Sources and licences
Every number on this site was measured by somebody else. This is who, under what licence, and what that licence allows, checked before the data was added rather than after somebody asked.
- indicators
- 60
- sources
- 8
- countries and territories
- 172
- values
- 771,427
Covering 1789 to 2025, though no single indicator spans all of it. Data last fetched 2026-07-30.
This site is non-commercial
One source here does not permit commercial reuse: Freedom House. Carrying advertising or charging for access would mean removing them first, or asking their permission.
One dataset is currently held back
Digital Society Project — Held back until the Digital Society Project confirms in writing that the data may be redistributed and built into an index. They publish it free and ask to be cited, but state no licence, and their data page reserves all rights — so permission to do this was assumed rather than given, and the honest thing is to stop assuming it and ask. Its indicators are not shown anywhere on the site and its data is not served, but the measurements are real and nothing about them is in doubt. This is a permissions question, not a quality one.
4 indicators are currently held back
Average tariff rate — Held back while the reuse terms for the underlying WITS/UN Comtrade series are confirmed.
Secure internet servers — Held back while redistribution permission for the underlying Netcraft series is confirmed.
Homicide rate — Held back while redistribution permission for the underlying UNODC series is confirmed.
High-technology exports — Held back while the reuse terms for the underlying WITS/UN Comtrade series are confirmed.
What 2 of these licences do not say
The rows below say what each producer’s terms permit. For V-Dem, Freedom House that is partly a reading rather than a finding: those producers publish no licence covering reuse, or publish statements that disagree with one another. Where that is so the permissions listed are the cautious interpretation, not a grant anybody has made, and the note under each one says exactly what is missing. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and it is not a substitute for asking a producer directly.
Using these numbers yourself
The CSV button in the viewer exports what is on screen. What you may then do with it is set by the licence of the source it came from, not by us, so credit the producer named in the table below, and follow its terms. Where a licence requires a link, the licence name in the table is that link. Where a series was measured by one body and published by another, both are named — the compiler’s licence does not always extend to the measurer’s data.
V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg
Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), Country-Year: Full + Others
- How established
- Not stated by the producer, or stated inconsistently
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Combining into an index
- Permitted
- Share-alike
- Not required
- Licence last read
- 2026-07-30
- Retrieved via
- Our World in Data
Three sources say three things. V-Dem distributes the dataset free of charge and asks to be cited, but its own site names no licence and carries an all-rights-reserved copyright notice. Our World in Data, which republishes it and which this site downloads from, records the data as CC BY 4.0, and that is the grant relied on here. A third-party research-data catalogue records V-Dem as CC BY-SA 4.0 instead — share-alike, which if correct would bind anything built on it, including this site. Nothing here resolves that, so it is set down rather than smoothed over: written permission from V-Dem is the only thing that would.
Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, et al. “V-Dem Country-Year Dataset v16.” Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project, University of Gothenburg.
| Indicator | Id | Years | Countries | Values |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freedom of expression | expression | 1789–2025 | 164 | 28,573 |
| Freedom of association | assembly | 1789–2025 | 164 | 28,549 |
| Civil liberties | civilLiberties | 1789–2025 | 164 | 28,740 |
| Freedom from political violence | physicalIntegrity | 1789–2025 | 164 | 29,029 |
| Equal protection of rights | equality | 1789–2025 | 164 | 29,034 |
| Academic freedom | academic | 1900–2025 | 163 | 16,261 |
| Media censorship effort | mediaCensorship | 1789–2025 | 164 | 20,409 |
| Harassment of journalists | journalistHarassment | 1789–2025 | 164 | 28,442 |
| Media self-censorship | mediaSelfCensorship | 1789–2025 | 164 | 28,602 |
| Access to justice for women | accessJusticeWomen | 1789–2025 | 164 | 29,020 |
| Access to justice for men | accessJusticeMen | 1789–2025 | 164 | 29,032 |
| Electoral democracy | electoralDemocracy | 1789–2025 | 164 | 28,189 |
| Liberal democracy | liberalDemocracy | 1789–2025 | 164 | 27,313 |
| Rule of law | ruleOfLaw | 1789–2025 | 164 | 28,841 |
| Judicial checks on government | judicialChecks | 1789–2025 | 164 | 27,937 |
| Legislative checks on government | legislativeChecks | 1789–2025 | 163 | 22,548 |
| Political corruption | politicalCorruption | 1789–2025 | 164 | 23,938 |
| Civil society participation | civilSociety | 1789–2025 | 164 | 28,601 |
| Women’s political empowerment | womenPolitical | 1789–2025 | 164 | 24,674 |
Skaaning, Gerring and Bartusevičius
Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy (LIED) v6.9
- Licence
- CC0 1.0
- How established
- Published by the producer
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Combining into an index
- Permitted
- Share-alike
- Not required
- Licence last read
- 2026-07-30
- Retrieved via
- Our World in Data
Deposited in the Harvard Dataverse, which applies CC0 to deposited data by default. The version shipped here is the one Our World in Data was serving at the last build.
