The Global Data Lab is a university-based data and research institute that develops databases, indicators, and instruments for monitoring and analyzing the status and progress of societies.
Priorities as a partner of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data
The Global Data Lab contributes to the data revolution for sustainable development data by providing the global community with disaggregated development indicators for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Disaggregation of indicators is considered one of the key elements to effectively monitor the SDGs. At the same time it is a great challenge as for many LMICs few indicators are available at the sub-national level.
The Global Data Lab has created over 100 sub-national indicators in a broad range of fields, including education, gender, wealth, poverty, asset ownership, fertility, demographic window, child mortality, vaccinations, housing characteristics, public services, and children’s stunting and wasting. Most indicators are available for 1,300+ regions in 125+ LMICs. These indicators can be freely downloaded, used, re-used, and redistributed by anyone.
A recent contribution is the development of a sub-national version of the Human Development Index (HDI) of the UNDP and its underlying education, health, and standard of living indicators, which can be downloaded for the period 1990-2018 for 1,700+ areas across the globe.