2016 social progress index media brief - long version

SOCIAL PROGRESS

IMPERATIVE

2016 SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEXMEDIA BRIEFING

EMBARGOED – NOT FOR USE BEFORE 27 JUNE 2016

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WHAT IS THE SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEX?

GDP BASIC HUMAN NEEDS

FOUNDATIONS OF WELLBEING

OPPORTUNITY

GDP + SPI = INCLUSIVE GROWTH

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The Social Progress Imperative defines social progress as

“the capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential.”

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Nutrition and Basic Medical Care

Water and Sanitation

Shelter

Personal Safety

Access to Basic Knowledge

Access to Information and Communication

Health and Wellness

Environmental Quality

Personal Rights

Personal Freedom and Choice

Tolerance and Inclusion

Access to Advanced Education

OpportunityFoundations of WellbeingBasic Human Needs

Social Progress Index Framework

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Basic Human Needs Opportunity

Nutrition and Basic Medical Care§ Undernourishment§ Depth of food deficit§ Maternal mortality rate§ Child mortality rate§ Deaths from infectious diseases

Water and Sanitation§ Access to piped water§ Rural access to improved water source§ Access to improved sanitation facilities

Shelter§ Availability of affordable housing§ Access to electricity§ Quality of electric supply§ Household air pollution attributable deaths

Personal Safety§ Homicide rate§ Level of violent crime§ Perceived criminality§ Political terror§ Traffic deaths

Access to Basic Knowledge§ Adult literacy rate§ Primary school enrollment§ Lower secondary school enrollment§ Upper secondary school enrollment§ Gender parity in secondary enrollment

Access to Information and Communications§ Mobile telephone subscriptions§ Internet users§ Press Freedom Index

Health and Wellness§ Life expectancy at 60 § Premature deaths from non-communicable

diseases§ Obesity rate§ Suicide rate

Environmental Quality§ Outdoor air pollution attributable deaths§ Wastewater treatment§ Greenhouse gas emissions§ Biodiversity and habitat

Personal Rights§ Political rights§ Freedom of speech§ Freedom of assembly/association§ Freedom of movement§ Private property rights

Personal Freedom and Choice§ Freedom over life choices§ Freedom of religion§ Early marriage§ Satisfied demand for contraception§ Corruption

Tolerance and Inclusion§ Tolerance for immigrants§ Tolerance for homosexuals§ Discrimination and violence against minorities§ Religious tolerance§ Community safety net

Access to Advanced Education§ Years of tertiary schooling§ Women’s average years in school§ Inequality in the attainment of education§ Globally ranked universities§ Percentage of tertiary students enrolled in

globally ranked universities

Social Progress Index Complete Framework

Foundations of Wellbeing

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INDICATOR DATA SOURCESHard data

Expert analysis

Surveydata

WHAT DOES THE SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEX TELL US ABOUT THE WORLD?

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IF THE WORLD WERE A COUNTRY, IT WOULD RANK SOMEWHERE BETWEEN KYRGYZSTAN AND MONGOLIA

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Basic Human Needs Foundations of Wellbeing Opportunity

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THE WORLD IS DOING BEST IN AREAS THAT HAVE BEEN THE FOCUS OF THE MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

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Basic Human Needs Foundations of Wellbeing Opportunity

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THE WORLD STRUGGLES MOST WITH PERSONAL RIGHTS AND TOLERANCE AND INCLUSION

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Basic Human Needs Foundations of Wellbeing Opportunity

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THOUGH NOT THE WORST AREA OF PERFORMANCE, ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY IS AT RISK OF GETTING WORSE

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Basic Human Needs Foundations of Wellbeing Opportunity

WHAT DOES THE SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEX TELL US ABOUT COUNTRIES?

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SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEX 2016 RESULTS MAP

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SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEX 2016 RESULTS

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SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEX 2016 RESULTS

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TOP PERFORMERSMORE THAN ONE PATH TO WORLD-CLASS SOCIAL PROGRESS

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• Top tier countries are known for their strong welfare policies and, particularly among non-Nordic countries, multiculturalism.

