The United Nations is one of the few sources of statistics from all the world's nations. Due to disparities in reporting infrastructures, publication of U.N. compilations tends to be slow and statistics from lesser developed nations may be rudimentary or appear to be out of date. However, these are generally the most recent data available.

The World Bank is the informal umbrella term used to designate several agencies of the United Nations whose purpose is to monitor and promote international development and to provide low-interest and interest-free loans and grants to low income countries.

The World Bank regularly reports statistics and trends in international development, and developed a new open access policy in 2010, making even more data available on the Internet for free.