While DataFirst's focus is on household surveys rather than country-level indicators, many of our users make use of country-level indicators available from the World Bank's Open Data repository.
A very convenient new way of accessing this data has recently been launched in the form of the wbopendata Stata module. Users who have this module installed are able to find and download indicators directly from within Stata. Accessible datasets include:
- World Development Indicators
- Global Development Finance
- The African Development Indicators
- Doing Business
- Education Statistics
- Enterprise Surveys
- Gender Statistics
- Health Nutrition and Population Statistics
- Millennium Development Goals
- Worldwide Governance Indicators
Installing and using the wbopendata module
The module is hosted in the Statistical Software Components repository (where most third-party Stata modules are hosted). It can be installed very easily by simply typing at the Stata command prompt:
ssc install wbopendata
After this the wbopendata command is available for use. To obtain details on usage, type:
help wbopendata
To launch the visual interface of the command, type:
db wbopendata
From the dialogue box presented, it is possible to download data in three ways:
- by country - all indicators for all years for a single country.
- by topic - all indicators within a specific topic, for all years and all countries.
- by indicator - all years for all countries for a single indicator.
For more information, see the wbopendata page on the World Bank Open Data website.