UN Millennium Development Goals e-learning materials

Data providers - macrodata [page 1 of 2]

Inter-governmental organisations (IGOs) such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are the primary actors in the collection and dissemination of international aggregate data. These organisations have the capacity to produce very high quality multi-national databanks as they have a presence in every country in the world, the leverage to charge countries to deliver the data and the power to create international standards. National statistical agencies are the main source of data, and one of the functions of international agencies is to provide technical assistance and financial resources to national statistical agencies that are struggling to build their national statistical infrastructures. Data are also collected from central banks, government agencies and through specialist surveys.

ESDS International's data portfolio includes databases from the following data providers:

• Office for National Statistics (ONS): www.statistics.gov.uk
• Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): www.oecd.org
• International Monetary Fund (IMF): www.imf.org
• United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO): www.unido.org
• The United Nations (UN): www.un.org
• The World Bank Group: www.worldbank.org
• Eurostat: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu
• The International Labour Organisation (ILO): www.ilo.org
• The International Energy Agency (IEA): www.iea.org/

ESDS International data providers and the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

The United Nations partners for the MDGs include the World Bank Group, the OECD, the International Labour Organisation and the International Monetary Fund from the above list and many of the data produced by these IGOs feeds into the UN MDG indicators.

For example the data indicator for UN MDG goal 1, target 1 to 'halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day' is produced by the World Bank’s Development Research Group based on data obtained from government statistical offices and World Bank country departments. Data on household income, consumption and expenditure, including income in kind, are generally collected through household budget surveys or other surveys covering income and expenditure. Read on for information about ESDS International's micro data providers...