ASi" kUCTURE FlOR DEVELOPMENT

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Introduci-ion
This seventeenth edition of the World Development ports of goods and services and of GNP has re-
Indicators provides economic, social, and natural placed total external debt as a percentage of exports
resource indicators for selected periods or years for of goods and services and of GNP
207 economies and various analytical and Table 25, Populition and labor force, includes popugraphic
grouFs of economies. Although most of the lations age 15-64 for 1992 and labor force growth
data collected by the World Bank are on low- and rates for 1970-80,1980-92 and 1990-2000-
middle-income economies, comparable data for
high-income economies are readily available and Classficaton of economies
axe also included in the tables. Additional infonna- As in the Report itself, the man criterion used to
tion may be found in the World Bank- Atlas, World classify economies and broadlv distinguish different
Tables, World Debt rables, and Sociia Indicators of stages of economic development is GNP per capita.
Development. These data are now also available on This year the per capita income groups are lowdiskette
through the World Bank-s Socioeconomic income, $675 or less in 1992(42 economies); middlerTue-series
Access and Retrieval System-*STARS*. income, $676 to 58,355 (67 economies); and high-
Changs in this edition
Changes in this edition
income,
moe
$8,356 or more (23 economies) F-conomies
with populations of fewer than I million and those
Because of space limitations in the main tables, an with sparse data are not shown separately in the
economy must have reasonable coverage of key main tables but thev are included in the aggregates.
socio-economic indicators to be indluded. Addi- Basic indicators for these economies may be found
tional basic indicators for economies with sparse in Table la.
data (Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia and Herzegov- Further classification of economies is by geoina,
Cambodia, Croatia, Cuba, Eritrea, Haiti, Iraq, graphic location. For a list of economies in each
Dem. Rep. of Korea, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libena, group, see the tables on classification of econo-
Libya, Macedonia FYR, Viet Nam, Fed. Rep of Yu- mies at the back of this book. Aggregates for segoslavia,
and Zaire) are presented, along with coun- verely indebted middle-income economies are
tries with less than 1 nillion population, in Table Ia. also presented.
Other changes have been made to a number of
tables. Although these are described more fully in Methodglogy
the technical notes, an outline of the changes may be The World Bank continually reviews methodology
of interest
in an effort to improve the international comparabil-
A new table, Table 32, fnfiustructure, has been in- ity and analytical significance of the indicators- Difduded
to highlight key indicators of the service ferences between data in this year's and last year's
level and coverage of infrastructure (see the techni- editions reflect not only updates for the countries
cal notes).
but also revisions to historical series and changes in
The table on the structure of consumption has methodology.
been deleted because updates have not been avai-- All dollar figures are current US. dollars unless
able for most countries since 1985.
otherwise stated. The various methods used for con-
In Table 23, Total extenal debt ratios, net present verting from national currency figures are descnrbed
value of exteral debt as a percentage of total ex- in the technical notes.
157