This section is built exclusively from the open data of international organizations. Below is what each source publishes, how it collects the data, how often it updates it and on what terms it allows the data to be used. National and regional statistics of individual countries are not included in the section: indicators have to be comparable across all countries.
UN Population Division · World Population Prospects
30 indicators
The principal series of estimates and projections of the world's population, prepared since 1951 by the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Each revision brings national censuses, population registers and demographic surveys into a single comparable picture: population size and structure, fertility, mortality, life expectancy and migration for every country from 1950 onward, with projections to 2100.
The World Bank's flagship database of development indicators: about 1,400 series for 217 countries from 1960 onward. It is compiled from official national statistics and from the data of specialized UN agencies, and harmonized to comparable definitions and units. The country groupings by region and income group that serve as the standard in international comparisons are published here as well.
International Monetary Fund · World Economic Outlook
21 indicators
The database behind the IMF's World Economic Outlook: estimates and projections of macroeconomic indicators for more than 190 countries. Unlike the World Bank, the IMF publishes not only the historical record but also a five-year forecast, along with GDP in constant prices and at purchasing power parity on a single methodology. Updated twice a year, in April and October.
World Health Organization · Global Health Observatory
55 indicators
The WHO statistics portal: morbidity and mortality by cause, coverage of health services, health system resources, risk factors. The data come from national registration systems, household surveys and the estimates of WHO expert groups, which extend incomplete national series into comparable estimates for all countries.
The International Labour Organization's labor market database: employment, unemployment, the labor force, the structure of employment by sector, wages, informal employment. The primary source is national labor force surveys; the ILO harmonizes them to common definitions and completes them with modeled estimates where surveys are not run every year.
The official source of international statistics on education, science and culture: enrollment coverage by level of education, literacy, government spending on education, R&D expenditure, the number of researchers. The data are collected directly from national ministries through a standard questionnaire and mapped to the ISCED classification.
International Telecommunication Union · World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators
6 indicators
Telecommunications and internet statistics from the UN specialized agency: the share of internet users, mobile and broadband subscriptions, the cost and speed of access. The data come from national regulators and operators and are supplemented by household surveys.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations · FAOSTAT
23 indicators
The largest international database of agricultural statistics: crop production and yields, livestock, land and fertilizer use, food balance sheets and undernourishment. It rests on national agricultural agencies and surveys, harmonized to a single commodity nomenclature.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute · Military Expenditure Database
9 indicators
The most complete and most cited series of military expenditure by country, going back to 1949. SIPRI brings national budgets to the common NATO definition (spending on the armed forces, including military pensions and military aid) and publishes them in constant prices, in current US dollars and as a percentage of GDP.
World Tourism Organization · Tourism Statistics Database
6 indicators
International tourism statistics: arrivals and departures, inbound tourism receipts and outbound tourism expenditure, average length of stay, room capacity. The data are collected from national tourism administrations and statistical offices following the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development · UNCTADstat
16 indicators
Statistics on world trade and investment: exports and imports of goods and services, foreign direct investment, maritime shipping and merchant fleets, terms-of-trade indexes. It draws on balance-of-payments data, customs statistics and the reporting of transnational corporations.
World Intellectual Property Organization · IP Statistics Data Center
6 indicators
Intellectual property statistics: patent, trademark and industrial design applications by residents and nonresidents, grants and registrations issued, charges for the use of intellectual property. The data come directly from national and regional IP offices.
Our World in Data · CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
17 indicators
A combined greenhouse gas emissions dataset that Our World in Data assembles from the Global Carbon Project, Climate Watch and the Energy Institute. It gives CO₂ emissions by country from 1750 onward — total, per capita, by fuel type, and on a consumption basis (adjusted for trade).
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime · UNODC Data Portal
7 indicators
The only source that brings the crime statistics of different countries to a comparable form. UNODC collects the data of national authorities through its annual survey of crime trends and harmonizes them to common definitions: intentional homicide is counted the same way regardless of how it is classified in local law. It publishes both absolute counts and rates per 100,000 population — the World Bank republishes only the rates, so the absolute figures are available here alone.
United Nations Development Programme · Human Development Report
3 indicators
The Human Development Index and the indexes derived from it, which UNDP has computed since 1990. The HDI combines three dimensions — life expectancy, education and income — into a single number from 0 to 1, so that a country's level of development is not reduced to GDP per capita alone. The Gender Development Index and the Gender Inequality Index are published separately.
Transparency International · Corruption Perceptions Index
1 indicator
A composite score of how corrupt experts and businesspeople consider a country's public sector to be. It has been computed since 1995 from a dozen independent surveys and expert assessments, on a scale from 0 to 100. The nature of the indicator matters: it measures perceptions of corruption rather than its volume, and a low score means a poor reputation of institutions, not bribes counted.
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees · Refugee Data Finder
4 indicators
The number of refugees, asylum seekers and other people in need of international protection, from 1951 onward. The data are kept in two breakdowns — by country of origin and by country of asylum — and these are fundamentally different indicators: one shows where people left from, the other where they arrived. The two cannot be added together, but comparing them is useful: the gap shows who hosts forced migration and who produces it.
Electric vehicle sales and stock by country, which the IEA compiles from national vehicle registrations. Coverage is the largest markets rather than every country in the world: the agency takes data where official registration reporting exists, so the tables hold a few dozen territories rather than two hundred. That is how the source is built, not a gap in the data.
An independent energy think tank that brings the world's electricity statistics into one comparable database: generation by source, demand, installed capacity, net imports, power sector emissions and the carbon intensity of a kilowatt-hour for 214 territories from 2000 onward. The underlying data are taken from grid operators and national statistical offices — ENTSO-E, the EIA, Eurostat, national agencies — then brought to common definitions and updated more often than annual yearbooks: a preliminary estimate for the year just ended appears as early as spring.
U.S. Energy Information Administration · International Energy Statistics
6 indicators
The statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Energy, which maintains an international database covering every form of energy: production, consumption, fuel exports and imports, electricity generation, installed capacity, emissions and energy intensity for more than 230 territories. The data are collected from national reporting and converted to common units — quadrillion Btu and tonnes of oil equivalent — which is what makes them comparable: grades of coal differ in heat content by almost a factor of two, and without such conversion production in tonnes cannot be added up.
U.S. Geological Survey · Mineral Commodity Summaries
3 indicators
Annual estimates of metal and mineral production by country, which the U.S. Geological Survey has prepared since the early twentieth century and which remain the main open source on the industry. For most commodities production is concentrated in a handful of countries, so the tables hold a dozen territories rather than two hundred: that is how the industry itself is arranged, not how the data were sampled.
We do not change the values from sources: the data is loaded as is and every page names the source it came from. The only exception is summary values for groups of countries that the source does not publish (subregions, G20, BRICS and the like): we compute them from member countries and explicitly mark such cells with the word "computed".
