United Nations data
Keep this in mind: The copyright page of data.un.org http://data.un.org/Host.aspx?Content=UNdataUse says "All data and metadata provided on UNdata’s website are available free of charge and may be copied freely, duplicated and further distributed provided that UNdata is cited as the reference."
Unfortunately, most other UN sites say this "The United Nations grants permission to Users to visit the Site and to download and copy the information, documents and materials from the Site for the User’s personal, non-commercial use, without any right to resell or redistribute them or to compile or create derivative works therefrom..." I use data.un.org for all data.
UN Social and Economic Commissions http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/inter-natlinks/sd_intstat.htm lists various regional commissions and their data pages.
Millenium Development Goals Indicators http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Default.aspx can get a variety of data here
Data at Unicef http://data.unicef.org/ data on women, infant, child indicators of health.
Statistical yearbook http://unstats.un.org/unsd/syb/ most recent and access to previous yearbooks.
Other
World Bank has a data page http://data.worldbank.org/ with lots of data. Their terms of use for data sets page http://go.worldbank.org/OJC02YMLA0 says "You may extract, download, and make copies of the information contained in the Datasets, and you may share that information with third parties." and then lists various conditions. There are also some specifications on how you attribute the data sets.
One data set is the Ease of Doing Business http://www.doingbusiness.org/ "objective measures of business regulations for local firms in 185 economies and selected cities at the subnational level"
OECD's Society at a glance http://www.oecd.org/social/societyataglance.htm various data for OECD countries.
The African Development Bank now also has the Open Data For Africa http://opendataforafrica.org/ Can get data and make charts for a wide variety of variables. This is open data: the terms and conditions say "Users are free to copy, distribute, disseminate or include the data in other products for commercial and/or noncommercial purposes at no cost." (but users should list the source when using the data)
FAO stat http://faostat3.fao.org/home/E has data on agriculture, food and nutrition, population, plants, animals, etc
Also see the State of food insecurity in the world http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/ which has tables in pdf format.
FAO copyright page http://www.fao.org/contact-us/terms/en/ says "Except where otherwise indicated, content may be copied, printed and downloaded for private study, research and teaching purposes, or for use in non-commercial products or services, provided that appropriate acknowledgement of FAO as the source and copyright holder is given and that FAO's endorsement of users' views, products or services is not stated or implied in any way."
Prosperity index http://www.prosperity.com/default.aspx kind of a general overall index, including economic and other quality of life factors.
The Open Data Hub of the European Union https://open-data.europa.eu/en/data The European Commission Data Portal provides access to open public data from the European Commission. It also provides access to data of other Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies at their request.
World Statistics http://world-statistics.org/index.php from Jean-Michel Durr. "World Statistics is a new portal that gives free and easy access to data provided by International Organizations, such as the World Bank, the United Nations and Eurostat"
Indices of Social Development (ISD) http://www.indsocdev.org/ "brings together 200 indicators, synthesising them into a usable set of measures to track how different societies perform along six dimensions of social development: civic activism, inclusion of minorities," etc. Data from 1990 to 2010. Supported by World Bank, site hosted by International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague
Focus Economics http://www.focus-economics.com/ has data for 76 countries, 20+ indicators. Data for the past 5 year period can be accessed for free on their indicator and country pages
The sites listed here are mainly demography sites, but have
other data as well.
UN data, world
population prospects http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx?d=PopDiv
Population Reference Bureau http://www.prb.org/ Click on the World Population Data Sheet, or the data finder page http://www.prb.org/datafinder.aspx for some basic demographic data on world countries.
Economic
data
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The sites listed here are sites mainly about economic data,
but have other data as well.
Penn World Tables http://www.rug.nl/research/ggdc/data/pwt/
"The Penn World Table displays a set of national accounts
economic time series covering many countries. Its expenditure
entries are denominated in a common set of prices in a common
currency so that real quantity comparisons can be made,
both between countries and over time. It also provides
information about relative prices within and between
countries, as well as demographic data and capital stock
estimates." The Penn World Tables currently comprise data
for 150 countries and 30 subjects, including population, real
GDP, consumption share of GDP, investment share of GDP, real GDP
per adult, a Standard of Living Index (Consumption plus
government consumption minus military expenditure, % of
GDP). The data can be downloaded at the site above,
and there are papers available.
