Methodology

Geo Index is a static editorial atlas. Country pages are documents, not live dashboards. We do not invent statistics, and we do not call unofficial country APIs.

Missing data

A missing observation is shown as an em dash or “No comparable data.” It is never coerced to zero. Zero is rendered only when the source value is actually zero.

Projections

UN WPP years from 2024 onward are medium-variant projections. IMF WEO forecast years are labelled projection. Ranks use the same-year cohort, not a mix of actuals and forecasts, unless the year itself is a projection year for that series.

Source precedence

Population and demography: UN WPP 2024 over WDI. Economy: World Bank WDI, with IMF WEO as fallback and for fiscal series. Human development: the latest UNDP HDR recalculated series only. Education: UNESCO UIS (ShareAlike, isolated). Labour: ILOSTAT. CO₂: Our World in Data / Global Carbon Project — not IEA-EDGAR. Health: WDI / WPP, not WHO GHO as a hosted dependency.

Classification

UN member, UN observer, associated state, dependency, special administrative region, territory, statistical area, or special status. Taiwan and Kosovo are special status and are never labelled UN members. Palestine and the Holy See are UN observers.

Join keys

Statistics are joined on stable identifiers (slug, ISO alpha-2/3, M49, Natural Earth ADM0_A3), never on English names. HDR MPI 2025 tables without ISO3/M49 are skipped rather than name-matched.

Maps

See the map and status policy. Natural Earth de facto geometry, dispute overlays, and independently selectable observer/special-status features.

Licences

Site code is MIT. Upstream datasets keep their own licences and are attributed on every profile. UNESCO UIS remains under data/raw/unesco/. Wikimedia Commons photographs are allowlisted (CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA, public domain); NC and ND files are rejected.