News

Developing countries are facing the largest net debt outflows in 50 years. Explore the full report for data and policy insights.

Explore how national statistical systems are performing. Our latest Statistical Performance Indicators (SPI) update is now out.

Learn everything about data infrastructure in less than a minute from Development Data Group Manager Craig Hammer, speaking at at the 2025 Annual Meetings' Data Playground. Watch our new video.

Listen to our Statistical Analyst, Shwetha Grace Eapen, discuss how data powers development at the 2025 Annual Meetings' Data Playground.

Dive into the latest data on key development themes, including poverty, health, labor, and education.

Explore new global poverty estimates up on the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP), including nowcasted estimates. 

In a digital milestone, Chile’s last census used computer-assisted personal interviews & Survey Solutions, a software developed by the the World Bank's Data Group.

Aivin Solatorio, Data Scientist with the Development Data Group, has won second place at the ACM HuMob Challenge at MIT Connection Science with his paper "GeoFormer: Predicting Human Mobility using Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT)."

We have published the Spanish edition of the Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2023, a visual resource presenting interactive storytelling and data visualizations about progress towards the 17 SDGs.

The Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2023 has won both the top “Most Beautiful” award and the “Humanitarian” category’s gold medal at the prestigious 2023 Information is Beautiful Awards, organized by the Data Visualization Society. 

We have released the Arabic edition of the Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2023, a visual resource presenting interactive storytelling and data visualizations about progress towards the 17 SDGs.

A new report on data governance in the Indian state of Kerala aims to support the state government in combining data initiatives related to climate change and disaster risk management into an integrated ecosystem of technology products and processes.

We are humbled that the Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2023 has been shortlisted in the Information is Beautiful Awards 2023.

Haishan Fu, Chief Statistician of the World Bank and Director of the World Bank’s Development Data Group, delivered the opening address for the Women in Data Science (WiDS) Worldwide 2023 Virtual Conference.

Development Data Group experts – Umar Serajuddin (Manager), Emi Suzuki (Demographer), and Haruna Kashiwase (Consultant) – contributed data on tobacco use and population, as well as analysis to a recent article on China’s smoking epidemic, produced by The Examination and re-published in USA Today. 

In a recent article on Vietnam's education system, The Telegraph has quoted Development Data Group Senior Economist, Hai-Anh H. Dang, and cited our research and data. 

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Development Data Group have joined forces to put Mobile Phone Data (MPD) to work for policy through the World Bank-hosted Global Data Facility.

A new report sets out the rationale and preliminary findings of the data sharing exercise between G-7 and the World Bank, which has been extended to all Paris Club creditors on a voluntary basis. 

Development Data Group Senior Geographer Brian Blankespoor and other World Bank experts (above) have recently given a presentation at NASA to highlight how we use satellite data—including from the agency’s own satellite—to track greenhouse gas emissions.

The Development Data Group, in close cooperation with the Bank's Equitable Growth, Finance, and Institutions (EFI) Global Practice, recently co-organized an OpenGovData Hackathon with the Electronic Administration Unit of the Government’s Presidency in Tunisia to explore how open data can improve transparency and innovation.

In an opinion piece, The New York Times cited our research on poverty:

"Indeed, World Bank researchers estimate that the number of people living in extreme poverty actually declined a hair in 2022, though the figure remains higher than on the eve of the pandemic. The number is about the same as it was in 2018 — and much better than in 2017 and previous years."

In a prominent article, The New York Times cited our research on poverty:

"Defaulting on a huge swath of loans would send borrowing costs for vulnerable nations even higher and could spawn financial crises when nearly 100 million people have already been pushed into poverty this year by the combined effects of the pandemic, inflation and Russia’s war in Ukraine."