The Subnational Gender Development Database: Uncovering Variation in Gender Inequality Within Countries

In this paper we describe and present the Subnational Gender Development Database. This database contains for the period 2000-2023 the national and subnational values of the Subnational Gender Development Index (SGDI), the male and female values of the Subnational Human Development Index and the underlying gender-specific education, health and standard of living indices. The subnational values of the indicators were computed on the basis of data from statistical offices and from the Area Database of the Global Data Lab, which contains indicators aggregated from household surveys and census datasets. These subnational values were computed in such a way that their population-weighted national averages are equal to their official national values, as presented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in their Human Development Reports. Subnational values for missing years have been calculated by using interpolation and extrapolation on the basis of real values. The SGDI Database contains values for the SGDI and underlying indicators for 1810 subnational regions in 166 countries.