# **Comparability**

Cross-country comparable data sets that track certain indicators over time—often created by think tanks, research institutions, and international organizations— allow countries to benchmark their performance against peers, which they can use to evaluate national policies and assess national priorities. Countries often respond with reforms in areas where they are lagging.

As one example, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) made gender equity reforms upon seeing data from the Women, Business and the Law Index – an index created by the World Bank to compare laws and regulations affecting women’s economic opportunity across economies. The reform effort, supported by DRC’s ministries of Gender and Justice, led to changes the DRC’s Family Code, which for decades contained legal provisions that prevented married women from carrying out economic activities. The adoption of a new Family Code in July 2016 allowed married female entrepreneurs in DRC to start formal businesses, open bank accounts, register a company, and perform a host of other economic activities without interference from their husbands. The law also allows them to have a greater voice in management of the marital property and raised the legal marriage age for girls from 15 to 18.

In Sri Lanka, policy proposals were made upon seeing a provincial breakdown of the Human Capital Index (HCI) – an index created by the World Bank to measure the amount of human capital a child born today can expect to attain by age 18. Though Sri Lanka performs better than its neighbors in terms of human capital, the provincial breakdown confirmed high levels of stunting in the less developed provinces. This contributed to the Manifesto of the President proposing a special child nutrition program to address child under-nutrition, a nutrition allowance for children from poor families, and a nutrition aid program for pregnant women in the Estate Sector.

# **Accessibility**

When governments make data widely available, they empower individuals to make better choices through more information and knowledge. The digital revolution has increased the potential and ease with which information can be shared. One example is providing agricultural information, often through text messages, to smallholder farmers to increase their productivity. Such data transmission can improve existing extension services, which rely on in-person agricultural advice and are more costly to sustain and whose quality is more difficult to assure. A meta-analysis suggests that providing agricultural information increases yields by 4 percent and also increases farmers’ probability of using productivity-enhancing agrochemical inputs (Fabregas et al. 2019). With more than 2 billion people living on smallholder farms, these numbers can have major consequences for global poverty and shared prosperity.

Likewise, providing real-time price data to farmers allows them to sell their products at the right time and place. In Ethiopia, small-scale farmers lack access to reliable price information, and thus often receive prices far below market value. In 2008 the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange opened, providing price information to farmers through text messages, hotlines, and online 17