Microproduct data guideintermediate

World Development Indicators

Country and regional development indicators spanning economics, health, education, and infrastructure for comparing change over time.

Start the guide Open official source

At a glance

Difficulty
Intermediate — some data preparation helps
Size
Medium · 0.1–1 GB
Formats
CSV, Excel, API
Access
Download or API
API key
Not required
Provider
World Bank
Updates
Quarterly
Data terms
CC BY 4.0

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

World Development Indicators provides documented country-level time series across many development topics. Start with one indicator and three countries before exploring the wider catalog. Check the indicator definition and missing values before comparing places or drawing conclusions.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection for the World Bank API
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Open the official source and review the definition and units for GDP per capita.
  2. 2.Use the API example below or export GDP per capita from DataBank.
  3. 3.Check country coverage and missing years before starting the comparison.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import requests
import pandas as pd

url = "https://api.worldbank.org/v2/country/all/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD"
response = requests.get(url, params={"format": "json", "per_page": 20000}, timeout=30)
response.raise_for_status()
rows = response.json()[1]
gdp = pd.DataFrame(rows)[["countryiso3code", "date", "value"]]
print(gdp.dropna().head())
4

Test a useful signal

Compare GDP per person over time

Compare long-term GDP-per-capita patterns for three countries while accounting for missing observations.

  1. 01Filter the API result to three countries and convert year to an integer.
  2. 02Plot one line per country using only non-null values.
  3. 03Describe one shared pattern, one meaningful difference, and one limitation in the comparison.

Dataset details

World Bank is an intergovernmental source. Last verified 2026-08-10. Temporal coverage: 1960-present.

Domains

EconomicsDevelopment

Data types

TabularTime Series

Tasks

Economic AnalysisForecastingVisualization

Geography

Global

Formats

CSVExcelAPI

Provider

World Bank

Data terms

CC BY 4.0