The World Bank's country groups: region, income level and lending type

The World Bank's classification of 217 countries, as its data service served it on 3 November 2026. One row is one country, with its region, its income level and the World Bank lender it borrows from. There are no numeric units: every column is a code or a label. Join it to weo by code to compare countries by income level or region.

Usage

wb_groups

Format

A tibble with 217 rows and 6 variables:

code: chr The country's three-letter code, the same code the IMF uses, so it joins to the code column of weo.
wb_code: chr The World Bank's own code. It differs from code for two countries only: Kosovo (XKX) and West Bank and Gaza (PSE).
country: chr The country's name, as the World Bank writes it, such as "Egypt, Arab Rep.".
region: chr The World Bank's region, one of seven, such as "Sub-Saharan Africa" or "South Asia".
income_level: chr The World Bank's income level: "Low income", "Lower middle income", "Upper middle income" or "High income".
lending_type: chr Which World Bank lender the country borrows from: "IDA" (the concessional arm, for the poorest countries), "IBRD", "Blend" (both), or "Not classified".

Source

The World Bank: World Development Indicators: country and lending groups, https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037712/world-development-indicators, retrieved through wbwdi::wdi_get_entities() on 3 November 2026, CC BY 4.0. Built by data-raw/wb_groups.R from data-raw/source/wb_country_groups.csv.

Details

The World Bank revises income levels every 1 July, from each country's gross national income per person.

The table holds countries only, no aggregates, so a join to weo leaves out the IMF's group rows. 21 countries are here and not in the WEO, and one WEO country, Taiwan Province of China, is in the WEO and not here.

Vintage

The classification the World Bank's data service served on 3 November 2026. This table is a frozen snapshot: it does not change when the World Bank revises its groups.

Transformations

The World Bank's list came through wbwdi::wdi_get_entities(). The file data-raw/source/wb_country_groups.csv keeps the 217 countries and drops the World Bank's aggregates such as "Sub-Saharan Africa", renames the columns, and uses the IMF's codes for Kosovo (KOS) and West Bank and Gaza (WBG), so that one join matches every country. The World Bank's own code stays in wb_code. data-raw/wb_groups.R then changes no value.

Credit

Print this line under every chart you make from these data:

Source: International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, October 2026, https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:WEO. Country groups: The World Bank: World Development Indicators: country and lending groups (CC BY 4.0). Net interest is the primary balance minus the overall balance, calculated for this workshop.

Drop the third sentence if your chart shows no net interest.

Terms of use

The package's MIT license does not cover these data. The World Bank publishes them under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0), with the added terms in its Terms of Use for Datasets, https://www.worldbank.org/ext/en/legal/terms-conditions/datasets (read on 6 November 2026). You may copy, share and adapt them, commercially too, if you credit the World Bank in its format, say what you changed and link to the license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. When you share the data, pass on the same attribution requirement; giving the web address of those terms is enough. Do not imply that the World Bank takes part in, sponsors or endorses your use. Disputes go to mediation and then arbitration. See system.file("LICENSE-data.md", package = "saisdata").

This package is not an official IMF or World Bank product.

Examples

# The first six countries
head(wb_groups)
#> # A tibble: 6 × 6
#>   code  wb_code country              region            income_level lending_type
#>   <chr> <chr>   <chr>                <chr>             <chr>        <chr>       
#> 1 ABW   ABW     Aruba                Latin America & … High income  Not classif…
#> 2 AFG   AFG     Afghanistan          Middle East, Nor… Low income   IDA         
#> 3 AGO   AGO     Angola               Sub-Saharan Afri… Lower middl… IBRD        
#> 4 ALB   ALB     Albania              Europe & Central… Upper middl… IBRD        
#> 5 AND   AND     Andorra              Europe & Central… High income  Not classif…
#> 6 ARE   ARE     United Arab Emirates Middle East, Nor… High income  Not classif…