Every year sees the publication of a set of data collated by the World Bank Group that describes high-level social and economic change for every country on earth. On August 18th 2020, the latest update of the World Bank’s World Development Indicators were published online.
Recognising that many people find it difficult to keep up to date a brief summary of the data are provided on this website with data for all countries listed, along with lists of the three main groupings by income status:
- Low income countries (2020)
- Middle income countries (2020)
- High Income counties (2020)
You may well ask, “so what” or “why do these data matter”? The answer is that for many developing and emerging economies these measures of social and economic change are highly significant. The economic indicators are a measure of the growth of national economies (which occasionally may be negative), the average income for individual citizens and households, whilst social indicators can measure population and demographic change as well as outcomes linked to employment, education and health.
The World Development Indicators, also provide an update of the current assessment of the income status of all countries. For developing and emerging economies these measures influence access to concessionary grants and loans from development agencies and for activities linked to Official Development Assistance (ODA) including many sources of development research such as the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund and Newton Fund.
From a development perspective “graduation” either from low-income to middle-income status or from middle-income to high-income status are most significant.
The 2020 data list three new high-income countries which have graduated from middle-income status. These are:
Three countries have graduated from low-income to lower middle-income status. These are:
Only one country progressed from lower to upper middle-income status.
Not all of the change recorded in the 2020 update has been positive, with three countries recording a decline in their income status
- Algeria (from upper to lower middle-income status)
- Sri Lanka (from upper to lower middle-income status)
- Sudan (from lower middle-income to low income status)
2020 will be a year of significant challenge to all countries, but especially for developing and emerging economies. The Covid-19 pandemic is having severe impacts on health, employment, education and the economy in nearly all countries. The initial impacts developed more rapidly in developed and major emerging economies, but there is an expectation that long-term impacts will be significant in most other developing countries as well.
The next revision of the World Development Indicators will be published in August 2021 and it should be expected that those data will start to demonstrate the impacts of the pandemic on society and the economy in most countries. It is likely that many more countries will see recent gains in development progress to be partly reversed, though some impacts may only be captured and documented in subsequent years.
For many developing countries, post Covid-19 recovery will be slow, especially when combined in the drop in Official Development Assistance provided by developed countries resulting from contraction of their economies. More detailed analysis of the development statistics will certainly be required and justified then.