OVERVIEW
World Development Indicators (WDI) serves as the World Bank's primary collection of internationally comparable data on development. It is a comprehensive resource that contains pertinent, top-notch statistics concerning global development and poverty alleviation efforts. Within this database, you can access over 1,400 time series indicators for 217 economies and over 40 country groups, with historical data spanning over five decades for many of these indicators.
*The description above is a paraphrased version of the description on the World Bank’s website.
Available Data File Formats
Excel, CSV, Tabbed TXT, SDMX
Accessibility
This is an open data source for public use.
https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators
How to retrieve data by example
Scenario
Suppose you want to examine GDP growth rates, food imports, and food exports in China, India, Japan, and Kenya over a decade from 2013 to 2022 in order to assess how well each country handled economic difficulties, such as the effects of COVID-19.
Step-by-step
1. Visit the World Bank Development Indicators’ website by clicking on https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators
2. From the left panel of the window, click on “Database” and select “World Development Indicators”.
3. From the left pane of the window, scroll down and click on “Country” to select the countries of your choice (China, India, Japan, and Kenya). You can use the “search bar” or the “filter” to search and select countries of your choice.
4. From the left pane, click on “series” to select “GDP growth (annual %)” “Food Exports (% of merchandise exports)”, “Food Imports (% of merchandise imports)” or use the scroll bar, “search bar” or the “filter”.
5. From the left pane, click on “Time” and select the years of your choice (from 2013 to 2022) and click on “Apply Changes”.
6. Afterwards, this how the interface would appear.
7. To analyze GDP growth, food exports, and food imports for any other country (such as India) click on the grey colored box enclosed in the yellow circle to display the list of countries and select India as shown below.
8. After selecting any other country of interest (such as India), this is how the interface would appear.
9. To download the chart, click on the “Download” icon enclosed by a yellow circle as seen below.
10. To download the data of the chart in any format (for example, Excel), click on the “Download options” enclosed by a yellow circle.
11. This is how the excel data would appear.
Be sure to consult with the source website on how to correctly cite your data. For this scenario, the citation in APA would look something like this:
World Bank Development Indicators, Washington D.C: The World Bank (2024)