World Data Sources

EVERY now and then I get the urge to stand back and look at what's going on in the world. As the old saying goes, Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. This column is about data sources that give a world view. The U.S. government spends a lot of money to provide websites with all kinds of interesting data. One of the easiest to use and most comprehensive is the Central Intelligence Agency's World Fact at www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html. Incidentally, the CIA says there are 222 countries in the world. I thought the number was closer to 190. I guess I should get out more! One way to use the Fact Book is to use the Guide to Country Profiles. Detailed information on every country is broken down under the following headings: Geography, People, Government, Economy, Communications, Transportation, Military, and Transnational Issues. Under the Communications category, you can find such things as number of telephone lines, number of Internet hosts, and number of Internet users. According to the Fact Book, the U.S. has 208 million Internet users--about two-thirds of the total population. Vatican City has the fewest, with just 93. Some categories are just plain sad; under the Transnational Issues category is a subcategory for Trafficking in Persons. The most user-friendly way to use the Fact Book is to use its Ranked Lists. For example, if you examine Life Expectancy at Birth, you find that the number ranges from a low of 32.23 years for Swaziland to a high of 83.52 for Andorra--a small country between France and Spain. It's interesting to read about countries I had forgotten. An obvious data source on the world's children is UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund). Each year, UNICEF issues a report titled State of the World's Children. The home page for the report is www.unicef.org/sowc. There are numerous ways to mine data from this report. You can download the entire report or print summaries, tables, charts, and panels--inserts in the final report. Although the world's children seem to be doing a little better than in the past, the numbers are still disturbing. For example, the percentage of the world's children under 5 years of age who are moderately or severely underweight now stands at 25%. In the least-developed nations, the number rises to 35%. These numbers tell the global story, but the report also breaks the world down by region. For example, South Asia has the largest percentage of malnourished children at a sad 42%. Incidentally, the adult literacy rate in the least-developed countries is 55%, compared to 78% for the world. And here is a curious statistic: only 68% of the world's households use iodized salt. Both UNICEF and the CIA have a wide variety of Web pages designed especially for students. For example, UNICEF has a colorful interactive game for children done by the creators of Sesame Street. You can find it at www.panwapa.org. The main UNICEF Web page for education is at http://cyberschoolbus.un.org. The main CIA Web page for kids is at www.cia.gov/kids-page/index.html. If you find yourself on a redirect page, just click on the link to Kids' Pages. Once you're there, click on the K-5 pages, and you will find an interesting activity that teaches children about the CIA's K-9 Corps. Kids get to see pictures of the various dogs and read about their work protecting the CIA's people. Although you might not expect it, the U.S. Census Bureau's International Page at www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb is another government site with a great deal of data on individual countries. An interesting feature of this site is that you can call up population pyramid graphs that show the relative percentages of people at various ages. Unlike many sites, the Census Bureau projects statistics into the future. For example, between now and 2025, the percentage of young children in the U.S. is projected to grow substantially. …