World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators Series

This data collection, the first edition in the World Handbook series, comprises interval-level social, political, economic, and demographic indicators for 141 countries in the period 1961-1963. Information is provided for the size of the country, the number of years independent, total population, population per square kilometer, gross national product (GNP), gross capital formation as a percentage of the GNP, government revenue and expenditure, foreign trade, employment in industry and in agriculture, degree and annual increase of urbanization, and voting characteristics. Other variables provide information on security, public enterprise, military personnel and expenditure on defense, domestic group violence, and votes in national elections for political parties such as the Communist and Socialist parties, religious parties, and noncommunist secular parties as percentage of total votes. Other variables provide information on population characteristics such as the number of births and deaths per 1,000, live births per 1,000, life expectancy at birth, income distribution, percentage of population of working age, Roman Catholics, Christians, and Moslems as a percentage of the population, immigrants and emigrants per 1,000 population, percentage of literate population aged 15 and above, enrollment in primary and secondary schools, index of achievement motivation, marriages per 1,000 population aged 15-44, and inhabitants per physician and per hospital bed. Additional variables provide information on daily newspaper circulation, radios and televisions owned, cinema attendance per 1,000 population, private consumption, and the distribution of agricultural land.

This merged data collection contains political, social, economic and demographic information for 141 selected countries in the period 1961-1963 and is also designed as a research and reference aid in the field of comparative politics. Information is provided for population size and growth rate, country size, date of independence, former colonial ruler, level of urbanization, political modernization, governmental stability, per capita gross national product (GNP), foreign trade as a percentage of the GNP, government revenues and expenditures, political leadership, character of the bureaucracy, legislature, the legal system, status of economic development, international financial status, westernization, literacy rate, degree of freedom of the press, religious configuration, and racial, religious, and linguistic homogeneity. Data are also provided for government employment, military personnel, defense expenditure, current electoral system, percentage of votes in national elections for the Communist party, religious parties, and the secular parties, regime's ideological orientation, domestic group violence, sectionalism, percentage of speakers of dominant language, private consumption, agricultural and industrial labor, index of achievement motivation, and inhabitants per doctor and hospital bed. Data on population characteristics provide information on live births and deaths per 1,000 population, population annual rate increase, percentage of students in primary and secondary education, marriages per 1,000 population, immigrants and emigrants per 1,000 population, income distribution, and Roman Catholics, Christians, and Moslems as percentage of the population. Additional variables provide information on daily newspaper circulation, radios and television ownership per 1,000 population, and cinema attendance.

This dataset contains information on eighteen types of political events aggregated by year to the nation level for years 1948-1967. The events included are riots, deaths from political violence, political assassinations, armed attacks, elections, protest demonstrations, regime support demonstrations, political strikes, renewals of power, unsuccessful executive transfers, unsuccessful irregular transfers, irregular power transfers, executive adjustments, regular executive transfers, executions, acts of negative sanctions, acts of relaxation of political restrictions, and external interventions. Sources are THE NEW YORK TIMES and the Associated Press. Data were collected by the World Data Analysis Program at Yale University.

This dataset contains information for 57,268 daily occurrences of seventeen types of political events: riots, deaths from political violence, political assassinations, armed attacks, elections, protest demonstrations, regime support demonstrations, political strikes, renewals of power, unsuccessful executive transfers, unsuccessful irregular transfers, irregular power transfers, executive adjustments, regular executive transfers, executions, acts of negative sanctions, and acts of relaxation of political restrictions. The data are recorded at daily intervals for each event group for each country during the twenty-year period 1948-1967. For example, two riots in a country on the same day appear as one record or case, but one riot and one election in a country on the same day appear as two separate records. Seven sources were used including THE NEW YORK TIMES INDEX and the Associated Press.

This data set contains data for interventions recorded at daily intervals during the twenty-year period 1948-1967. The daily report is the unit of analysis. There are 1,073 records, one for each day on which an intervention occurred in a country. The number of records per country varies. If, for example, a country had no action meeting the criteria for inclusion as an intervention, no record is given for that day for that country. Those countries not involved in an intervention were excluded. Data are recorded for 89 of the 136 nations in the World Handbook Aggregate Data file and two international organizations. Some of the 31 variables included are the number of interveners, type of group involved, air and naval incursions, and length of intervener's presence in the country. The data sources are THE NEW YORK TIMES INDEX, ASSOCIATED PRESS, ASIAN RECORDER, AFRICAN RESEARCH BULLETIN, MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL, and AFRICAN DIARY.

