RESOURCE DATABASE

General Databases

General | Health | Environment

Nationamaster.com
NationMaster is a vast compilation of data from such sources as the CIA World Factbook, the UN, and the OECD. The site allows users to rank countries by indicator, generate maps and graphics on all kinds of statistics, and create profiles of individual countries. It is also possible to view profiles of individual countries including their maps and flags, use correlation reports and scatterplots to find relationships between variables, and refer to a fully integrated encyclopedia with over one million articles. The goal of the site is to be “the web’s one-stop resource for country statistics,” bringing them to life by providing visualization technologies and easily accessible data.

OECD Statistics
OECD Statistics is a single online platform, which enables users to extract data and build tables from across different databases (e.g., health, environment, education, etc.). It is worth noting that OECD Statistics limits comparisons to the 30 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

OECD Factbook
The OECD Factbook is a handy resource that ranks the 30 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) according to the most popular economic, environmental and social indicators (e.g., GDP per capita, life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.). The data are presented graphically for easy viewing, defined and explained in text format, and made accessible as tables which can be manipulated in excel. The Factbook is especially useful when making comparisons between advanced industrial countries like the United States, Germany, Japan, etc.

Statistics of the Human Development Report
Statistics of the Human Development Report includes all of the statistical data from the Human Development Report (HDR) as well as resources to help users better understand these data, including: helpful information about the human development index (HDI) and other indices, links to other background materials, data resources and on-going debates and discussions on human development statistics. The benefit if

World Development Indicators Database
The World Development Indicators (WDI) database contains official-source data from the World Bank and other international agencies, and is intended for cross-country comparisons. More than 700 development indicators (including time series) for 208 countries are included in the database. A major advantage of the WDI database is that it is extremely comprehensive; a major disadvantage is that it can be somewhat confusing to navigate.

The United States Census Bureau
The U.S. Census Bureau serves as a leading source of quality data about the American people and economy. The official U.S Census is described in Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. It calls for an actual enumeration of the people every ten years, to be used for apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives among the states. The first official Census was conducted in 1790 under Thomas Jefferson. Since that time, the

Decennial Census has been conducted every ten years, generally on April 1 st in years ending in zero. Common Census indicators include age, income, gender, employment, educational attainment, etc. An interesting and useful feature of the Census website is called “Fact Sheet” and it allows users to retrieve Census data for different levels of geography, including: states, counties, cities and towns, and ZIP codes.