An exploratory tool for examining how governance indicators relate to human development outcomes — health, education, poverty, service access — across countries and over time. Click any country to see its trajectories side by side.
This is an exploratory tool, not a causal analysis. Correlations shown here describe statistical associations between variables — they do not establish that governance improvements cause development gains, or vice versa.
Reverse causality is endemic. Wealthier countries tend to have both better governance scores and better development outcomes. Much of the correlation you see may reflect income level driving both variables simultaneously, not a direct governance–outcome relationship.
Use the “Control for income group” option to visualise correlations within income groups — a rough check on whether patterns hold beyond the development-level effect.
Some pairs have measurement overlap. World Bank Governance Indicators partly draw on service delivery data, so correlating WGI with health or education outcomes may be partially circular. Treat such pairs with extra caution.
Lags are uncertain. Governance changes take years or decades to affect outcomes. The “Show 5-year lag” option uses governance data from five years prior — a rough but instructive test of whether earlier governance predicts later outcomes better than contemporaneous data.
Use this to form hypotheses, not draw conclusions. Patterns worth investigating further should be tested with proper causal methods.