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GEOGRAPHIES

Subdivision: an administrative region of a country that is generally the first level below the entire country, like a state in the United States or province in Canada. The size of a subdivision varies greatly between countries and is based on local definitions

City: a metropolitan area (generally larger than the “city proper” and including surrounding urbanized communities) with over 100,000 inhabitants for the US and EU or over 300,000 for the rest of the world. Our city definitions come directly from the United Nations and for the United States they are similar to Metropolitan Statistical Areas, like Greater Los Angeles.

 

DATA TYPES

Population: the total number of people in a country, subdivision or city.

Disposable Income: total personal income after taxes. On a per capita basis, this can be considered the amount of money that individuals have available for spending and is the most important metric for understanding consumer bases. This is available at a country, subdivision and city level.

GDP: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) represents the total value of the final goods and services produced within a country, subdivision or city.

Consumer Classes: Tellusant’s globally harmonized income brackets that make it easy to directly compare the affluence of populations across different countries. Our brackets breakdown the population of a country, subdvision or city into 7 groups based upon their level of income (global percentiles in parenthesis): Very Low (0-10%), Low (10-40%), Middle-Low (40-60%), Middle (60-80%), Middle-High (80-90%), High (90-99%) and Very High (99%+).

Age Fractiles: split of the population of a country, subdivision or city into 4 age groups: 0-17, 18-34, 34-55 and 55 or older.

Age x Income: groupings segment the population by both age and income level. Incomes are represented as either Low, Middle or High which represents a simplified version of our Consumer Classes.

Currency: data is provided in local currency, USD or Purchasing Power Parity dollars (PPP$) in both current terms and constant 2015 terms.

Exchange Rates: the conversion ratios between any two currencies, both historically and into the future.

In total, we combined more than 500 global, regional, and local data sources to build TelluBase. Data sources vary by data type and location, but generally cover:

• Population: sources include United Nations, national censuses, among others
• GDP, Income, Inflation, Exchange Rates: sources include International Monetary Fund, World Bank, International Comparison Program, among others
• Income and Age Distribution: Sources include World Income Inequality Database (WIDER), World Inequality Database, among others

 

TelluBase methods and proprietary algorithms are applied across many topics. Steps that we take include:

• Data cleaning: fix errors in underlying datasets
• Data harmonization: Integrate and ensure consistency across geographies
• Topic expertise: Apply insights and knowledge from 30 years of expertise from our founders
• Forecasting: forecast data not otherwise reliable, including income-age distribution
• Economic information by city: detailed statistical models for city and subdivision information
• Income-age distribution: apply sophisticated machine-learning algorithms and forecasts
• Additional algorithms: correct for purchasing power, cost of living, and other adjustments

 

Additional harmonization and forecast notes:

• The sum of subdivision measures equals national measures in all cases.
• Cities may be larger for a given measure than the subdivision where the city is in some cases if the metropolitan area spills into multiple subdivisions.
• PPP relative to USD values is assumed to change over time, as in reality the ratio declines as countries and their subdivisions become affluent. Therefore, this measure will not be equivalent to World Bank and other estimates.

 

For more complete information behind our sources and methodology, please contact us.