Skaaning, Svend-Erik, John Gerring and Henrikas Bartusevičius. “A Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy.” Comparative Political Studies 48 (12). Dataset: Skaaning, Svend-Erik, “Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy (LIED) dataset v6.9”, Harvard Dataverse, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/29106.
| Indicator | Id | Years | Countries | Values |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Universal right to vote | suffrage | 1789–2025 | 168 | 28,181 |
World Bank
Women, Business and the Law
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- How established
- Published by the producer
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Combining into an index
- Permitted
- Share-alike
- Not required
- Licence last read
- 2026-07-30
- Retrieved via
- Our World in Data
Measures what the law says, not how it is applied. The series here is the 1970–2023 historical panel built on the original eight-topic, 35-question framework; the World Bank has since revised that framework, so these values are not interchangeable with the current edition’s and are cited as the legacy version deliberately.
World Bank. “Women, Business and the Law 1.0 (1970–2023 historical panel).” World Bank, Washington, DC.
| Indicator | Id | Years | Countries | Values |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legal rights for women | womenLegalRights | 1970–2023 | 164 | 8,856 |
| Women can get a passport as men do | passportEquality | 1970–2023 | 164 | 8,856 |
Freedom House
Freedom in the World
- How established
- Not stated by the producer, or stated inconsistently
- Commercial use
- Not permitted
- Combining into an index
- Permitted
- Share-alike
- Not required
- Licence last read
- 2026-07-30
- Retrieved via
- Our World in Data
The permissions page is clear on one half and silent on the other. Non-commercial reuse is permitted provided the work is credited, and anything commercial needs written approval first — so keeping these two indicators is a commitment that this site does not start charging or carrying advertising without dropping them. What the page never addresses is adaptation: whether these scores may be combined into somebody else’s index is neither granted nor refused. They are offered in the builder on the reading that non-commercial reuse with credit covers it, which is an interpretation and not a permission.
Freedom House. “Freedom in the World.” Freedom House, Washington, DC.
| Indicator | Id | Years | Countries | Values |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Civil liberties score | civilLibertiesFh | 2003–2025 | 168 | 3,844 |
| Political rights score | politicalRightsFh | 2002–2025 | 168 | 4,010 |
World Bank
World Development Indicators
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- How established
- Published, but does not cover every series used
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Combining into an index
- Permitted
- Share-alike
- Not required
- Licence last read
- 2026-07-30
- Retrieved via
- World Bank Indicators API v2
The World Bank grants CC BY 4.0 “unless indicated otherwise in the data or indicator metadata”, and warns in the same terms that some datasets are provided by third parties and “may not be redistributed or reused without the consent of the original data provider”. That caveat is not marginal here: most of the series used from this collection were compiled by somebody else — the IMF, the ITU, UNESCO, the WHO, UNODC, the ILO, the UN Population Division, the IPU, Netcraft, the JRC and the IEA — and each indicator now names the body that actually measured it. Those providers have not been cleared one by one, so this is recorded as qualified rather than verified. Where a provider’s own terms are known to conflict, the indicator has been moved out from under this entry: see SIPRI.
