Tag: global peace index

Social Indicators of Development

The main social indicators of development include education, health, employment rates and gender equality.

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.

Indicators of Health and Development

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.

To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

The Global Peace Index – What is it and How Useful Is It?

The Global Peace Index uses 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators to measure the state of peace using three thematic domains:

  • the level of Societal Safety and Security;
  • the extent of Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict;
  • the degree of Militarisation.

The data is collated by the Institute for Economics and Peace – a think tank which develops metrics to analyse peace and to quantify its economic value. It does this by developing global and national indices of ‘peacefulness’, analysing country level risk, and calculating the economic cost of violence, and the positive benefits of peace.

Some of they key findings from the latest 2020 report include:

  • The average level of global peacefulness fell 0.34 per cent on the 2020
    GPI. This is the ninth time in the last 12 years that global peacefulness has fallen.
  • Trends are polarising – around 80 countries got less peaceful, but 80 countries got more peaceful.
  • The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remained the world’s least peaceful region.
  • Europe remains the most peaceful region in the world, although it recorded a slight deterioration in peacefulness.
    registering any change over the past year.

The Institute for Economics and Peace says its aim is to ‘create a paradigm shift in the way the world thinks about peace. We use data driven research to show that peace is a positive, tangible and achievable measure of human well-being and development.’

You can explore the Global Peace Index and download the full 2017 report for free on the Institute for Economics and Peace’s dedicated website – Vision of Humanity

Selected Key Findings of the 2017 Global Peace Index

Trends in peacefulness in 2020

There has been a divergence in peacefulness in the last decade – with the least peaceful countries getting less peaceful and the most peaceful countries getting more peaceful.

If you look at the breakdown by indicator, it is mainly refugees and internal conflicts driving the drift towards less peacefulness.

The economic costs of violence 

  • The economic impact of violence on the global economy in 2020 was around $14 trillion in purchasing power parity (PPP),
  • This is equivalent to 12 per cent of the world’s economic activity (gross world product), or $2000 for every person.

NB – What’s above is just an overview – I strongly recommend you explore the data further at Vision of Humanity!

How Useful is the Global Peace Index in helping us to understand development?

Strengths

On the plus side, the data seems to be non-partisan, in the sense that there doesn’t seem to be undue influence in the data selection process from developed countries – there is a heavy peace-score penalty which some of the most developed countries pay for high levels of military expenditure – most notably the United States.

Also, if we can trust the data and the number-crunching, then there is a clear correlation between sustained peacefulness in a country and that country’s level of development, and so monitoring levels of peacefulness and violence seems to be one of the most important goals in global development.

The Global Peace Index covers a lot of indicators – and the reports break them down to look at individual indicators, so you get a certain level of insight into the levels of peacefulness and violence.

I do like the focus on ‘positive peace’ and the fact that the report recognizes high levels of military expenditure as retarding investment in more positive aspects of development.

Limitations 

On the downside, I’m not convinced that all of the data is 100% valid – there has to be a lot of differences in the way data is recorded from country to country, especially in war-zones, so lots of missing conflict-deaths no doubt. This means making comparisons is difficult.

Also, I’m not sure they’ve included a broad enough range of indicators – the fact that Qatar creeps in at number 30 makes me suspicious, also – is violence against women included?

Also, I’m not clear about how the data is weighted – there’s lots of talk in the report about ‘multiplying factors’, and I don’t know enough about the maths behind the indices to evaluate how valid these calculations are.

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