The Global Legislators Database (GLD) is a cross-national dataset on characteristics of 19,704 national parliamentarians in 97 of the 103 world's electoral democracies. The database includes individual legislator-level information on those who held office in each country's lower (or unicameral) chamber during a single legislative session as of 2015, 2016, or 2017. Variables included for each legislator are name, date of birth, gender, party affiliation, last occupation prior to holding elected office, and highest level of education completed. An article describing and validating the dataset is published in The British Journal of Political Science. (2024-10-09).

Read more about the GLD in The Economist.