World Bank. “World Development Indicators.” World Bank, Washington, DC.
| Indicator | Id | Years | Countries | Values |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trade opennessMeasured by National statistical offices and central banks | trade | 1960–2025 | 164 | 8,046 |
| Tax revenue as a share of GDPMeasured by International Monetary Fund, Government Finance Statistics | taxRevenue | 1972–2024 | 140 | 4,215 |
| Government spending as a share of GDPMeasured by International Monetary Fund, Government Finance Statistics | govSpending | 1972–2024 | 141 | 3,998 |
| Foreign investment inflowsMeasured by International Monetary Fund, Balance of Payments statistics | investmentOpenness | 1970–2025 | 166 | 7,962 |
| Internet useMeasured by International Telecommunication Union, World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators | internetUsers | 1990–2025 | 170 | 5,194 |
| Fixed broadband subscriptionsMeasured by International Telecommunication Union, World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators | broadband | 1998–2024 | 168 | 3,570 |
| Mobile subscriptionsMeasured by International Telecommunication Union, World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators | mobile | 1960–2024 | 170 | 8,661 |
| Life expectancyMeasured by UN Population Division, World Population Prospects | lifeExpectancy | 1960–2024 | 170 | 11,016 |
| Adult literacyMeasured by UNESCO Institute for Statistics | literacy | 1975–2024 | 144 | 1,017 |
| Secondary school enrolmentMeasured by UNESCO Institute for Statistics | secondaryEnrolment | 1970–2025 | 167 | 5,224 |
| Government spending on educationMeasured by UNESCO Institute for Statistics | educationSpending | 1970–2025 | 165 | 4,399 |
| Health spendingMeasured by World Health Organization, Global Health Expenditure Database | healthSpending | 2000–2024 | 165 | 3,903 |
| Health costs paid out of pocketMeasured by World Health Organization, Global Health Expenditure Database | outOfPocketHealth | 2000–2024 | 165 | 3,903 |
| Maternal mortalityMeasured by World Health Organization, Trends in Maternal Mortality | maternalMortality | 1985–2023 | 167 | 6,513 |
| Women in parliamentMeasured by Inter-Parliamentary Union | womenParliament | 1997–2025 | 165 | 4,477 |
| Women in the workforceMeasured by International Labour Organization, ILO modelled estimates | femaleLabour | 1990–2025 | 168 | 6,034 |
| Fertility rateMeasured by UN Population Division, World Population Prospects | fertility | 1960–2024 | 170 | 11,018 |
| Urban populationMeasured by UN Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects | urban | 1960–2025 | 170 | 11,220 |
| PopulationMeasured by UN Population Division, World Population Prospects | population | 1960–2025 | 170 | 11,190 |
| GDP per capitaMeasured by World Bank International Comparison Program | gdpPerCapita | 1990–2025 | 163 | 5,791 |
| GDP growthMeasured by National statistical offices and central banks | gdpGrowth | 1961–2025 | 169 | 9,431 |
| InflationMeasured by International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistics | inflation | 1960–2025 | 163 | 7,990 |
| UnemploymentMeasured by International Labour Organization, ILO modelled estimates | unemployment | 1991–2025 | 168 | 5,866 |
| Income inequalityMeasured by World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform, from national household surveys | gini | 1963–2025 | 154 | 2,372 |
| Extreme povertyMeasured by World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform, from national household surveys | poverty | 1963–2025 | 154 | 2,372 |
| Government debtMeasured by International Monetary Fund, Government Finance Statistics | governmentDebt | 1970–2024 | 93 | 1,399 |
| CO₂ emissions per personMeasured by European Commission Joint Research Centre, EDGAR database | co2PerCapita | 1970–2024 | 165 | 9,075 |
| Renewable energy useMeasured by International Energy Agency | renewableEnergy | 1990–2022 | 169 | 5,376 |
| Access to electricityMeasured by World Bank Tracking SDG7 / ESMAP | electricityAccess | 1990–2024 | 170 | 5,248 |
World Bank
Worldwide Governance Indicators
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- How established
- Published by the producer
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Combining into an index
- Permitted
- Share-alike
- Not required
- Licence last read
- 2026-07-30
- Retrieved via
- World Bank Indicators API v2
Each score is a weighted average of many underlying surveys and expert assessments, and the World Bank publishes a 90% confidence interval alongside every one. Those intervals are not shown here, and there is no fixed number of points below which a gap can be dismissed: the margin depends on how many sources back a particular country in a particular year, so it is wide where a score rests on one source and narrow where it rests on nine. The World Bank’s own rule is to compare the intervals — where they overlap, the difference is not significant.
