Dr Max Roser
Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development
Max leads the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development. Together with his team he is studying the history and future of living conditions around the world. His focus is on large global problems including poverty, disease, hunger, inequality, environmental degradation, and violence.
He is the founder and editor of the online publication OurWorldInData.org. The publication, which he founded in 2011, focuses on large global problems and presents the data and research necessary to make progress against these. The publication is read by more than one million readers every month, it is used by policymakers, and it is cited more than a thousand times every year by both academic publications and in the popular media. It is a long-term project that Max and his team are continuously working on.
His work on inequality includes the Chartbook of Economic Inequality which he coauthored with Tony Atkinson, Joe Hasell, Salvatore Morelli. It shows how inequality has changed over the last 100 years in 30 countries. In recently published research he studied how the benefits of economic growth are shared across the income distribution in different countries.
He is also investigating whether the world is on track to achieve economic prosperity in a sustainable way. In recent research he assessed the global socio-economic scenarios which underlie the IPCC reports on climate change by comparing them with the recent observational record.
He has researched the link between incomes and health outcomes and made suggestions for how to allocate development assistance for health. A particular focus of his work is the mortality and well-being of children.
With his team he also published the SDG-Tracker.org, a free, open-access publication that tracks global progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals and allows people around the world to hold their governments accountable to achieving the agreed goals.
Max has a BSc in geoscience, a BA and an MA in philosophy, an MSc in economics, and a doctorate from the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
His work is cited by many hundred media outlets every year including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, The Financial Times and the BBC.
