So in this post I’ll share a dashboard I made that allows you to compare countries using World Development Indicators from the World Bank.

I had previous made a post looking at comparing just Canada and South Africa and wanted to create a compact report that allowed users to compare any countries on any indicator.

The Dashboard to Compare Countries using World Development Indicators

Below is the dashboard. Note you’ll need to open the report in Google Data Studio in order to interact with the Google Maps feature.

Click on the ‘Google Data Studio’ icon in the bottom right hand corner of the report to open it.

The World Bank World Development Indicators public dataset

This dashboard is based on the World Development Indicators (WDI) dataset from the World Bank available in Google BigQuery.

The dataset has the following fields focused on country and indicators.

The list of countries includes some regional combinations. These include regional definitions such as ‘small states’, ‘North America’, ‘Fragile and conflicted affected situations’ and more. I removed these using a custom CASE statement. Below is the CASE statement.

CASE
WHEN country_name IN ("Small states","World","North America","Arab World","Caribbean small states","Central Europe and the Baltics","Channel Islands","Early-demographic dividend","East Asia & Pacific","East Asia & Pacific (excluding high income)","East Asia & Pacific (IDA & IBRD countries)","Euro area","Europe & Central Asia","Europe & Central Asia (excluding high income)","Europe & Central Asia (IDA & IBRD countries)","European Union","Fragile and conflict affected situations",	"Heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC)","High income","IBRD only","IDA & IBRD total","IDA blend","IDA only","IDA total""Late-demographic dividend","Latin America & Caribbean","Latin America & Caribbean (excluding high income)","Latin America & the Caribbean (IDA & IBRD countries)",	"Least developed countries: UN classification",	"Low & middle income","Low income","Lower middle income","Middle East & North Africa","Middle East & North Africa (excluding high income)","Middle East & North Africa (IDA & IBRD countries)","Middle income","OECD members","Other small states","Pacific island small states","Post-demographic dividend","Pre-demographic dividend","South Asia","South Asia (IDA & IBRD)","Sub-Saharan Africa","Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding high income)","Sub-Saharan Africa (IDA & IBRD countries)","Upper middle income") THEN "Region"
ELSE "Country"
END

Using the Google Data Studio dashboard to compare countries based on WDI

We can filter our time series chart and our Google Map using various methods to compare and contracts countries and indicators.

For example, below I’ve decided to compare Senegal and Sierra Leone using the indicator ‘Population in largest city’.

The time series chart shows the change over time and on the Google Map it shows the average value for 2017, 2018 and 2019.

We also can simply choose an indicator and see what the top countries are on the line chart and on the Google Map. The size of the bubble on the map indicates the level of value. So below I’ve selected the indicator ‘GDP (constant 2010 US$)’ and it shows the top ten countries on the time series line chart. On the map we see the US, China and Japan’s bubbles are far larger than most other countries indicating the high GDP value.

You can also focus in on issues that concern you. For example, below I’ve selected the indicator showing the total Unemployment rate as modelled by the International Labour Organization. It shows that South Africa has the highest unemployment rate in the world at 28%.

Filtering by Region of the World

So I’ve also added in a CASE statement to the data that allows you to filter by region of the world.

Below is the CASE statement that divides up the countries into geographic regions.

