UK Data Service .Stat Guides
Guide to World Bank World Development Indicators
INTRODUCTION
The World Banks World Development Indicators (WDI) contains statistical data for over 1500 development indicators. The extensive collection of development data includes social, economic, financial, natural resources and environmental indicators covering the period from 1960 onwards for over 200 economies. The new 2016 edition includes indicators to help measure the 169 targets of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Main topics
The main topics in the WDI are as follows:
People
- Population and demographics
- Labor and employment
- Poverty and income distribution
- Education
- Health
Environment
- Land use and agricultural production
- Energy production and use
- Urbanization
- Emissions
- Adjusted savings
Economy
- National accounts (local currency)
- National accounts (US$)
- Derived national accounts
- Purchasing power parity
- Trade
- Government finance
- Monetary
- Balance of payments
- External debt
States & Markets
- Investment climate
- Business environment
- Financial depth
- Tax and trade policies
- Defense expenditures and arms trade
- Military expenditures and arms trade
- Transport, power, and communications
- Information and technology
Global Links
- Investment and trade
- Financial flows
- Development assistance and aid
- Migration
- Travel and tourism
Access World bank data
As a result of the World Bank's Open Data initiative the World Bank WDI dataset hosted by the UK Data Service are now freely available to all. Please refer to the Terms of Use for Datasets in The World Bank's Data Catalog.
User RESOURCES
- Download the full WDI publication from the World Bank (PDF: 7Mb) & highlights featuring the SDGs (PDF: 6Mb)
- World Bank World development indicators and countries
- World Bank Data section
- World Bank Data Overview
- How the World Bank classify countries
- Acronyms and Abbreviations
- World Bank Specific Data Series information
- Data Updates and Errata