Groningen Growth and Development Centre http://www.ggdc.net/ "The Groningen Growth and Development Centre is a research group of economists and economic historians at the Economics Department of the University of Groningen. The group carries out research on comparative analysis of levels of economic performance and differences in growth rates in the world economy." They have a number of data bases available for free including these: Total Economy Database with timeseries for GDP in constant 1990 and 1999 prices, Employment, Population and Working Hours for at most 75 countries. Series for GDP per Capita, GDP per person employed and GDP per hour worked are also available.Series run from 1950-2002 for OECD countries and from 1950-2000 for other countries. 60-industry database: series on value added in current and constant prices, employment and value added per person engaged for at most 60-industries covering the economy for 16 countries. Series run from 1990 onwards. 10-sector database: consists of series on real GDP in national currencies, employment and, in some cases, annual working hours by broad sector of the economy for about 20 countries across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America from 1950 onwards. ICOP industry Database: provides estimates of comparative productivity levels by industry, which are compiled within the framework of the International Comparisons of Output and Productivity project. We now provide annual series from 1950-2000 for manufacturing. The ICOP Database presently covers approximately 30 countries. They also publish working papers.
The world economy statistics http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/maddison-project/home.htm At present, (January 2015), this is GDP per capita from all countries from 1950 to 2010, and from many countries from as early as 1800, and even some "countries" from 1500
The original site was here http://www.theworldeconomy.org/statistics.htm This book is from Angus Maddison, at the OEDC. Very interesting data, including very long term data. For example, Table 1-3 Level and Rate of Growth of GDP: World and Major Regions, 0-1998 A.D., and Figure 1-4 Comparative Levels of GDP Per capita: China and West Europe, 400-1998 A.D These are samples from the book.
ECONOMIC FREEDOM OF THE WORLD Annual Report by the Fraser Institute. http://www.fraserinstitute.org/ The reports can be found on the Research and News page, in Economic Freedom. The summary index is based on 23 components designed to identify the consistency of institutional arrangements and policies with economic freedom in seven major areas, including size of govt, structure of markets, freedom to trade with foreigners, and other... See the freetheworld reports page http://www.freetheworld.com/reports.html that also lists the current report, and earlier reports, and research generated from the economic freedom of the world.
The data are also here http://www.freetheworld.com/datasets_efw.html
INTERSTATE STATISTICAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES. http://www.cisstat.com/ see the Main Macroeconomic Indicators page http://www.cisstat.com/eng/macro0.htm The pages for individual countries have annual data from 1995 to 2010 on indicators such as GDP, CPI, Capital Investments, and so on.
INDEX OF ECONOMIC FREEDOM http://www.heritage.org/index/ measures the level of freedom and prospects for growth in our global economy. The Index is a practical reference guide to the economies of 161 countries. This site links to the book. You can see the rankings of the countries, including rankings from 1995 through current. Can also find it here http://www.heritage.org/index/Default.aspx Includes data in both urls.
McKEEVER
INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC POLICY ANALYSIS http://www.mkeever.com/
includes ratings of economic policies of about 27
countries. Specifically, the ratings look at whether the
policies facilitates or obstruct wealth creation.
ILO labor
statistics data http://www.ilo.org/ilostat
includes "Yearly statistics of Employment, Unemployment,
Hours of Work, Wages, Labour Cost, Consumer Price Indices,
Occupational Injuries, Strikes and Lockouts" 1969 to
current. Also, "Monthly statistics of Employment, Unemployment,
Hours of Work, Wages, Consumer Price Indices. 1976 to
current. Completeness of data for yearly and monthly
varies by country, for example, some countries only have data
for 1990 to present, some earlier.
World
bank http://go.worldbank.org/8HKVHK4HP0
(very long url) has a table showing income distribution.
The table is labeled WDI 2007 poverty. The years of the
data vary from 1993 to 2005.
Luxembourg Income
Study site http://www.lisdatacenter.org/
especially
see
the
LIS
key
figures,
"Summary
measures
for
all
datasets
in
the
LIS
archive
are
reported."
such
as
income
inequality,
relative
poverty
rates,
poverty rates for children. These tables are free.
The actual data is free to academic researchers in member
countries, and to students world wide.
Global
Competitiveness Report http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2015-2016/
ranking countries. "The Global Competitiveness Report is a
contribution to enhancing our understanding of the key factors
which determine economic growth, and explain why some countries
are so much more successful than others in raising income levels
and opportunities for their respective populations, and in
joining the upper ranks of international competitiveness.
Unfortunately, no central page for these reports, so need to
search for other years."
Inequality
Project http://utip.gov.utexas.edu/
has a data page. UTIP is a small research group concerned
with measuring and explaining movements of inequality in wages
and earnings and patterns of industrial change around the
world."
UNCTAD World Investment Report http://unctad.org/en/Pages/DIAE/World%20Investment%20Report/World_Investment_Report.aspx
includes data sets such as Inward FDI Stock as a
Percentage of Gross Domestic Product, and many others.
