Social Indicators of Development

Last Updated on April 20, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Some examples of social indicators of development include:

1. Education – for example how many years of schooling children have.
2. Health – often measured by life expectancy.
3. Employment Rates
4. Gender equality
5. Peacefulness
6. Democracy
7. Corruption
8. Media freedoms
9. Civil Rights
10. Crime/ social unrest
11. Suicide Rates
12. Composite indicators of all of the above

A well known example of a social indicator of development is the Human Development Index, which combines one economic indicator (Gross National Income) with two social indicators: life expectancy and years of schooling into one score and ranks countries accordingly.

Social Indicators of development give a much broader picture of how developed a country is compared to purely economic indicators such as GDP which merely focus on economic productivity. Social indicators are more useful in showing us the extent to which income generated in a country actually benefits ordinary people.

The World Bank provides the most comprehensive data on social indicators of development, and you can also find many specific social indicators of development within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The Sustainable Development Goals selectively uses some World Bank data and is a much more accessible way for the lay person to monitor social development precisely because it is more limited in scope than the World Bank data.

This post introduces students to the specific indicators which institutions such as the World Bank and United Nations use to measure how ‘developed’ a country is, and the main indices which are used to compare the levels of development of different countries.

For each indicator, firstly we look at some of the indicators the World Bank uses and then we look at the Millennium Development Goals. Where appropriate we will also look at other sources of data.

The purpose of this post isn’t to assess the validity of the different indicators, just to provide an overview of HOW MUCH data there is out there!

Indicators of Education and Development

The World Bank uses several indicators to measure how developed a country is in terms of education:

• The net enrolment rate for pre-primary
• The net enrolment rate for primary*
• The net enrolment rate for secondary education
• The gross enrolment ratio for tertiary (further) education.
• Gender parity for primary education (using the gross enrolment ratio)**
• primary completion rate for both sexes
• The total number of primary aged children who are out of school.
• Government expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP.
• The World Bank also monitors the quality of education systems and finance focussing indicators such as how effectively students are monitored and quality of decision making.

*The net enrolment rate for primary is ‘the number of pupils of official primary school age (according to ISCED97) who are enrolled in primary education as a percentage of the total children of the official school age population’.

**The gross enrolment rate for primary school The number of children enrolled in primary school (of any age) as a percentage of the total children of the official school age population.

The difference between Net Enrolment Rate and Gross Enrolment Rate is explained succinctly in this blog post on NER, GER and Universal Primary Education.

The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals has ten targets for education development (with a heavy focus on gender equity and also ensuring all students are taught about sustainable development) and twelve main indicators to measure these targets including:

• Flows of official development aid for scholarships
• The proportion of teachers with qualifications.
• The proportion of schools providing safe facilities.

The United Nations has 13 targets and 28 indicators for health and development including

• maternal mortality ratio
• proportion of live births attended by a health professional
• under five mortality rate
• Neo natal mortality rate
• number of new HIV infections per 1000
• Tuberculosis, malaria and Hepatitis B rates per 1000
• Deaths from diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes
• Suicide rates
• treatments for drug addiction
• alcohol consumption
• deaths from road traffic injuries
• adolescent birth rates
• effective access to family planning
• death rates from air pollution and poor hygiene.
• Smoking rates
• proportion of populations vaccinated and with access to vaccinations
• Health worker density and distribution
• Health emergency preparedness.

Other social indicators to be covered in a future post…..

Later on I will also cover the following:

• Health
• Employment Rates
• Gender equality
• Peacefulness
• Democracy
• Corruption
• Consumption
• Leisure/ Media
• Civil Rights
• Crime/ social unrest
• Suicide Rates
• Composite indicators of all of the above!!!

I might also cover some of the more subjective indicators of development:

• Life satisfaction (‘happiness’ indicators)
• Trust
• confidence
• well-being
• perceived security

Signposting and related posts

This material is mainly relevant to the Global Development and Globalisation module, taught as part of the AQA’s A-level sociology specification.

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