Data Driven

Make better educated travel decisions with the price index series presented in today's Viz of the Day. The figures highlight common travel-related expenditures, ranging from accommodation, transportation, and urban transit to beer and soccer, and may well help individual travelers to better gauge the relative cost of travel to their destinations of choice.

In a perfect world, where access to technology and the wealth are equally distributed, the GDP of each country would be proportional to its population. In the real world that relationship exists on average (see the dot charts below) but with significant deviations from the trend. Many developed countries, being relatively less populous than their developing counterparts, have high levels of GDP, while the GDPs of...

Now, after more than three decades, the Chinese government is ending its controversial one-child policy. Originally implemented in 1980 to curb its rapid population growth, China’s one-child policy has witnessed a fertility rate decline from 2.7 births per woman in 1981 to 1.6 births in 2015. Those who backed the one-child policy claimed it led to 300 million fewer births and lifted 200-400 million people out of...

The World Bank EdStats All Indicator Query holds around 3,000 internationally comparable indicators that describe education access, progression, completion, literacy, teachers, population, and expenditures. The indicators cover the education cycle from pre-primary to vocational and tertiary education. The query also holds learning outcome data from international and regional learning assessments (e.g. PISA, TIMSS,...

7 September 2015 - Africa’s power sector struggles under low access and insufficient capacity. Only 35 percent of the population of Sub-Sahara Africa, including South Africa, has access to electricity while more than 90 percent of the populations of Burundi, Chad, Liberia, Malawi, and South Sudan lack access to a power grid. Most African countries, except South Africa, face severe power generation capacity deficits...

The South African economy exhibited weak quarter-on-quarter real GDP growth earlier this year and faces high and rising unemployment, weak domestic demand, and falling market prices on key export commodities. Accelerated growth is on the horizon for South Africa, however, according to consensus forecasts of multiple major international agencies, even if at a slower rate than other large sub-saharan African...

The Global Competitiveness Report 2014-2015 assesses the competitiveness landscape of 144 economies, providing insight into the drivers of their productivity and prosperity. The report remains the most comprehensive assessment of national competitiveness worldwide, providing a platform for dialogue between government, business and civil society about the actions required to improve economic prosperity....

National and sub-national time-series data on Ebola cases and deaths in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Senegal and Mali is the most comprehensive dataset on Ebola situation available to public. The data compiled manually by The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in West & Central Africa from a number of published reports (WHO situation reports and the data from the national Ministries...

2014 was a challenging year for world markets and for world currencies too. Almost every currency in the world was devalued (more or less) compared to US dollar. Russian ruble (-42%) and Ukraine hryvnia (-47.5%) became "champions" (due to political conflict between those states). UK Pound Sterling and Pakistani Rupee were the strongest. Among the developed markets US was the best (+12.8% price return...

Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) complements standard income poverty indicators (which define poverty as percent of population living at 1.25, 2, 2.5 etc. dollars a day) by taking into account deprivation aspect of poverty. Thus, for many people being poor means not only lack of money but also limited access to education, nutrition, sanitation, water and so on. MPI concept embraces this idea by defining the poor...

India is a country with the biggest amount of snakebite envenoming cases occurring each year: on average, 120 thousand cases take place every year in this country. However, India is the second biggest country in the world and that is why mentioned above number looks much less ghastly in terms of per 1000 population, namely, 0.1 cases. Bhutan, conversely, is less favorable country in this regard with as much as 4...

In this dashboard, we integrate the most recent medium and long-term forecasts of key economic indicators for G20 countries from major international organizations, namely, the World Bank, IMF, United Nations, OECD, European Commission and the Economist Intelligence Unit. The data presented cover projections of real GDP growth, characterizing each country's output of final goods and services; consumer price...

Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) - is comprehensive statistical tool assessing African countries' performance in provision of public goods and services. Consisting of 133 variables derived from 32 independent sources IIAG measures governance performance across 4 pillars: Safety and Rule of Law, Participation and Human Rights, Sustainable Economic Opportunity and Human Development. All-embracing nature of...

The United States rank last in child income poverty, has the largest difference in P90/P10, and has the highest percentage of people living below 50% median income.

Due to the worst drought in the U.S. since 1956 and unfavorable weather conditions in the Black Sea region, world grain prices jumped in July. International Grain Counsil announced that its Grains and Oilseeds Index reached all-time high on July, 20th. If the situation around world grain supply continue deteriorate, people in poor and developing countries can suffer from increasing food prices as food expenditures...

Following the recommendation of experts gathered in the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) Round Table on hunger measurement, hosted at FAO headquarters in September 2011, an initial set of indicators aiming to capture various aspects of food insecurity is presented on the dashboard. "High incomes, low spending on food relative to other outlays, and significant investment in agricultural research and development...

Food is a basic human need. And we tried to estimate how much do people pay for food in different countries. It appeared that food availability significantly varies across countries. In general, price of 1000 Kcal goes up inline with per capita income. For example, in Greece, Belarus, Croatia, Japan and Macedonia people pay $2.8 (based on PPP) for 1000 Kcal. At the same time in Nigeria, Uzbekistan, China India and...

Brent crude oil prices will average $72.8 per barrel in 2018 and to $73.7 per barrel in 2019, according to the most recent forecast from the US Energy Information Administration's monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (EIA). This reflects an upward revision of $9.5/barrel to the EIA forecast for 2018 compared to last month's Outlook. The OECD Economic Outlook as of May 2018 was less bullish, pegging the real price of a...

According to The World Bank Poverty and Inequality Statistics, more than 1200 million people live on less than $1.25 a day (on a PPP basis). It means that every fifth person in the world lives in extreme poverty.Click on the country on the map to get data on number of poors and inequality level.

Africa is a continent with 1 billion people, which have an average income about $250 per person in a month. African population is young and fast growing. More then 40% of people are under 14 years old and average annual growth of population is 2.3%. On average, every African women has more than 4 children. Only 16% of population use internet. No more them 64% are provided by water supply and less then 40% of...

According to African Economic Outlook (AEO), released at the end of May, 2012, African economy will perform solid and stable expansion in 2012-2013. AEO projects that economic growth in Africa will accelerate to 4.5% in 2012 and even to 4.8% in 2013. Among the largest African economies Nigeria, Angola and Ethiopia will show booming (7% and above) GDP growth rates. Click on any country in the table to see its GDP...

(October 2016) - Renewable energy resources have increasingly become mainstream energy soures worldwide, catapulted by new capacity in developing countries. Depending on the source, renewable energy has or is poised to surpass coal to become the world's largest source of electrical power capacity. The International Energy Agency (IEA) in its most recent medium-term renewable market report said that this transition...