Ranking Atlas is a small independent publication that turns public datasets into bilingual (Japanese / English) rankings. We pull primary sources — the World Bank, Our World in Data, e-Stat (Statistics Bureau of Japan), and similar — and rearrange the numbers into a form that anyone can scan, compare, and verify.
Why Ranking Atlas Exists
Searching for “ranking of X” online tends to surface aggregator pages whose source is opaque, or articles that mix indicators measured under incompatible methodologies. Meanwhile, the primary datasets — the World Bank, Our World in Data, e-Stat — sit in row-oriented tables that are technically open but rarely friendly to a casual reader who just wants to compare two countries or two cities.
Ranking Atlas tries to sit between those two worlds: take the primary tables that already exist, present them as readable rankings, and never lose track of the original source. Three commitments shape every page: (1) cite the dataset, licence, and access date in full; (2) never re-order rows by editorial preference; (3) explain which indicator was chosen and why it is the right one for the question the page is asking.
How We Select Datasets
A ranking only goes live if its underlying dataset clears all of the following:
- Primary source. International organisations, government statistics, or peer-reviewed papers with redistribution rights. We do not republish aggregated rankings from private vendors.
- Explicit licence. World Bank Open Data (CC BY 4.0), Our World in Data (CC BY 4.0), e-Stat (the Japanese government’s standard reuse terms), and similar — the reuse terms must be public.
- Documented methodology. The population, survey year, sampling design, and revision history must be traceable from the source’s own documents.
- Active maintenance. We prefer datasets that are revised on a known cadence. Discontinued series are out of scope by default.
Editorial Principles
- Every ranking cites the underlying public dataset, including its licence
- We do not subjectively reorder rows or alter source values; the bars are drawn from the indicator as published
- Every article spells out the definition of the indicator, how to read the chart, and any exclusions applied — to keep readers from drawing the wrong conclusion
- Articles written for affiliate purposes carry a clear advertising disclosure at the top
- Corrections are welcomed and recorded on this page or in the article footer
About the Operator
Ranking Atlas is run as a one-person publication under the byline “Ranking Atlas Editorial”. The site grew out of a long-standing interest in public statistics, data visualisation, and geographic literacy, and went live in 2025.
Everything you see — the data fetchers, the bar-chart race generator, the editorial text, the build pipeline — is implemented, written, and maintained by the same operator. Any interpretation expressed on the site is the operator’s personal view and does not represent any organisation or employer.
Publishing Cadence and How to Reach Us
New rankings are added at a pace of one to three per week. Existing articles are updated whenever the upstream dataset is revised, or when a reader points out an error worth fixing; the revision note is recorded either here or at the bottom of the article.
For corrections, ranking requests, citation enquiries, or interview requests, please use the Contact page or write directly to ranking@rankingatlas.com. We typically reply within five to seven business days.
From the Editor: How We Verify the Numbers
Before a ranking goes live I run it through a short but non-negotiable checklist. I download the source table directly from the primary publisher (e-Stat, the World Bank), strip aggregate rows such as “Japan total” or “World”, and cross-check adjacent years to catch silent changes in sheet layouts or item classifications — Japanese household-survey tables in particular love to shuffle their columns between years. Unit mix-ups (thousands of yen vs. yen, per 100,000 vs. per 10,000) are the single most common failure mode for data sites, so every indicator gets checked against the publisher’s own definition page.
Mistakes still slip through occasionally. When they do, the article is corrected with a visible note rather than silently rewritten. A chart can look authoritative while quietly misleading, depending on how the data was cut — which is exactly why each article spells out which table, which column, and which exclusions were used.
Primary Data Sources
- World Bank Open Data (World Development Indicators and others)
- Our World in Data (OWID)
- e-Stat — Statistics Bureau of Japan (SSDS, Family Income and Expenditure Survey, etc.)
- Statistics of Japan (Vital Statistics, Population Census, etc.)
Each ranking article includes the dataset name, URL, retrieval date, and licence under its source caption. You can jump straight from any article to the underlying source via the “Source” section at the foot of the page.