International Statistics

Crime

• Transparency International 
  Data about corruption.

   

• UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention 
  Crime statistics, research, and analysis.

   

• US State Department: International Narcotics Control Strategy Reports 
  Includes individual reports on the 28 major drug producing and drug transit countries. 1996 to the present.

   

• World Prison Brief 
  Information is provided on prison populations and prison population rates per 100,000 of the national population, on the use of imprisonment for women and juveniles, on the extent of pre-trial imprisonment and on prison overcrowding, as well as a record of the national ministries responsible for prisons and contact details for prison administrations.

Cultural and Social

• Ethnologue: Languages of the World 
  "Catalogue of more than 6,700 languages spoken in 228 countries."

   

• OECD Family Database 
  Cross-national indicators on the situation of families and children for OECD countries.

   

• OECD Social Expenditure Database 
  "It includes reliable and internationally comparable statistics on public and (mandatory and voluntary) private social expenditure at programme level."

   

• Pew Global Attitudes Project 
  "The Pew Global Attitudes Project is a series of worldwide public opinion surveys that encompasses a broad array of subjects ranging from people's assessments of their own lives to their views about the current state of the world and important issues of the day. More than 150,000 interviews in 54 countries have been conducted as part of the project's work."

   

• UNESCO Reports: Culture and Communication 
  Data on books, broadcasting, films, and libraries.

   

• World Values Survey 
  "The World Values Survey (WVS) is a global network of social scientists who have surveyed the basic values and beliefs of the publics of more than 80 societies, on all six inhabited continents."

Education

• National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) 
  Links to tables on international educational comparisons.

   

• OECD Online Education Database 
  "The collected annual data cover the outputs of educational institutions, the policy levers that shape educational outputs, the human and financial resources invested in education, structural characteristics of education systems, and the economic and social outcomes of education."

   

• UNESCO Education Statistics 
  From 1999 to the present.

   

• UNESCO Literacy Statistics 
  Regional and national literacy rates.

   

Health

• WHOSIS: World Health Organization Statistical Information System 
  Available data include health statistics, mortality statistics, and the "Weekly Epidemiological Record."

    

• HIV/AIDS Surveillance Database 
  US Census Bureau site with information on the AIDS pandemic and on the HIV seroprevalence (infection) in population groups in developing countries.

   

• Pan-American Health Organization 
  Country Health Profiles, and Core Health Data.

   

• UNAIDS 
  HIV/AIDS information and data.

   

• United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) 
  Statistics on mortality, immunization, child malnutrition, adult literacy, water supply, sanitation, iodized salt use, and net primary enrollments and enrollments by gender, plus the full-text version of The State of the World's Children, and The Progress of Nations.

Sources are drawn from an excellent guide produced by the University Libraries of the University of Maryland.