Why and how to compare regions

Why compare at all

Saying that a market's household debt is high, or that its account ownership is low, is a comparison, whether or not it is stated. High compared with what? The answer should be explicit: compared with neighbours, with other regions, and with the world, using numbers that were measured in the same way.

This course places Southeast Asia against East Asia, South Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. The later market courses build on it.

Datasets built for comparison

A few international datasets collect the same indicators for many economies under one set of definitions. Two kinds should be told apart. Survey data ask people what they do. Supply-side data come from the institutions that provide the services.

• World Development Indicators, from the World Bank: population, national accounts and many other series for countries and regions.
• Global Findex, from the World Bank: a survey of about 1,000 people in each of more than 160 economies, covering people aged 15 and over, on accounts, payments, saving and borrowing.
• The IMF's Financial Access Survey: a supply-side database on access to and use of financial services; its 2024 release covered 192 economies.
• The BIS credit statistics: credit to governments, non-financial companies and households in more than 40 economies. For lending to companies and households combined, it shows credit from all lenders alongside credit from domestic banks alone. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are among the economies in its groups.
• The ILO's labour statistics: employment and informal work, measured to standards agreed by the International Conference of Labour Statisticians.

Same definition, same year

Even in World Development Indicators, the World Bank warns that full comparability cannot be assured, because statistical methods, coverage, practices and definitions differ widely between countries; the data indicate trends and major differences rather than precise gaps.

Definitions also change over time. When the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians narrowed the definition of employment in 2013, the informal employment rate came out higher under the previous standard in 41 countries with data, and unchanged in 38. In 2023 the 21st International Conference of Labour Statisticians adopted new standards for statistics on the informal economy. Comparing a figure on the old basis with one on the new basis can show a change that never happened.

The same applies to years. A 2025 figure for one market next to a 2021 figure for another mixes four years of change into the comparison. Use the same year for every economy, and say which year it is.

What a region is

The World Bank groups economies into seven regions: East Asia and Pacific; Europe and Central Asia; Latin America and the Caribbean; the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan; North America; South Asia; and Sub-Saharan Africa. Its regional figures include economies at all income levels.

In this grouping, Southeast Asia is not a region of its own. Its economies sit inside East Asia and Pacific, together with China, Japan, Korea and Australia. In this course, Southeast Asia means the eleven member states of ASEAN; Timor-Leste became the eleventh on 26 October 2025. A Southeast Asian figure therefore has to be built from the country data, and the way it is built matters.

How an average is built

For ratios, the World Bank generally computes regional aggregates as averages weighted by the denominator of the ratio, and it does not publish an aggregate when missing data account for more than a third of the weights. It describes aggregates as approximations of unknown totals or averages.

Regional GDP per person = total GDP of the members ÷ total population of the members

Worked example, from World Development Indicators data for 2025 in current US dollars. Dividing the eleven ASEAN members' total GDP by their total population gives a GDP per person of about 6,100 dollars. The simple average of the eleven countries' own figures is about 15,900 dollars, because Singapore, at about 98,800 dollars, and Brunei, at about 32,200 dollars, count as much as Indonesia, with about 286 million people. The middle country, Indonesia, has about 5,060 dollars. Three honest calculations, three different answers.

Large members also dominate a weighted figure. In 2025 the World Bank's figure for East Asia and Pacific was about 14,080 dollars per person, close to China's figure of about 13,860 dollars, because China holds almost three-fifths of the region's population. A regional average can describe its largest member more than the region.

Five checks before comparing

Each market's current figures are on the market research pages, and household indicators by market are on the household page.

• Is it the same indicator, with the same definition, for every economy?
• Is it the same year?
• Which economies are inside each regional figure, and is Southeast Asia shown on its own or hidden inside a larger region?
• Is the average weighted or simple, and which large members drive it?
• Does it come from a survey of people or from the providers' records, and how many economies are missing?