science

World Development Indicators

World Development Indicators is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand World Development Indicators rather than just read about it. In short: World Development Indicators (WDI) is the World Bank’s premier compilation of international statistics on global development. Drawing from officially recognized sources and including national, regional, and global estimates, the WDI provides access to approximately 1,600 indicators for 217 economies, with some time series extending back more than 50 years.

Key takeaways

World Development Indicators belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect World Development Indicators to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of World Development Indicators from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

World Development Indicators (WDI) is the World Bank’s premier compilation of international statistics on global development. Drawing from officially recognized sources and including national, regional, and global estimates, the WDI provides access to approximately 1,600 indicators for 217 economies, with some time series extending back more than 50 years. The database helps users find information related to development, both current and historical. The topics covered in the WDI range from poverty, health, and demographics to GDP, trade, and the environment. The World Development Indicators website provides access to data as well as information about data coverage, curation, and methodologies, and allows users to discover what type of indicators are available, how they are collected, and how they can be visualized to analyze development trends.

Data sources A share of the indicators in WDI come from World Bank Group surveys and data collection efforts, but the majority are based on data originally collected, compiled and published by other sources, including other international organizations such as UN specialized agencies (sometimes in cooperation with the World Bank), national statistical offices, organizations with a specific research or monitoring focus, the private sector, and academic studies.

Accessing the data The World Bank’s Open Data site provides access to the WDI database free of charge to all users. Users can browse the data by Country, Indicators, Topics, and via the Data Catalog. The WDI database can be accessed directly via DataBank, a query tool where users can select series, economies, and time periods, and do bulk downloads in Excel or CSV, or via API. In addition, data can be programmatically accessed using Stata, R, and Python modules.

WDI and the Sustainable Development Goals World Development Indicators takes a comprehensive view of the world and currently includes many of the official SDG indicators as well as other data that are relevant to SDGs. For example, in addition to official indicators on the income/consumption growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population relative to the average as per SDG target 10.1, the WDI presents indicators like the Gini index or income shares by decile or quintile that are relevant for SDG goal 10 on inequality. SDG related indicators can also be explored in the SDG dashboard, which uses WDI data.

References

External links World Development Indicators World Bank Open Data DataBank WDI and the Sustainable Development Goals The Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2018 Google - public data

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with World Development Indicators

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what World Development Indicators claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to World Development Indicators before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about World Development Indicators ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of World Development Indicators

In research: World Development Indicators appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses World Development Indicators in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: World Development Indicators is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Demographics indicators, World Bank, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for World Development Indicators outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study World Development Indicators in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what World Development Indicators means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain World Development Indicators out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is World Development Indicators in simple terms?

Why does World Development Indicators matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study World Development Indicators?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on World Development Indicators.