International Measures of Development
Description
The International Measures of Development dataset provides a snapshot into the economic, demographic, and investment profiles of 70 countries from across the globe over the last 50 years. The included countries provide representation of all major geographic regions, while being diverse in their financial and social characteristics. The dataset contains a total of four tables, each representing a separate entity inherent to a country’s overall image. By placing all of these tables in one dataset, different aspects from various categories can be compared for different countries. The first of which is the country table, which serves as the primary reference for the three other tables. Each record within this table represents one of the 70 countries which comprise the dataset. The attributes associated with this table include country ID, country name, continent, current population, and land area. The respective datatypes are of type VARCHAR and INT. Secondly, the demographic table contains key quality of life indicators relevant to countries on an international scale. Each record in this table represents a given year for a given country, for a total of 3500 records. It contains the following 12 columns: demographic ID, country ID, year, life expectancy, population, birth rate, death rate, median age, percent married, sex ratio, child dependency, and old age dependency. Datatypes for this table are of type INT and DECIMAL. Next, the economic table contains variables which represent the country’s financial and workforce profile. Like the demographic table, each record in this table represents a given year for a given country for a total of 3500 records. It contains the following 8 columns: economic ID, country ID, year, GDP, GDP per capita, inflation, unemployment rate, and GNI. Datatypes for this table are of type INT and DECIMAL. Lastly, the investment table captures a country’s investing landscape. It features the same structure as the other two tables. The 12 contained columns include investment ID, country ID, year, inflow FDI, outflow FDI, investments in energy, ICT, transportation, and water, non-financial asset investment, portfolio investment, and net financial account. Datatypes for this table are of type INT and DECIMAL.
Files
Steps to reproduce
There are three components to consider in reproducing this dataset. These consist of the database design workflow, data collection, and data processing. As mentioned within the dataset description, this dataset contains four tables; three which capture the economic, demographic, and investment data of the 70 countries and an additional table which represents these countries themselves. All associated tables branch off from the country table, which shares one to many, non-identifying relationships with the other three. That is, for each country, there are 50 associated records (one per year) within each table. Additionally, as given by the non-identifying relationships these tables share, each table comes equipped with its own surrogate primary key that does not involve the original country ID primary key from the country table. The country ID variable merely acts as a foreign key in each of these three tables. In terms of data collection, two primary sources were used. The country, economic, and investment tables use data obtained from the World Bank World Development Indicators dataset, while the demographic table uses data obtained from the United Nations Data Portal. In each case, the 70 countries were selected, along with all years from 2024 to 1975 (2025 and 2026 were omitted as data is largely lacking for these years). The desired variables were then selected, and the resulting CSV files were downloaded. The variables obtained from World Bank include inflation (consumer prices %), GDP (current US$), GDP Per Capita (current US$), unemployment (total, % of labor force, national estimate), GNI (current US$), FDI (net inflow, current US$), FDI (net inflow, current US$), net investment in nonfinancial assets (% GDP), portfolio investment (current US$), investment in energy, ICT, transportation, and water with private participation, net financial account (current US$), and land area. The variables gathered from the United Nations include crude birth and death rates, life expectancy at birth, median age of population, total population by sex, child and old age dependency ratios, sex ratio of the total population, and currently married (percent). As for the processing of the data, once the appropriate CSV files were downloaded, they were appropriately conjoined into Excel CSVs of the final dataset tables. At this stage, null values were converted to unique integers, before being imported into MySQL. Within MySQL, the unique integers were converted back into null values using SET and WHERE statements.
Institutions
- Wentworth Institute of TechnologyMassachusetts, Boston