Kaufmann, Daniel, and Aart Kraay. “Worldwide Governance Indicators.” World Bank, Washington, DC.
| Indicator | Id | Years | Countries | Values |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regulatory quality | regulatoryQuality | 1996–2024 | 169 | 4,343 |
| Voice and accountability | voiceAccountability | 1996–2024 | 170 | 4,378 |
| Control of corruption | controlOfCorruption | 1996–2024 | 170 | 4,371 |
| Government effectiveness | governmentEffectiveness | 1996–2024 | 169 | 4,345 |
| Political stability | politicalStability | 1996–2024 | 170 | 4,373 |
United Nations Development Programme
Human Development Report
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0 IGO
- How established
- Published by the producer
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Combining into an index
- Permitted
- Share-alike
- Not required
- Licence last read
- 2026-07-29
- Retrieved via
- Our World in Data
UNDP asks that anyone embedding HDI values keeps them current, because the index is recalculated each year over revised inputs.
UNDP. “Human Development Report.” United Nations Development Programme, New York.
| Indicator | Id | Years | Countries | Values |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human Development Index | hdi | 1990–2023 | 165 | 5,223 |
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Refugee Data Finder
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- How established
- Published by the producer
- Commercial use
- Permitted
- Combining into an index
- Permitted
- Share-alike
- Not required
- Licence last read
- 2026-07-30
- Retrieved via
- Our World in Data
Refugee statistics are CC BY 4.0 unless UNHCR marks a particular dataset otherwise; some supplemental and third-party material carries its own terms. The count itself is of people recognised as refugees, which is a legal status and not the same as everyone who left, and much of it is reported by governments and rounded before publication.
UNHCR. “Refugee Data Finder.” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Geneva.
| Indicator | Id | Years | Countries | Values |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Refugees who left | refugees | 1960–2024 | 168 | 6,435 |
The site itself
The source code is MIT licensed. That covers the code and nothing else — the statistics above are not ours to license and stay under each producer’s terms, so copying the repository does not carry those permissions with it. The two typefaces are under the SIL Open Font License, whose text ships with the site: Public Sans and IBM Plex Mono. Every bundled library is listed in the third-party notices.
Considered and left out
Well-known datasets that would have fitted the site but whose terms do not permit what it does with them. Recorded so the question is not asked twice.
- Economist Intelligence Unit — Democracy Index
- Proprietary, and licensed commercially. Not redistributable.
- Reporters Without Borders — World Press Freedom Index
- No reusable licence found on the index or its data pages. Absence of a licence anywhere cannot be proved, so this is a reasonable reading rather than a certainty; V-Dem’s media indicators cover the same ground and are licensed.
- Transparency International — Corruption Perceptions Index
- Left out on a licence reading that turned out to be wrong. Transparency International’s copyright page says its general content is CC BY-ND 4.0 but that “the CPI and datasets are licensed under CC BY 4.0”, which does permit combining it into an index. The CPI page’s own footer still carries the blanket CC BY-ND notice, so the two disagree. Worth adding rather than refusing.
- Fraser Institute — Economic Freedom of the World
- Free to download, but publishes no terms for reuse or redistribution, and the report itself is all rights reserved.
- Heritage Foundation — Index of Economic Freedom
- Permits limited unedited non-commercial copying; commercial reproduction is prohibited and no reuse grant covers the data.
- World Justice Project — Rule of Law Index
- All rights reserved; reproduction is by request.
- IHME — Global Burden of Disease
- Free for non-commercial use, but explicitly not redistributable.
- World Prison Brief
- Free to read and asks to be cited, but states no licence covering reuse.