Methodology
This page explains how statistics reach this site and the rules used when numbers are compared or described.
Collection
Each measure is defined by a fixed request to an official data service: a dataset code and an exact selection of every dimension, such as age group, sex and unit. Annual measures are checked about once a week; monthly and quarterly measures daily. If the source has not changed, nothing new is published.
Checks before publication
- The response must be the expected dataset, and every fixed dimension must return exactly the category that was requested.
- Periods must match the release frequency, and each place and period may appear only once.
- Values must be numeric and within logical limits for the measure. A share cannot be negative and a death rate cannot exceed 1,000 per 1,000 people, but unusual real values, such as hyperinflation, are kept.
- If a response contains far fewer values than the published version, it is treated as incomplete and not published.
- For World Bank series, the licence and series name are re-read from the provider's metadata. A changed licence withdraws the series; a changed name holds it until the definition is reviewed.
When a check fails, only the affected measure is held back. Visitors keep seeing the last valid version, and the update is retried automatically. When a handful of values in one or two countries are impossible, those values alone are left out and the rest of the update goes ahead.
Versions and consistency
Every accepted update creates a new version. Revised values replace older ones in the new version without changing earlier versions. Charts, tables, summaries and downloads on a page always come from the same publication. The plain link to a page shows the latest figures; the “link to this version” option keeps the numbers you saw, for as long as that publication is retained.
Missing values and flags
A missing value is shown as a dash and is never treated as zero. Lines in charts are not joined across missing years. Flags from the source, such as estimated, provisional or a break in the series, are shown beside the value and included in downloads. Projections, such as the ILO's figures for the current and next year or the UN population projections to 2100, are drawn as dashed lines and are not used as a country's latest value.
Comparisons
- Only places measured with the same indicator are compared, so the definition, unit and source are identical.
- Rankings use the latest period with data for most countries, so every value refers to the same year. A separate view shows each country's latest figure with its own year.
- Group figures, such as the EU or the world, are the aggregates published by the source. This site does not calculate averages of countries.
- Similar measures from different sources, such as life expectancy from Eurostat and from the UN, are kept separate and labelled with their source.
Describing change
Changes in percentages (rates and shares in %) are given in percentage points: a rise from 5% to 6% is 1 percentage point. Changes in rates per population, such as nurses per 100,000 people, are given as a difference in the same unit: a rise from 692.5 to 721.3 is 28.8 nurses per 100,000 people. Changes in index values are given in index points, and changes in counts and amounts in percent. Sentences on each page are calculated from the published values and are left out when a needed value is missing. No text is generated by an AI service.
Countries and groups
Places are identified by codes, not names. World regions and income groups follow the World Bank classification. EU regions are the NUTS 2 regions of the 2024 classification, with Eurostat's codes and official names; a regional measure ranks regions, and the country figures in the same dataset are shown only for reference. Some measures from national statistical offices cover a single country and have no ranking.
Languages
The site is available in English, Portuguese, Spanish, German and French. Figures are the same in every language. Country names in other languages come from the international CLDR tables; region names stay in the official language of the region. Measure names and definitions were translated for this site from the English text, which follows the source's own definition.