• By global standards, these countries perform particularly well on Opportunity dimension.

• However, even the strongest countries have unfinished agendas and areas for improvement.

but seven are not.

Five of the 12 very high social progress countries are Nordic

WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEX AND GDP PER CAPITA?

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SOCIAL PROGRESS DOES INCREASE WITH GDP PER CAPITA BUT ECONOMIC GROWTH IS NOT THE WHOLE STORY

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QUICK WINSCOMPONENTS THAT RAPIDLY IMPROVE WITH GDP PER CAPITA

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STEADY IMPROVERS COMPONENTS THAT IMPROVE WITH GDP PER CAPITA

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HARD PROBLEMSCOMPONENTS THAT IMPROVE, BUT WITH A LOT OF NOISE

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TOUGHEST CHALLENGESCOMPONENTS THAT HARDLY IMPROVE WITH GDP PER CAPITA

GDP IS NOT DESTINY

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COUNTRIES CAN EXPERIENCE SIMILAR LEVELS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS AT VASTLY DIFFERENT LEVELS OF GDP PER CAPITA (PPP)

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New Zealand achieves a level of social progress (88.45) almost as high as Norway (88.70) at a GDP per capita that is half that of Norway ($33,360 versus $64,004).

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COUNTRIES CAN EXPERIENCE SIMILAR LEVELS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS AT VASTLY DIFFERENT LEVELS OF GDP PER CAPITA (PPP)

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Slovenia achieves a level of social progress (84.27) almost as high as the United States (84.62) at a GDP per capita nearly half that of the United States ($28,153 versus $52,118).

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COUNTRIES CAN EXPERIENCE SIMILAR LEVELS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS AT VASTLY DIFFERENT LEVELS OF GDP PER CAPITA (PPP)

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Jamaica achieves a level of social progress (71.94) nearly equal to Kuwait (71.84) at a fraction of the GDP per capita ($8,467 versus $69,878).

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Ukraine achieves a level of social progress (66.43) slightly higher than Russia (64.19) at a fraction of the GDP per capita (Russia: $23,293 versus Ukraine: $8,267).

COUNTRIES CAN EXPERIENCE SIMILAR LEVELS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS AT VASTLY DIFFERENT LEVELS OF GDP PER CAPITA (PPP)

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COUNTRIES CAN EXPERIENCE SIMILAR LEVELS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS AT VASTLY DIFFERENT LEVELS OF GDP PER CAPITA (PPP)

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Costa Rica achieves a level of social progress (80.12) almost as high as the Republic of Korea (80.92) at less than half the GDP per capita of Korea ($33,629 versus $14,232).

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COUNTRIES CAN EXPERIENCE SIMILAR LEVELS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS AT VASTLY DIFFERENT LEVELS OF GDP PER CAPITA (PPP)

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Jordan achieves a level of social progress (65.43) almost as high as Saudi Arabia (66.30) at a fourth of the GDP per capita of Saudi Arabia ($49,537 versus $11,496).

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COUNTRIES CAN EXPERIENCE SIMILAR LEVELS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS AT VASTLY DIFFERENT LEVELS OF GDP PER CAPITA (PPP)

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Nicaragua achieves a level of social progress (63.03) slightly higher than Venezuela (62.60) at almost a fourth the GDP per capita of Venezuela ($16,751 versus $4,692).

Country performance is measured against a group of 15 countries most similar in GDP per capita (PPP) using a 4-year average. The following 2 slides show countries that over and underperform relative to their economic peer cohort groups.

OVER AND UNDERPERFORMANCE ON SOCIAL PROGRESS RELATIVE TO ECONOMIC PEERS

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COUNTRIES OVERPERFORMING ON SOCIAL PROGRESS RELATIVE TO GDP PER CAPITA (PPP)*

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Some countries’ relative overperformance may be a sign of economic decline rather than success in creating social progress (e.g., Moldova, Kyrgyzstan).

* Graphic shows only those countries overperforming by a significant amount (one or more points).

Overperformance can signal very strong performance in social progress (e.g., Costa Rica, New Zealand, Rwanda).

