Q&A 9 How do I create and load a new table for GDP growth factors in MySQL?
9.1 Explanation
Your database may contain different types of economic data:
- GDP levels (in US dollars) → stored in a table like gdp_wdi
- GDP growth factors (growth rate + explanatory variables) → should be stored in a separate table
Keeping them separate avoids confusion and lets you query each dataset appropriately.
For this example, we will use a sample file: data/gdp_growth_factor.csv.
9.2 SQL/MySQL Code
-- 1. Drop table if it already exists (clean slate)
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS gdp_growth_factors;
-- 2. Create new table with growth rate + explanatory factors
CREATE TABLE gdp_growth_factors (
country CHAR(3),
year INT,
gdp_growth_rate DOUBLE,
investment DOUBLE,
inflation DOUBLE,
population_growth DOUBLE,
PRIMARY KEY (country, year)
);
-- 3. Load CSV data into this new table
LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/Users/tmbmacbookair/Dropbox/GITHUB_REPOs/cdi-economics/data/gdp_growth_factor.csv'
INTO TABLE gdp_growth_factors
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
IGNORE 1 LINES
(country, year, gdp_growth_rate, investment, inflation, population_growth);
-- 4. Verify the first few rows
SELECT * FROM gdp_growth_factors LIMIT 5;