Reference
Statistics and data sources for country research
This is the entry point for basic data used when comparing international politics, economics, security, demographics, and living standards. When writing a country profile, check the latest available year, whether a value is estimated or observed, and how each indicator is defined.
Minimum set
Basic statistics and development indicators
Check the population, GDP, poverty, education, infrastructure, and development level that form the base of a country profile.
GDP, population, growth, poverty, education, infrastructure, FDI, and trade. The first stop for country comparisons.
Long time-series development indicators covering more than 200 economies and regions.
GDP, inflation, unemployment, fiscal balances, current accounts, and IMF forecasts for macroeconomic checks.
Cross-cutting UN statistics, including national accounts, population, energy, industry, and trade.
HDI, inequality-adjusted HDI, gender indicators, inequality, and poverty for living-standard comparisons.
Fast visualization for population, health, education, energy, CO2, democracy, and related topics.
Political systems, democracy, and freedom
Compare elections, autocratization, civil liberties, and rule of law quantitatively.
Research-grade data that decomposes democracy, elections, liberty, deliberation, and equality into detailed indicators.
Country assessments of political rights and civil liberties with readable country narratives.
Government effectiveness, rule of law, control of corruption, regulatory quality, and political stability.
Security, military, and conflict
Review military spending, nuclear forces, conflict, domestic violence, and security risks.
Long time-series country military expenditure data for comparing defense capacity and regional tension.
Annual synthesis of nuclear forces, arms control, arms transfers, and the security environment.
Research data on interstate war, civil war, and organized violence.
Event data on protests, riots, and political violence for tracking local security and civil-war dynamics.
Trade, industry, and resources
Examine import and export structure, tariffs, food, energy, and critical resources.
Exports and imports by country, commodity, and partner. A baseline for supply-chain research.
Tariffs, trade values, and official trade data for more than 150 economies.
Agriculture, food, land use, forestry, and nutrition for food-security and agricultural export analysis.
Electricity, oil, gas, renewables, and CO2 for checking energy security.
Population, migration, and refugees
Check population structure, urbanization, migration, refugees, and internally displaced people.
Population, fertility, mortality, age structure, and future projections.
Refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people, and stateless people for conflict and humanitarian-crisis context.
International migration, remittances, migration trends, and migration policy.
Health, education, and labor
Review living standards, civic life, human capital, and the labor market.
Life expectancy, causes of death, infectious diseases, health systems, and health expenditure.
Enrollment, literacy, education expenditure, and education inequality.
Unemployment, labor-force participation, youth employment, working hours, and informal employment.
Usage notes
International statistics do not update on the same cycle across indicators. GDP may have recent estimates while poverty, health, education, refugee, and labor indicators can lag by several years.
In reports, cite not only the number but also the data year, whether it is estimated or observed, the source institution, the indicator definition, and how missing countries are handled.