When Is There Enough Data to Create a Global Statistic ?

To monitor progress toward global goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals, global statistics are needed. Yet cross-country data sets are rarely truly global, creating a trade-off for producers of global statistics: the lower is the data cov...

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Main Authors:	Mahler, Daniel Gerszon, Serajuddin, Umar, Maeda, Hiroko
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English
Published:	Washington, DC: World Bank 2022
Subjects:	SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS SDGs WORLD DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS DATA COVERAGE
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099715305052234754/IDU05d45ca360cddd044880828c072587f9a9c4f http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37413

id	okr-10986-37413
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-374132022-05-14T05:10:37Z When Is There Enough Data to Create a Global Statistic ? Mahler, Daniel Gerszon Serajuddin, Umar Maeda, Hiroko SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS SDGs WORLD DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS DATA COVERAGE To monitor progress toward global goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals, global statistics are needed. Yet cross-country data sets are rarely truly global, creating a trade-off for producers of global statistics: the lower is the data coverage threshold for disseminating global statistics, the more statistics can be made available, but the lower is the accuracy of these statistics. This paper quantifies the availability-accuracy trade-off by running more than 10 million simulations on the World Development Indicators. It shows that if the fraction of the world’s population for which data are lacking is x, then the global value will on expectation be off by 0.37*x standard deviation, and it could be off by as much as x standard deviations. The paper shows the robustness of this result to various assumptions and provides recommendations on when there is enough data to create global statistics. Although the decision will be context specific, in a baseline scenario, it is suggested not to create global statistics when there are data for less than half of the world’s population. 2022-05-13T15:33:00Z 2022-05-13T15:33:00Z 2022-05-05 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099715305052234754/IDU05d45ca360cddd044880828c072587f9a9c4f http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37413 English CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank Washington, DC: World Bank Policy Research Working Paper Publications & Research
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS SDGs WORLD DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS DATA COVERAGE
spellingShingle	SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS SDGs WORLD DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS DATA COVERAGE Mahler, Daniel Gerszon Serajuddin, Umar Maeda, Hiroko When Is There Enough Data to Create a Global Statistic ?
description	To monitor progress toward global goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals, global statistics are needed. Yet cross-country data sets are rarely truly global, creating a trade-off for producers of global statistics: the lower is the data coverage threshold for disseminating global statistics, the more statistics can be made available, but the lower is the accuracy of these statistics. This paper quantifies the availability-accuracy trade-off by running more than 10 million simulations on the World Development Indicators. It shows that if the fraction of the world’s population for which data are lacking is x, then the global value will on expectation be off by 0.37*x standard deviation, and it could be off by as much as x standard deviations. The paper shows the robustness of this result to various assumptions and provides recommendations on when there is enough data to create global statistics. Although the decision will be context specific, in a baseline scenario, it is suggested not to create global statistics when there are data for less than half of the world’s population.
format	Working Paper
author	Mahler, Daniel Gerszon Serajuddin, Umar Maeda, Hiroko
author_facet	Mahler, Daniel Gerszon Serajuddin, Umar Maeda, Hiroko
author_sort	Mahler, Daniel Gerszon
title	When Is There Enough Data to Create a Global Statistic ?
title_short	When Is There Enough Data to Create a Global Statistic ?
title_full	When Is There Enough Data to Create a Global Statistic ?
title_fullStr	When Is There Enough Data to Create a Global Statistic ?
title_full_unstemmed	When Is There Enough Data to Create a Global Statistic ?
title_sort	when is there enough data to create a global statistic ?
publisher	Washington, DC: World Bank
publishDate	2022
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099715305052234754/IDU05d45ca360cddd044880828c072587f9a9c4f http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37413
_version_	1764487128574590976

When Is There Enough Data to Create a Global Statistic ?

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