from the first days in 2011 Our World in Data focussed on the big global problems and asked how it is possible to make progress against them. The enemies of this effort were also always the same: apathy and cynicism."[16] He said that "it is because the world is terrible still that it is so important to write about how the world became a better place."[14]
He is critical of themass media's excessive focus on single events which he claims is not helpful in understanding "the long-lasting, forceful changes that reshape our world, as well as the large, long-standing problems that continue to confront us."[1][17][18] In contrast to the event-focussed reporting of the news media Roser advocates the adoption of a broader perspective on global change, and in particular a focus on those living inpoverty.[18] The focus on the upper classes, especially in historical perspective, is misleading since it is not exposing the hardship of those in the worst living conditions.[19]
Roser advocates looking at larger trends in poverty, education, health andviolence since these are slowly, but persistently changing the world and are neglected in the reporting of today's mass media.[18]
Cartogram by Max Roser showing the distribution of the global population. Each of the 15,266 pixels represents the home country of 500,000 people.
Roser is known for his research how globalliving conditions are changing and hisvisualisations of these trends.[20][21][22] He has shown that in many societies in the past a large share (over 40%) of children died.[23]
Global CO2 emissions by world region since 1750 – a chart fromOur World in Data
As of 2019, Roser's research has been concerned with global problems such as poverty,climate change, child mortality and inequality.[2]
For example in 2015 research, he studied withTony Atkinson, Brian Nolan and others how benefits from economic growth are distributed.[24][25][26]
In October 2019 he co-authored a study of child mortality. It was the first global study that mapped child death on the level ofsubnational district.[27] The study, published inNature, was described as an important step to make action possible that further reduces child mortality.[28]
In 2017 Rose and Felix Pretis found that the growth rate in CO2emission intensity exceeded the projections of all climate scenarios.[29] WithJesus Crespo Cuaresma he studied the history of international trade and its impact on economic inequality.[30]
Roser has criticized the practice of focusing on theinternational poverty line alone. In his research he suggests a poverty at 10.89international dollars per day.[31] They stated this is the minimum level people needed to have access to basic healthcare. The reason for the low global poverty line is to focus the attention on the world's very poorest population.[32] He proposes using several different poverty lines to understand what is happening to global poverty.
Inglobal health research he studied the impact of poverty on poor health and disease and contributed to a textbook on global health.[33][34] His most cited article, coauthored withHannah Ritchie and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, is concerned with global population growth.[35]
As of 2015 Roser was a regular speaker at conferences where he presented empirical data on how the world is changing.[36] He has been part of the Statistical Advisory Panel ofUNDP.[37] UN Secretary-GeneralAntónio Guterres invited him to internal retreats attended by the heads of the UN institutions to speak about hisglobal development research.[38]
The data visualization expertEdward Tufte repeatedly cited and reprinted the work by Max Roser in his books.[45][46]
Roser developed a global cartogram in which the area of each country represents the size of the country’s population. He published it open access and it became widely used in the media (including the FT, The Economist, and in open source applications).
Life expectancy by world region, from 1770 to 2018
In 2019 he was listed in second place among the "World’s Top 50 Thinkers" byProspect Magazine.[47]
In 2019 Our World in Data won theLovie Award, the European web award, "in recognition of their outstanding use of data and the internet to supply the general public with understandable data-driven research – the kind necessary to invoke social, economic, and environmental change."[48]
In 2021 he received the Covid Innovation Heroes Award "for an outstanding contribution to public understanding for helping people across the world see, and more importantly understand, critical pandemic data."[49]
In 2022 he was selected as one of "The Future Perfect 50", as one of 50 scientists and writers who are building a better future.[50]
^"Our World in Data".Global Health Education and Learning Incubator, Harvard University.Archived from the original on 14 May 2023. Retrieved11 May 2023.
^Roser, Max; Cuaresma, Jesus Crespo (1 July 2012). "Borders Redrawn: Measuring the Statistical Creation of International Trade".Working Papers in Economics and Finance. Rochester, NY.SSRN2111864.
^Kohler, Stefan; Roser, Max; Geldsetzer, Pascal; Bärnighausen, Till (2021). "Ökonomie und globale Gesundheit" [Economics and Global Health]. In Bonk, Mathias; Ulrichs, Timo (eds.).Global Health (in German). De Gruyter. pp. 523–556.doi:10.1515/9783110448474-020.ISBN978-3-11-044847-4.