World Income Inequality Database http://www.wider.unu.edu/research/WIID3-0B/en_GB/database/
"The UNU-WIDER World Income Inequality Database (WIID)
collects and stores information on income inequality for
developed, developing, and transition countries." From the
United Nations University. The last update is from 2014.
I'm not entirely sure of the relationship, but some
other databases are here http://myweb.uiowa.edu/fsolt/swiid/swiid.html
and http://worldinequality.org/
International Development Statistics (IDS) online databases on aid and other resource flows http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/50/17/5037721.htm data on donor aid.
World Top Income Database http://g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/topincomes/ as of March 2012, "top income share time series over the long-run for more than twenty countries to date."
PovCalNet http://go.worldbank.org/WE8P1I8250 "PovcalNet is an interactive computational tool that allows you to replicate the calculations made by the World Bank's researchers in estimating the extent of absolute poverty in the world, including the $1 a day poverty measures, as published in the background papers by Chen and Ravallion and in the 2007 World Development Indicators."
Political data
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Some research indicates that change is related to governments. Specifically, successful change requires the presence of stable and flexible political systems. I'm not sure there is data on this exact topic, so these sites have data that might be indicators of state stability or flexibility. A number of these sites focus on political or economic freedom.
Bertelsmann Transformation Index http://www.bertelsmann-transformation-index.de/ another political index of some sort
The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems
(CSES) http://www.cses.org/
"collaborative
program
of
cross-national
research
among
election
studies
conducted
in
over
fifty
consolidated
and
emerging
democracies.
The
goals
of
this
unique
program
of
research
are
threefold: illuminate how electoral institutions constrain the
beliefs and behaviors of citizens to condition the nature and
quality of democratic choice as expressed through popular
elections; understand the nature of political and social
cleavages and alignments; and shed light on how citizens, living
under diverse political arrangements, evaluate democratic
institutions and processes." They can look at
"satisfaction with the performance of democracy: how do citizens
respond to varying institutional forms of democracy?"
Freedom house http://www.freedomhouse.org/
especially see their country ratings page, which is "an
annual assessment of state state of freedom by assigning each
country and territory the status of "Free," "Partly Free," or
"Not Free" by averaging their political rights and civil
liberties ratings. This data is available as html,
excel and pdf, for 1972/73 to the current year.
Global Integrity Index http://www.globalintegrity.org/report assesses the existence, effectiveness, and citizen access to key national-level anti-corruption mechanisms across a diverse range of countries.
The Polyarchy Scale http://www.nd.edu:80/~mcoppedg/crd/datacrd.htm
This
is
a
scale
"measuring
thresholds
of
polyarchy
in
every
independent
state
in
the
world
as
of
mid-1985."
Also
has
updated
data
for 2000. Developed by Michael Coppedge. The scale
ranges from "Meaningful fair elections are held, there is full
freedom for political organization and expression, and there is
no preferential presentation of official views in the media." to
"No meaningful elections are held, all organizations are banned
or controlled by the government or official party, all public
dissent is suppressed, and there is no public alternative to
official information."
The Center for
Systemic Peace http://www.systemicpeace.org/
has
a
bunch
of
data
sets including the Polity IV (governance), armed conflict,
terrorists, and more. Look at other data on the Center for
International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM)
at http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/
State failure http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/political-instability-task-force-home/ has data (and research)
about Internal Wars and Failures of Governance, 1955-most
recent data. Although, to tell the truth, I don't exactly see
where to get the data.
Sachs and Warner http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Economics/Growth/sachs.htm
this
data
set
includes
some
economic
data
such
as
per
capita
gdp
growth,
purchasing
power,
but
also
the
degree
to
which
an
economy
is rated as 'open' and 'institutional quality index' which is
political stability, corruption, a few other criteria. The
Sachs and Warner data set is also available at http://www.cid.harvard.edu/ciddata/ciddata.html
SIPRI database on
military expenditure http://www.sipri.org/databases
especially read the sources and methods carefully.
Transparency International corruption perception index http://www.transparency.org/ See "What we do" then Publications. These are also available at Internet Center for Corruption Research http://www.icgg.org/ The TI site also has a global corruption barometer and a bribe payers survey.
World Audit http://www.worldaudit.org/ lists data on democracy, political rights, civil liberties, corruption. The civil liberties and political rights are Freedom House data (described above).
World bank
governance indicators http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home
data on corruption and other governance
indicators. This data set is also listed at the World
Bank Research Data Sets described above. The
variables in this data set are: Voice and Accountability,
Political Stability and Absence of Violence, Government
Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of
Corruption.
