This is a documentation of the countries and territories that we have chosen to include in Gapminder World. We also describe the principles we follow in cases where there have been border changes and other political changes.
How many countries and territories are included?
Our ambition with Gapminder World is to enable the display of data for all the countries and territories of the world. Therefore, the guiding principle has been to include as many entities as possible for which data might be available.
Please note that the inclusion of any geaographical area in this data set is based solely on data availability and convenience for possible users. Our choice of names for any of the included countries and territories is likewise made solely for the convenience of users. The notes on international status are based on Wikipedia. Neither this nor the inclusion/exclusion of a specific country or territory implies a stated opinion of Gapminder regarding the legal or political status of the geographica area in question. Neither do the names imply a stated opinion of Gapminder on the correct naming of an entity.
The number of countries and territories to include is arbitrary, but we have decided to include the following entities:
- 192 UN members (as of April 2008)
- 51 other entities listed in the “List of countries” in Wikipedia (2008-05-13). These include the Vatican, dependent territories, special entities and disputed territories. We have excluded the two “sub-dependencies” Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha, although they are listed by Wikipedia.
- 4 French overseas territories (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion and French Guyana), although they are considered an integral part of France
- 10 former states
- 2 ad-hoc areas: “Serbia excluding Kosovo” and “the Channel Islands”. The latter is the collective name of the two dependent territories Guernsey and Jersey.
UPDATE: In spetember 2012 we added the new UN state “South Sudan” to our country list. The new number of UN members are hence 193.
This gives a total of 193+51+4+10+2=260 countries and territories. Our goal is to have data for all these entities for at least two indicators (one of them being population), from 1800 onwards. However, most indicators will only have data for a selection of these entities.
Do you have a full list of the countries and territories in Gapminder World?
Yes, you can download the following Excel-file:
list of countries & territories.xls
In the file you will find the full list with the following information:
- The “formal name” of the country or territory in the Gapminder World Community. If you are a member in the community you should try to match your names to this list.
- The name displayed in the Gapminder World Graph (which in some cases is a shorter version of the “formal name”). Other members of the community can choose to display other names.
- What Gapminder means with the name. In some cases we have given additional explanations of how we define certain countries or territories. If we are not able to follow these definitions we will note it in the footnotes.
- International status according to Wikipedia (plus the categories “overseas integral part of motherland”, “former states” and “special entities”).
- “Mother country”, political predecessor country, name of new country after merge, or similar, whenever applicable.
Do you have a map of all the countries and territories in Gapminder World?
You can go to the “map” tab in gapminder world. There the location of almost all the included countries can be found. The only countries not included in the map are former states, ad-hoc areas and most of the disputed territories. NOTE: the link above is somewhat slower than the usual links to the graph, since additional map-related data has to be loaded as well.
Isn’t there any overlap between the included countries and territories?
Yes, there is some overlap. Ideally an indicator should only include observations for entities that are mutually exclusive. However, older data for some indicators concern former states, while newer data might only concern new states, as in the case of the Czech republic versus older data for the former Czechoslvakia. Hence, to enable the display of as many observations as possible, we have included both present and former states. We have also, for the same reason, included some special territories that could be considered as parts of other countries.
For some indicators (such as population) we will compile data and estimate the time series for all entities from 180 and onwards, even for years when the entity did not formally exist. For example, population data for 1998 for a person living in Russia would both be included in the data for the UN-member “Russia” and the data for the former state “USSR” that had ceased to exist at that time.
Is the data for Greenland included in the data for Denmark? What about other dependent territories?
Another potential source for overlap concernsdependent territories, special entities or disputed territories, which might be included in their “mother country”. As a guiding principle we have tried to “subtract” the dependent territory from the “mother country” when we have data for the dependent territory. Hence, Denmark should in principle be “Denmark excluding Greenland and the Faeroe Islands”.
However, in many cases the only data available is for the “mother country” with all its dependencies. In cases where we are aware of this overlap, we have commented on it in the footnotes.
In even more cases we have not been able to find any information on exactly what is included in a country. That being said, it should be noted that in most cases the dependencies are small in relation to their “mother countries” so that including or excluding them makes little difference.
How have all the border and name changes over the years been handled?
The guiding principle is to use the present borders for the countries for all years, even when there has been extensive border changes. Hence the population for Malaysia in 1820 is an estimate of the population that lived within the present borders of Malaysia, even though the area in 1820 was divided into a different set of political entities.
