Frequently Asked Questions
Throughout the data portal we use the following abbreviations for income classifications, geographic regions, climate classifications and data transformations.
Income classifications
Visit the page on World Bank Country and Lending Groups for more details. The income groups and colors used in this portal always refer to the most recent classifications.
| Abbreviation | Description |
|---|---|
| HIC | High income |
| UMIC | Upper middle income |
| LMIC | Lower middle income |
| LIC | Lower income |
Geographic regions
Visit the page on World Bank Units for more details on regional units.
| Abbreviation | Description |
|---|---|
| EAP | East Asia & Pacific |
| ECA | Europe & Central Asia |
| LAC | Latin America & the Caribbean |
| MENA | Middle East & North Africa |
| NA | North America |
| SA | South Asia |
| SSA | Sub-Saharan Africa |
Climate Classifications
Visit the page on Köppen-Geiger Climate Classifications for more details. In this Portal we assign countries to one of the five top-level classifications — Arid, Cold, Polar, Temperate, Tropical . We assign Mixed for countries when none of the previous five classes is unambigously prevalent.
| Abbreviation | Code | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Arid | BWh BWk BSh BSk |
Arid, desert, hot Arid, desert, cold Arid, steppe, hot Arid, steppe, cold |
| Cold | Dsa Dsb Dsc Dsd Dwa Dwb Dwc Dwd Dfa Dfb Dfc Dfd |
Cold, dry summer, hot summer Cold, dry summer, warm summer Cold, dry summer, cold summer Cold, dry summer, very cold winter Cold, dry winter, hot summer Cold, dry winter, warm summer Cold, dry winter, cold summer Cold, dry winter, very cold winter Cold, no dry season, hot summer Cold, no dry season, warm summer Cold, no dry season, cold summer Cold, no dry season, very cold winter |
| Polar | ET EF |
Polar, tundra Polar, frost |
| Temperate | Csa Csb Csc Cwa Cwb Cwc Cfa Cfb Cfc |
Temperate, dry summer, hot summer Temperate, dry summer, warm summer Temperate, dry summer, cold summer Temperate, dry winter, hot summer Temperate, dry winter, warm summer Temperate, dry winter, cold summer Temperate, no dry season, hot summer Temperate, no dry season, warm summer Temperate, no dry season, cold summer |
| Tropical | Af Am Aw |
Tropical, rainforest Tropical, monsoon Tropical, savannah |
Transformations
For the visualizations we employ the following basic transformations.
| Abbreviation | Description |
|---|---|
| Log10 |
Logarithm with base 10 For indicators with large negative numbers (net migration or imports), the sign is maintained but the transformation is applied to the absolute value. For growth rates, no transformation is applied |
| Diff |
First differences Calculates the difference between t and t-1, if both values are available. |
| Growth |
Simple growth rate Calculates the difference between t and t-1 and divides it over the value at t-1. |
| Min-max |
Min-max scaling Normalizes the data such that the values lie between 0 and 1. |
| Z-score |
Z-score Transforms the data such that it has mean 0 and a standard deviation of 1. |
The ESG Data Portal relies on data from trusted and credible sources. The portal therefore depends on the updating frequency of the individual sources. You can find the current coverage on the Framework page.
Gaps can occur for various reasons. Temporal gaps may occur when the underlying data series discontinued or the updating interval exceeds the annual frequency used in the portal. Coverage gaps across countries may be related to the statistical capacity of the national statistical offices.
For a more details, see the World Bank's Statistical Performance Indicator.
The ingrained income bias (or simply "income bias" or "wealth bias") is the phenomenon that sovereign ESG indicators of richer countries tend to be higher while those of poorer economies tend to be lower. In other words, sovereign ESG indicators are highly correlated with a country's income. In the graph below, we proxy income with a country's per capita GDP (in current US$) on the horizontal axis.
The World Bank Group makes data publicly available according to open data standards and licenses datasets under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0). Many datasets are available under other licenses. They are labeled accordingly, and when users access them, users agree to comply with all of the terms of the respective licenses, as explained here: Data Access and Licensing
Since the ESG data portal relies on data from trusted and credible sources, see for each indicator what the use policies are. You can find these at the bottom of each Indicators page under Indicator details.