Vision of Humanity http://www.visionofhumanity.org/ from the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), a non profit think tank. http://economicsandpeace.org/ . The Vision of Humanity has a couple of indexes, including the Global Peace Index, Terrorism Index, and peace indexes for a couple of countries.
Global Terrorism Database http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/ an open-source database including information on terrorist events around the world since 1970
Department of Peace and Conflict Research http://www.pcr.uu.se/ houses a whole bunch of data at their datasets page http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/UCDP/ such as the Data on Armed Conflict, and a lot of other conflict type data.
Carleton Indicators for Foreign Policy http://www4.carleton.ca/cifp/ has indicators for governance and fragile states
Conflict and Security Indices: A Summary of Open-Source Data http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA494834 this 2008 paper by Pavlovic, Nada J. ; Blackler, Kristen ; Mandel, David R. reviews a bunch of measures of conflict and security indicators.
Correlates of War http://www.correlatesofwar.org/ includes data on war, but also religion and some other stuff
Country Indicators for Foreign Policy (CIFP) http://www4.carleton.ca/cifp/
see the country ranking tables, and the indicator
descriptions for explanations. Many variables are ranked from
1996 to 2000, for many countries. Variables include armed
conflict, gov stability, militarization, demographics, and
others.
The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) https://www.prio.org/Data/
have a number of data sets on various topics. Of particular
interest is that they offer data used in publications, that
people can download and duplicate the published
research. PRIO also has research available.
Social
data
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Unesco statistics about education Indicators and data bases of education. http://www.uis.unesco.org/Pages/default.aspx click "literacy" then "statistical tables". Requires Java.
WORLD DATABASE OF HAPPINESS http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/ This is "an ongoing register of scientific research on subjective appreciation of life. It brings together findings that are scattered throughout many studies and provides a basis for meta-analytical studies." The data are available as an spss file from the author. Also, click on Finding Reports and then Rank reports of Happiness in Nations. This leads to a table showing a list of countries and their average happiness. You can also go to Happiness in Nations, then Search Findings by Item Type and some of the questions have data for a large number of countries.
Barro-Lee education data set http://www.cid.harvard.edu/ciddata/ciddata.html and http://www.barrolee.com/data/dataexp.htm and http://databank.worldbank.org/Data/Views/VariableSelection/SelectVariables.aspx?source=Education%20Statistics#
UN Refugee agency http://www.unhcr.ch/ a ton of international refugee data, including current and some trend statistics. Click on refugee statistics, then there are a number of reports available. The annual reports are in pdf.
Ethnic, linguistic and religious fractionalization http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty_pages/romain.wacziarg/papersum.html fractionalization data available here, as well as a paper, by Romain Wacziarg and others. Fractionalization is presented for three factors: ethnic, linguistic and region. Data for each country varies from 1983 (e.g. Angola) to 1998 (e.g., Austria), but seems only for one year for each country. Overall, there is high correlation between ethnicity and language (0.63) but low correlation between language and religion (0.24) and between religion and ethnicity (0.14). That is, ethnicity and language seem tied together, but religion seems independent.
Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization (ELF) Indices for 1961 and 1985 http://weber.ucsd.edu/~proeder/data.htm Dr. Roeder writes that "A common interpretation of the index is that it is the probability that two individuals chosen at random from the population (country) will be from different ethnic groups." There is high correlation between Roeder's ELF and Wacziarg et al's ethnic (0.79) and language (0.75) fractionalization, but low between ELF and religious (0.33) fractionalization.
Social Fractionalization, Political Instability, and the Size of Government http://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/staffp/2001/03/annett.htm includes a data set showing fractionalization of a country's population (along ethnolinguistic and religious dimensions) . The ratings are listed here http://humandevelopment.bu.edu/dev_indicators/show_info.cfm?index_id=234&data_type=1
Quality of Life http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf Quality of life data for 2005, includes data. The data are also in this file http://gsociology.icaap.org/data/PD_useful.xls available on my data sets page.
Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index, 2015 http://reports.weforum.org/travel-and-tourism-competitiveness-report-2015/ from World Economic Forum
Social Statistics http://www.postyour.info/ A kind of social survey for anyone. They post some questions (and you can suggest some), people answer, then you can either get some statistics on line or download the data set.
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life http://www.pewforum.org/
has a lot of data on religion. Their data are free to use for
research, academic, but with conditions. One example of a data
set is the Global Religious Landscape http://features.pewforum.org/grl/population-number.php
numbers and percent of national populations in major religious
groups
The Fraser Institute has this project "Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom" https://www.fraserinstitute.org/research/towards-a-worldwide-index-of-human-freedom from January 2013, which measures economic and also personal freedom, including religion. A table showing data is in chapter 3.
