The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the World Bank’s premier compilation of international statistics on global development. Drawing from officially recognized sources and including national, regional, and global estimates, the WDI provides access to almost 1,600 indicators for 217 economies, with some time series extending back more than 50 years. The database helps users — analysts, policymakers, academics, and all those curious about the state of the world - to find information related to all aspects of development, both current and historical.
The WDI printed publication was originally a compilation of tables produced as an annex to the 1978 World Development Report. It evolved into a standalone publication which included data tables, data stories, and methodological notes.
An annual World Development Indicators report was available in print or PDF format until 2017. You can browse the reports available in PDF format on the World Bank's Open Knowledge Repository.
In 2018, we introduced the WDI website - a new discovery tool and storytelling platform for our data which takes users behind the scenes with information about data coverage, curation, and methodologies. The goal is to provide a useful, easily accessible guide to the database and make it easy for users to discover what type of indicators are available, how they’re collected, and how they can be visualized to analyze development trends.