CASE 
WHEN country_name IN ("Angola","Benin","Botswana","Burkina Faso","Burundi","Cameroon","Cabo Verde","Central African Republic","Chad","Comoros","Congo (Brazzaville)","Congo (Kinshasa)","Congo, Dem. Rep.","Congo, Rep.","Cote d'Ivoire","Djibouti","Equatorial Guinea","Eritrea","Ethiopia","Gabon","Gambia","Gambia, The","Ghana","Guinea","Guinea-Bissau","Kenya","Lesotho","Liberia","Madagascar","Malawi","Mali","Mauritania","Mauritius","Mozambique","Namibia","Niger","Nigeria","Rwanda","Sao Tome and Principe","Senegal","Seychelles","Sierra Leone","Somalia","South Africa","South Sudan","Sudan","Eswatini","Tanzania","Togo","Uganda","Zambia","Zimbabwe") THEN "Sub-Saharan Africa"
WHEN country_name IN ("Algeria","Egypt","Egypt, Arab Rep.","Libya","Morocco","Tunisia","Western Sahara") THEN "North Africa"
WHEN country_name IN ("Hong Kong SAR, China","Macao SAR, China","China","Japan","Mongolia","Korea, North","Korea, Dem. People’s Rep.","Korea, South","Korea, Rep.","Taiwan") THEN "East Asia"
WHEN country_name IN ("Brunei","Brunei Darussalam","Cambodia","Timor-Leste","Indonesia","Laos","Lao PDR","Malaysia","Myanmar","Burma","Philippines","Singapore","Thailand","Vietnam") THEN "South East Asia"
WHEN country_name IN ("Afghanistan","Bangladesh","Bhutan","India","Maldives","Nepal","Pakistan","Sri Lanka") THEN "South Asia"
WHEN country_name IN ("Kazakhstan","Kyrgyzstan","Kyrgyz Republic","Tajikistan","Turkmenistan","Uzbekistan") THEN "Central Asia"
WHEN country_name IN ("West Bank and Gaza","Armenia","Azerbaijan","Bahrain","Cyprus","Georgia","Iran","Iran, Islamic Rep.","Iraq","Israel","Jordan","Kuwait","Lebanon","Oman","Qatar","Saudi Arabia","Syria","Syrian Arab Republic","Turkey","United Arab Emirates","Yemen","Yemen, Rep.") THEN "Western Asia"
WHEN country_name IN ("Antigua and Barbuda","Anguilla","Aruba","Bahamas","Bahamas, The","Barbados","Belize","Bermuda","Bonaire","British Virgin Islands","Cayman Islands","Clipperton Island","Costa Rica","Cuba","Curacao","Dominica","Dominican Republic","El Salvador","Grenada","Guadeloupe","Guatemala","Haiti","Honduras","Jamaica","St. Lucia","Martinique","Montserrat","Navassa Island","Nicaragua","Panama","Puerto Rico","Saba","Saint Barthelemy","Saint Kitts and Nevis","St. Kitts and Nevis","Saint Lucia","Saint Martin","Saint Pierre and Miquelon","Saint Vincent and the Grenadines",	"Sint Eustatius","Sint Maarten","Trinidad and Tobago","Turks and Caicos","US Virgin Islands") THEN "Central America and Caribbean"
WHEN country_name IN ("Holy See","Andorra","Austria","Belgium","Czechia","Czech Republic","Denmark","Faroe Islands","Finland","France","Germany","Greenland","Iceland","Ireland","Italy","Liechtenstein","Luxembourg","Malta","Monaco","Netherlands","Norway","Portugal","San Marino","Spain","Sweden","Switzerland","United Kingdom","Vatican City") THEN "Western Europe"
WHEN country_name IN ("Albania","Belarus","Bosnia and Herzegovina","Bulgaria","Croatia","Estonia","Greece","Hungary","Kosovo","Latvia","Lithuania","North Macedonia","Moldova","Montenegro","Poland","Romania","Russia","Russian Federation","Serbia","Slovakia","Slovak Republic","Slovenia","Ukraine") THEN "Eastern Europe"
WHEN country_name IN ("Canada","Mexico","United States") THEN "North America"
WHEN country_name  IN ("Australia","Federated States of Micronesia","Fiji","French Polynesia","Kiribati","Marshall Islands","Nauru","New Caledonia","New Zealand","Palau","Papua New Guinea","Samoa","Solomon Islands","Tonga","Tuvalu","Vanuatu") THEN "Oceania"
WHEN country_name  IN ("Argentina","Bolivia","Brazil","Chile","Colombia","Ecuador","Falkland Islands","French Guiana","Guyana","Paraguay","Peru","South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands","Suriname","Uruguay","Venezuela","Venezuela, RB") THEN "South America"
ELSE "Other"
END

For example, we can now quickly and easily focus in one a specific region. Below I’ve focused on North America and can compare the GDP per capita between Canada, Mexico and the United States.

I hope you enjoyed this post on how to compare countries using World Development Indicators.

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