Countries worldwide celebrate statistics and data

Today is World Statistics Day, an awareness day spearheaded by the United Nations Statistics Division which celebrates the role that statistics and data play in shaping our societies and policies.

Empirical data can support a range of development efforts and policymaking decisions, by providing decision makers with reliable, comparable information.

In order to improve opportunities and living standards across the world, policies must be informed by up-to-date, comprehensive and trustworthy statistics.

In this vein, IZA World of Labor demonstrates how data should be used to explore a range of social and economic trends.

Our articles on data and methods, for example, evaluate different econometric methods to help us to study topics from recruitment discrimination to firm dispersion.

Furthermore, objective analysis can help us to evaluate the efficiency of various development programs in low-income countries.

We also use empirical data to investigate several issues in the migration debate, from the effects on crime levels, to the effects on native employment and on native wages.

We need continued research, knowledge sharing, and global collaboration in order to improve policymaking processes.

Take a look at our data sources for a thorough list of relevant economics data sets. Or, you can look at our evidence maps which illustrate the geographical spread of information used in every article. This map shows sources used on our crime and immigration article.

How are you marking World Statistics Day? Tell us how statistics and data help you on Twitter @IZAWorldofLabor or on our LinkedIn group.