However, in many cases this has not been possible to follow to the letter. In those cases we have tried to follow it to the largest extent possible and to add footnotes describing the deviations (i.e. to the extent that we are aware of the deviations). In a few cases we have simply added another “former state”, such as “Ethiopia” and “Ethiopia and Eritrea”.
We use the same principles for the names: we use the present names of countries, even when they were named something else entirely.
For former states we have tried to use the borders as they were just before the dissolution of the state. Hence, population for the USSR in 2008 and 1820 are estimates of the population within the area of the borders of USSR as they were in 1990, even though the state did not exist in either of those years.
Are there some countries or territories that I should pay extra attention too?
Yes, see the list below.
|
“Formal name” in the Gapminder World Community |
What Gapminder means with the name |
International status according to Wikipedia |
|
Eritrea and Ethiopia |
1990 frontiers of what was then known as Ethiopia (including Eritrea) |
Former state |
|
Eritrea |
2008 frontiers of Eritrea |
UN-member |
|
Ethiopia |
2008 frontiers of Ethiopia, excluding Eritrea |
UN-member |
|
East Germany |
1990 frontiers of East Germany |
Former state |
|
West Germany |
1990 frontiers of West Germany |
Former state |
|
Germany |
2008 frontiers of united Germany |
UN-member |
|
Serbia and Montenegro |
Serbia (including Kosovo) & Montenegro |
Former state |
|
Serbia |
Serbia including Kosovo, and excluding Montenegro |
UN-member |
|
Montenegro |
2008 frontiers of Montenegro |
UN-member |
|
Serbia excluding Kosovo |
Excluding Kosovo (& Montenegro) |
Other entity |
|
Kosovo |
Kosovo |
Special entity |
Hi,
It would be great to have a list of the countries separated out in the different geos -
Could you please provide that?
Thanks
Narayan
Have you guys thought about making data available by major world-regions rather than just nations…IE sub-sahara Africa, Western Europe, South Pacific…etc
this is very usefull of my accadamic project thank you
I’ve discovered this tool today, it provides us the most complete and real information about many variables that we use in the study of International Relations and Political Sciences. Also, facts in Gap Minder are nothing but the heavy truth of the world, and they turn on the lights on false points of view of traditional myths, like extreme poverty in the “third world” or global warming, that don’t find any discussion.
I love this site, and I use it in my classes regularly. However, it would be wonderful I could have the option to select certain countries, and then have all the others drop out, so that only those countries’ bubbles would move. It would be useful for specific comparisons. I know we can do that already, but then the trail lines blur everything and it can sometimes be hard to see. Also, the other bubbles can hide things (particularly when looking at small countries). Thanks!
Dear Mcentellas, thanks for your comment.
The feature you are asking for, to select a few countries for comparison and then hiding the others is available today. Simply select them and move the “opacity-of-non-selected-bar” to the left to hide the other bubbles.
To get rid of the trail, simply uncheck the box that says “Trails” in the bottom right corner.
What you can’t get rid of when selecting a country is the label and a line from the bubble to the label, however you can move the label around and put it at the side of the chart.
It’s true that the other bubbles temporarily can “hide” smaller bubbles when you hold your mouse over them, but smaller bubbles always shows over the bigger one (unless when they are selected). This is unfortunatly not something we can change in the technology we are using today, maybe in future versions.
Staffan Landin
Web Producer
Hi!
Excellent tool – thx very much for providing it!
Is there a possibility to split country statistics in quintiles like Prof. Rosling did in his presentation at the TED conference?
Hi,
Thank you so much for your work.
I am in need of regional GDP per capita in PPP of all federal countries. Is it possible that you may have such data? Thank you.
Regards,
Mohsin
Hi Mohsin,
At this stage we have GDP per person for Indian states, Chinese provinces and US states. You find the graphs by clicking the icons in the main graph labeled with “gaps within …” and a flag(s). We also hope to upload data for the states of Brazil in the future, as well as smaller units for other countries.
The GDP per capita data is based on PPPs, but that only goes for the comparisons between counrties, not between the provinces or states within a country. However, price differences within a country is likely to be a less serious problem than between countries.
regards Mattias, Gapminder
Hello, thank you so much for your work, this is such a great project. Do you plan on including vaccine data for diseases other than measles, like flu?
Regards,
Claudia
This just rocks majorly. I’m completely addicted to it. This has tool has answered so many questions for myself and put a lot into perspective in terms of inequities and inequalities around the world.
This is amazing. Thank you and keep up the great work!
There is no print preview available, or is it ?
If yes then how to go about it. Remember you are talking to a dummy, so please…………..
The site is great otherwise.