Crime
data
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top
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime http://www.unodc.org/ has a section on data and analysis, including a crime statistics database http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/crimedata.html .
UN Survey on crime http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/Crime-Monitoring-Surveys.html data are available from surveys. A summary is available for total crimes, "total recorded crimes per 100,000 population" on this page. Also the latest report is the 9th (as of April 2008)
International Centre for Prison Studies http://www.prisonstudies.org/ has world prison briefs where you can get data on prison totals, rates, and other related data.
The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics http://wp.unil.ch/europeansourcebook/ Crime and criminal justice data. This is a wordpress site of The University of Lausanne.
National and international well being and progress
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OECD's Measuring the Progress of Societies http://www.wikiprogress.org/ OECD project.
Measuring national well-being http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/user-guidance/well-being/index.html
Gross National Happiness http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/ Centre for Bhutan Studies
Canadian Index of Wellbeing https://uwaterloo.ca/canadian-index-wellbeing/
Social Progress Index http://www.socialprogressimperative.org/data/spi "The Social Progress Index is an aggregate index of social and environmental indicators that capture three dimensions of social progress: Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing, and Opportunity. "
World Happiness Report http://worldhappiness.report/ can download data. The website doesn't say who organized/produced this, except at the bottom of a couple of pages it says "The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) was commissioned by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2012 to mobilize scientific and technical expertise from academia, civil society, and the private sector to support practical problem solving for sustainable development at local, national, and global scales." However, Columbia's Earth Institute seems to be involved: http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/16/world-happiness-report-2016-launched/
How's Life? 2015, Measuring Well-being http://www.oecd.org/std/how-s-life-23089679.htm How’s Life? describes the essential ingredients that shape people’s well-being in OECD and partner countries.
National Accounts of Well-being http://www.nationalaccountsofwellbeing.org/
Misc data
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Democide http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/
murder by governments.
Axel Dreher has an index of globalization, and another on
corruption http://globalization.kof.ethz.ch/
The CSGR Globalisation Index http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/csgr/index/
"measures
the
economic,
social
and
political
dimensions
of
globalisation
for
countries
on
an
annual
basis
over
the
period
1982
to
2004,
and
combines
these into an overall globalisation index, or score."
Internet World
Stats, http://www.internetworldstats.com/
An International website featuring worldwide up to date
Internet Usage Statistics and Population Data for over 233
countries and world regions. Their world table http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
shows world data, and they have more detailed data by region.
The Lagatum prosperity index http://www.prosperity.com/ another indicator of wealth and welbeing
Cline Center for Democracy http://www.clinecenter.illinois.edu/data/ has a number of data sets that are publicly available.
Societal Infrastructure and Development (SID) Datasets - religious composition, educational attainment, etc.
The Social Political and Economic Event Database Project Datasets - (civil unrest, property rights, electoral processes, etc.
Global Innovation Index http://www.globalinnovationindex.org/ something about the national economy that allows for innovative activities.
Sites that list other data sites
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BLS link to other official data sites http://www.bls.gov/bls/other.htm
UN links to other official data sites http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/inter-natlinks/sd_natstat.htm
Official Statistics of the world http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/Key Starting
Points for Statistics http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stats.htm
Data
on
all
sorts
of
topics.
Some
are
free
but
many
are
not.
But
this
lists
so
many
varies
sources
its
worth
looking at.
Development
Data http://www.developmentdata.org/
Data on topics related to development.
Guide to freely available international data resources http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/get-data/other-providers/international.aspx from ESDS international
The Macro Data
Guide http://www.nsd.uib.no/macrodataguide/index.html
has some comments about the data quality
This Open Directory page http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Government/Multilateral/Regional/
also lists various regional organizations, many of which
have data.
Data Portal Tools
CKAN http://ckan.org/ an open-source data portal platform. The website says "CKAN is a powerful data management system that makes data accessible – by providing tools to streamline publishing, sharing, finding and using data. CKAN is aimed at data publishers (national and regional governments, companies and organizations) wanting to make their data open and available."
Open Data Catalogs http://census.okfn.org/ from the Open Knowledge Foundation. "The open data census assesses the state of open data around the world. This site hosts the census and presents the results along with other key facts about the state of open data and especially open government data around the world."
Data repositories
Data Hub http://datahub.io/ The site says "Give your data a home"
Open Data info
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European Union's Open data: An engine for innovation, growth and transparent governance http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2011:0882:FIN:EN:PDF
Whitehouse has a Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2013/m-13-13.pdf
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Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation http://statistics.apec.org/ has tables of basic data
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