This data collection consists of aggregate political, economic, and educational data for 136 countries in the period 1950-1965. Included are indicators of population size and growth, communications, education, culture, economics, and politics for the four base years: 1950, 1960, 1966, and 1965. Data are provided for the percentage of population living in cities of 100,000 or more and 20,000 or more, the total economically active male population engaged in agricultural occupations, and the total economically active male population as a percentage of the total male population. Information is also provided for the number of telephones, radios, televisions, and newspapers per 1,000 population, cinema attendance per capita, literacy rates, and school enrollment ratio. Other variables provide information for steel consumption, energy consumption per capita growth rates, gross national product (GNP) per capita, total trade as a percentage of the GNP, total number of current scientific and technical serials published, percentage of contribution to the total world scientific authors, percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) originating in agriculture, industry, transportation, and communications, and gross domestic fixed capital formation as a percentage of the GNP. Additional information is provided on sectorial income inequality, land inequality, total number of physicians, and number of physicians per one million population. Other items include total military manpower, defense, education, and health expenditure in million United States dollars, total United States economic and military aid and Soviet aid, number of memberships in United Nations organizations and in other international organizations, diplomatic representation, electoral irregularity score, press freedom index, total internal security forces, the beginning and ending year of modernization, the date of independence, and the date of founding of the present constitution.

This third edition of the World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators is composed of four files, one aggregate data file (Part 1), and three events data files including a daily events political data file (Part 2), an annual political events data file (Part 3), and a new quarterly political events data file (Part 4). The aggregate data file (Part 1) is based upon data from the base years of 1950, 1955, 1960, 1965, 1970, and 1975. It contains political, economic, and social data and rates of change for 155 countries. Data are provided for central government current revenue and expenditure, gross national product and growth rates, imports, exports, and trade as a percentage of the gross national product, total military expenditure and manpower, public education, public health expenditure, energy consumption, coal, natural gas, and petroleum reserves and production, GINI measures of inequity, income inequity, sectorial inequity, coefficient of land inequality, political and civil rights indices, political and economic discrimination, the percentage of those discriminated against and its intensity, the proportion and intensity of separatism, voting behavior, the number of registered voters and voter turnout as a percentage of the adult population, the first five largest political parties, total legislative seats, total adult and working age population, population density, percentage of population in cities, agricultural density, health and nutrition measures, consumption measures, literacy, and school enrollment. Data are also provided for the percentage of the labor force in agriculture, industry, and the services, organized labor, industrial disputes and the number of working days lost, the life expectancy for males and females, infant mortality rates, and estimated birth rates and death rates, as well as the number of scientific authors, physicians per million population, total piped water, and newspapers, radios, television sets, and telephones per 1000 population. There are three files of events data in this collection. The first file records daily political events, the second aggregates these events to an annual file, and the third aggregates the same events into a quarterly file. The Daily Event Data file (Part 2) contains a variety of governmental change and political protest events for 139 countries. It records 38 kinds of domestic events including demonstrations, riots, strikes, assassinations, elections, referenda, and imposition of political restrictions, including censorship. Some of the 38 event types were only distinguished for the events occurring in particular periods. For example, the categories of bombing, ambush, raid, arrest, release of the arrested, imposition of martial law or curfew, and relaxation of martial law or curfew were added in 1978. The Annual Events Data file consists of summations of the occurrences of each type of event within each country on a year-to-year basis from 1948 to 1977. The annual totals are given for the same countries as in the daily file, with the exception of three countries. The Quarterly Event Data file consists of summations of the occurrences of each type of event within each country on a quarter-to-quarter basis. The 38 types of events coded in the quarterly events file have also been collapsed to 17 broader categories to maintain comparability with earlier editions of the handbook.

This file contains two sets of raw data. One dataset contains information used to construct aggregate measures of fractionalization and concentration, the other contains data used to construct measures of inequality. The fractionalization and concentration data are recorded for each city, political party, etc., for these variables: city populations, ethnic groups, language groups, export commodities, export receiving countries, distribution of votes by political party, and distribution of seats in the lower legislative house. The inequality data are recorded as distributions of farms, acreage, labor forces and gross domestic product. Data were collected by the World Data Analysis Program at Yale University.