Sorry but printout of what? If you meen the graphs, we have made chats on HIV and another one for Child mortality and Income in PDF-format available from the download-section or click here:
http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/gapminder-hiv-chart-2009/
or here:
http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/pdf-charts/gapminder-world-chart/
/Staffan, gapminder
You state that the Uk is the principle country of the Channel Islands. This is not so the uk consits of England Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland. The Channnel Islands are independent but part of the British Isles
Congrats on making available an excellent tool. I would like to use the tool for projecting other development data against the time series= year wise or even smaller units of time say months, days and hours.
For example
1) money spent on various aspects of police modernisation every year and the fall in crime statistics. Can I do that to analyse what contributed maximum to decline in crime?
2) Can I also use the time series to days and hours and minutes so that I can compare the statements of witnesses speaking about the same incident? I would like to play around with their statements plotted against time and see what lies they speak? e.g. Analyse the Mumbai terror attack on 26/11 and plot all the statements of each witness and official about what they were doing to correlate each other and come to one coherent commentary.
Once again congrats on developing the tool.
RSK
Dear R.Sri Kumar,
Thank you for your questions. The comparisons you ask about could possibly be interesting to project in Gapminder graph. The tool we are using in Gapminder World does today only allow ‘years’ as time-value and ‘countries’ as units.
Google, that 2 years ago acquired Trendalyzer, the software used in Gapminder World, have released Motion Chart, a tool that allow you to make “Gapminder Graphs” within Google Documents. There you can add data for different time-series yourself. Motion Chart allows more time-values like month, weeks or days.
Here is a quick guide to motion chart:
http://www.gapminder.org/upload-data/motion-chart/
/Staffan, Gapminder
Thank you Staffan and Gapminder for the answer. I will try with Motion chart and get back if there are other queries. RSK
THIS SITE IS FABULOUS! BUT I WAS SURPRISED NOT TO SEE ANY INFORMATION(GRAPHS) ON NIGERIA AS ONE OF THE COUNTRIES WITH MOST OIL. IS THIS DELUSION OR AM I JUST DELUDED?
To whom it may concern,
I have today come across he Gapminder website. It looks very interesting. I love this sort of information.
I have noticed that Malta is shown as part of North Africa and the Middle East. Please note in fact that Malta is a European country and a member of the European Union.
I hope that you will be correcting this error.
Regards,
Brian
This seems like a very interesting project. I am convinced that Gapminder will provide us with new and valuable ways of looking at our data. Thanks very much for your work and presentations.
When do you expect to make regional level data for Brazil available?
Thanks again, Scott
I noticed that data on Taiwan is excluded despite its ready availability.
China likes to keep Taiwan out of international data sets because China finds Taiwan’s success embarrassing, but that does not mean that international researchers have to help them.
I’m so curious for the explanation in the wild fluctuations experienced by Iceland. Does anyone know?
It would be great to have Brazil divided by states. There is quite a big gap between southern and northern states, and the country can be easily explainable with that. The info is easily accessible from IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) website.
How do I split a country into regions or into economics group as shown in several videoclips!?
I am also curious as to how you can split a country into regions as shown in the video clips. Amazing tool!
What about Puerto Rico? It is not on the lists. Will it be available?
Puerto Rico is on the list, you can see it in the excel-file or go to Gapminder World to find it there. If you select an indicator where there is no data on Puerto Rico it will not appear in the graph. On the default-graph however, Puerto Rico have data, and you can find it in the scroll list to your right, or click here to see.
/Staffan, Gapminder
Dear Linus and Ben, thank you for your question, it is not possible to split the bubbles in Gapminder World, those presentation with split bubbles are standalone flash-presentations. To be able to split a bubble into regions or other sub-groups like gender or income levels you first have to have data on those sub-levels. That is ard to find for many countries and especially over time.
But those we have and made presentations of can be found under Downloads on your left.
/Staffan, Gapminder
Great site!
I can’t figure out how to see the data on debt for the USA. Where can I find it?
I would like to select all countries to see the trace of the data for the whole world (to get the whole pictrue of convergence/divergence). is there an option so I don’t have to select each country on its own?
Hi!
Thank you for your famous cite & for the reply
would you plz tell me how I can compare my country ‘data to other
Regards
Mahdi
i have a question for you.. why we have to know the national territory of our country?
Hi, is there any data on the major world religions and how it relates to some of the existing data?
Hi Tobias,
Thanks for your interest. There is no general database of statistics by quintiles for all these variables but see http://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/gdec07/6535.html for some similar data.