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Between 2 Geeks: Episode 3 – Getting an education on education

Raka Banerjee's picture

Education is one of the strongest tools that we have to reduce poverty, improve health outcomes, increase gender equality, and promote peace and stability. For every year that people are educated, their earnings increase by 10%. However, there are still 121 million children who are not attending primary and secondary school around the world, and approximately 250 million children can’t read or write.

What can countries do to change this situation, and what can successful countries teach others about how to get things right in the classroom?

The 2017 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals: a new visual guide to data and development

World Bank Data Team's picture
Also available in: 中文 | العربية | Español | Français

The World Bank is pleased to release the 2017 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals. With over 150 maps and data visualizations, the new publication charts the progress societies are making towards the 17 SDGs.

The Atlas is part of the World Development Indicators (WDI) family of products that offer high-quality, cross-country comparable statistics about development and people’s lives around the globe. You can:

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their associated 169 targets are ambitious. They will be challenging to implement, and challenging to measure. The Atlas offers the perspective of experts in the World Bank on each of the SDGs.

Trends, comparisons + country-level analysis for 17 SDGs

For example, the interactive treemap below illustrates how the number and distribution of people living in extreme poverty has changed between 1990 and 2013. The reduction in the number of poor in East Asia and Pacific is dramatic, and despite the decline in the Sub-Saharan Africa’s extreme poverty rate to 41 percent in 2013, the region’s population growth means that 389 million people lived on less than $1.90/day in 2013 - 113 million more than in 1990

Note: the light shaded areas in the treemap above represent the largest number of people living in extreme poverty in that country, in a single year, over the period 1990-2013.

Newly published data, methods and approaches for measuring development

Chart: How Is the World's Youth Population Changing?

Tariq Khokhar's picture
Also available in: 中文 | Español | العربية

 

The world's population is young: 42 percent of people are under the age of 25. In South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people aged 12-24 has steadily risen to 525 million in 2015 - almost half the global youth population. The newly released Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2017 analyses this and other data related to the 17 SDGs.

Read more in "The 2017 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals: a new visual guide to data and development"

 

Interested in using purchasing power parity data? The International Comparison Program’s new site has you covered

Nada Hamadeh's picture

The International Comparison Program (ICP) is pleased to announce its new website.

The ICP estimates purchasing power parities, or PPPs, for use as currency converters to compare the size and price levels of economies around the world.  The new website is a rich repository of over 1,100 files and includes: an overview of the program and its history, governance structure, results and their uses, methodology and research agenda. The site also includes ICP reports, guides, videos, newsletters, and links to news articles, blogs and academic and research papers using ICP data and results.


Interactive chord diagram to visualize trade

Siddhesh Kaushik's picture

What comes to mind when we think of trade? Quite possibly, exports, imports and trade balance. Is there a quick way to get this information without having to look at tables? Most of us would like to see how much a country imports and exports, which are the major trade partners, and what is the trade balance. We have introduced a d3.js based interactive Chord diagram to quickly visualize this information.

For example, here is a visual of Australia’s Exports and Imports for 2015. The chart shows top countries to which Australia exported or imported that year, and the remaining are bundled as “others”. Here is how you can interpret the diagram.

Each country has a different color. The length of the arc for Australia represents Australia’s total imports and the other parts of the arc show Australia’s exports to various countries. We can see the Import arc is slightly bigger than the Export arc and hence Australia has an overall negative trade balance.

Latest from the LSMS: The Crowd & The Cloud, debunking myths about African Agriculture & costing household surveys

Vini Vaid's picture

Message from Gero Carletto (Manager, LSMS)

I would like to take this opportunity to remember Hans Rosling, a friend and supporter of the LSMS. I don’t need to tell you about his contagious enthusiasm for data or his masterful use of visualization tools to communicate statistics. I can’t say I knew Hans that well, but over the years, even if only based on sporadic interactions, I came to appreciate him both as a person and a scientist. I met him for the first time in 2013 and still remember the flabbergasted look on his face when Kathleen Beegle and I told him that the core LSMS team consisted of only four part-time staff. He was astounded to find out that we were so small, yet we looked so big. And, of course, being the visualization maestro that he was, he immediately came up with his own visual representation of the LSMS with a tool he had at his disposal at that moment: his hand!

From that day on, every time we met, he greeted me with his "LSMS hand." To this day, it remains a good, and fun, memory of Hans.

From data blur to slow-mo clarity: big data in trade and competitiveness

Prasanna Lal Das's picture

Tolstoy's War and Peace was the big data of its time. A memorable moment from the epic novel occurs when Prince Andrei awakens following a severe injury on the battlefield. He fears the worst but, "above him there was nothing but the sky, the lofty heavens, not clear, yet immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds slowly drifting across them. 'How quiet, solemn, and serene, not at all as it was when I was running.'" Time appears to slow down and the Prince sees life more lucidly than ever before as he discovers the potential for happiness within him.

In many ways the scene captures what we demand of big data—not the bustle of zillions of data points as confusing as the fog of war, but sharp, clear insights that bring the right information into relief and help us connect strands previously unseen. The question of whether this idea is achievable is the starting point of a paper about big data on trade and competitiveness just published by the World Bank Group. In it, we asked—can big data help policy makers see the world in ways they haven't before? Are decisions that are informed by the vast amounts of data that envelop us better than decisions based on traditional tools? We didn't want a story trumpeting the miracles of big data; we wanted instead to see the reality of big data in action, in its messiness and its splendor.

Open source software: addressing some misconceptions and stereotypes

Alanna Simpson's picture

While stuck in I-66 traffic one morning, a colleague and I had a vigorous debate on the merits of open-source versus proprietary software. I was left with the realization of how much misinformation still persists about this particular subject.

This discussion prompted me to be more proactive about advocating for the adoption of open-source technology. I believe we are just beginning to explore the possibilities for these tools in reducing poverty and ensuring sustainable development.

Between 2 Geeks: Episode 1 - The ups and downs of demography

Tariq Khokhar's picture

Between now and 2050, Africa will add over 1 billion people to its population.

That’s a startling statement about something that’s 30 years in the future. One group with a record of making such long-range projections is demographers like Dr. John May with the Population Reference Bureau.

In our discussion with John, he explains that the growth and structure of populations is linked to one fundamental issue: mortality rates. When infant and child mortality rates decline, fertility rates also eventually decline and population growth slows down. And as life expectancies increase, the share of older people in a country’s population goes up.

But it turns out things are a bit more complicated than that, and there are large implications for public policy that are ultimately driven by demography.

Even when a region like Africa has declining fertility rates, “population momentum” means that countries will continue to grow. With this growth comes the need for better infrastructure, services, and crucially, jobs.

By one estimate, the global economy will need to add 600 million jobs over the next 10 years - mostly in Africa and Asia - just to keep up with young people entering the workforce.

So how is demography shaping our future, and how can we make it the future we want?

This episode of Between  2 Geeks is hosted by Tariq Khokhar & Raka Banerjee, and produced by Richard Miron. You can chat with us on twitter with the hashtag #Between2Geeks , listen to new episodes on the World Bank Soundcloud Channel and  subscribe to “World Bank’s Podcasts” in your podcast app or on iTunes.

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