Is the world a better place?

“Is The World a Better Place?” is an interactive data storytelling project that challenges common misconceptions about global progress. The goal was to explore whether long-term global indicators such as homicide rates, deaths from natural disasters, and maternal mortality show signs of improvement, even as media narratives often emphasize negativity. We built an interactive dashboard in Looker Studio that allows users to explore these indicators across time, countries, income groups, and regions. A complementary presentation deck was designed to tell each indicator’s story through a clear narrative-driven structure.

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The project was created for curious citizens, teachers, students, and news readers interested in comparing perception with reality. It helps combat misinformation and negativity bias by making complex global data accessible and engaging and encouraging fact-based, long-term thinking. Data was sourced from Gapminder, the World Bank, and Our World in Data, cleaned and harmonized in BigQuery, and visualized through a multi-page Looker Studio dashboard. Each indicator follows a story-driven layout that progresses from global trends to regional detail, deep dives, and inequality views, using line charts, maps, boxplots, stacked bars, and bubble plots.