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COUNTRIES UNDERPERFORMING ON SOCIAL PROGRESS RELATIVE TO GDP PER CAPITA (PPP)*

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Countries with natural resource wealth and countries afflicted by conflict underperform.

* Graphic shows only those countries underperforming by a significant amount (one or more points).

But so does one of the world’s leading industrial nations, the United States.

COUNTRY PERFORMANCE –RELATIVE PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

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2016 FRAMEWORK & COUNTRY PERFORMANCE SCORECARDS

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Social Progress Index Framework• First Index of its kind – no economic indicators, only measures social

and environmental outcomes

• 2016 results rank and analyse 133 countries with partial results for an additional 28 countries

• Measures country performance across 53 indicators to answer three questions:

1. Does a country provide for its people’s most essential needs?

2. Are the building blocks in place for people to improve their lives?

3. Is there opportunity for people to improve their position in society?

Country Performance Scorecards• Strengths and weakness analysis examines

country performance relative to a group of comparator countries with similar resources (measured in terms of GDP per capita)

• Holistic view of priority areas for action and identification of out-performing areas

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SOCIAL PROGRESS INDEX SCORECARD OVERVIEW

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Reading the relative analysis scorecard. Within the group of peer countries, yellow signifies that a country’s performance is typical for countries at its level of economic development, green signifies that the country performs substantially better than its peer group, and red signifies that the country performs substantially worse than its peer group.

Standard groupings of countries, such as the classifications done by the World Bank, are not appropriate for our purposes for two reasons. First, the groupings are too large, representing excessively wide ranges of social performance and therefore few relative strengths and weaknesses.Second, using these groups, countries at the top or bottom of a group may appear to have a misleadingly large number of strengths or weaknesses simply because the group the country is being compared to is at a much lower or higher level of economic development. We therefore define the group of a country’s economic peers as the 15 countries closest in GDP PPP per capita. In order to reduce the influence of year-to-year fluctuations in GDP data, a four-year average is used (2011-2014).

After significant testing, we found that larger groupings resulted in a wider range of typical scores and therefore too few relative strengths and weakness. Smaller groupings become too sensitive to outliers.

Once the group of comparator countries is established, the country’s performance is compared to the median performance of countries in the group. The median is used rather than the mean, to minimize the influence of outliers. If the country’s score is greater than (or less than) the average absolute deviation from the median of the comparator group, it is considered a strength (or weakness). Scores that are within one average absolute deviation are within the range of expected scores and are considered neither strengths nor weaknesses. A floor is established so the thresholds are no less than those for poorer countries.

When the distribution of scores is tight around the median with too little variation to assess relative strengths and weaknesses, a 1 point band around the median is used to determine strengths and weaknesses.

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Find scorecards for all countries included in the index online here.

Background. The component, dimension and overall Social Progress Index scores are scaled from 0 to 100 with 100 as the score that a country would achieve were it to have the highest possible score on every indicator, and 0 as the score were it to have the lowest possible score on every indicator. With this scale, it is possible to evaluate a country’s performance relative to the best and worst possible score. In some cases, it is also helpful to compare a country’s performance to other countries at a similar level of economic development. For example, a lower-income country may have a low score on a certain component, but could greatly exceed typical scores for countries with similar per capita incomes. Conversely, a high-income country may have a high absolute score on a component, but still fall short of what is typical for comparably wealthy countries. For this reason, we have developed a methodology to present a country’s strengths and weaknesses on a relative rather than absolute basis, comparing a country’s performance to that of its economic peers.

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THEMATIC FINDINGS

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YOUNG PEOPLE ARE MORE LIKELY TO LIVE IN LOW SOCIAL PROGRESS COUNTRIES

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Social progress in the world looks different for younger than for older people.

Nearly 40% of the world’s people who are older than 55 live in countries classified as upper middle social progress or above, while just 22% of people aged under 25 do.

Today, youth are more likely to live in countries that lack basic medical care and clean water, that are less safe, less free, and less tolerant. This gap shows the critical need to engage youth in all countries on determining development priorities.