10 PM Current Affairs Quiz : October 13, 2018

• Human Capital Index (HCI) released in 2018 by World Bank.
• UNDP releases Human Development Index (HDI).
• The HCI uses survival rates and stunting rate instead of life expectancy as measure of health, and quality-adjusted learning instead of merely years of schooling as measure of education.
• HCI also excludes per capita income whereas the HDI uses it.
• Two significant changes from HDI are exclusion of income component and introduction of quality adjustment in learning.
• Exclusion of income element and introduction of quality adjustment makes HCI far less representative of Human Capital Development than the Index claims it to be.

Both statements are wrong:

Broader theme of the World Development Report (WDR) this year is “The Changing Nature of Work”.

As part of the WDR, the World Bank has launched a Human Capital Project (HCP).

About Human Capital Project (HCP):

• As part of the WDR, the World Bank has launched a Human Capital Project (HCP).
• The HCP programme is claimed to be a program of advocacy, measurement and analytical work to raise awareness and increase demand for intervention in order to build human capital.

There are three components of HCP

• A cross-country human capital measurement metric called the Human Capital Index (HCI)
• A programme of measurement and research to inform policy action
• A programme of support for country strategies to accelerate investment in human capital.

All options are wrong: These are components of Human Development Index.

Explanation:

• India ranked at 115 out of 157 countries on Human Capital Index (HCI) released by World Bank as part of World Development Report (WDR) 2019.
• Broader theme of the World Development Report (WDR) this year is “The Changing Nature of Work”.

Component of Human Capital Index.

1) Survival. This component reflects the fact that children born today need to survive until the process of human capital accumulation through formal education can begin. Survival is measured using the under-5 mortality rate.

2) Expected years of learning-adjusted school. Information on the quantity of education a child can expect to obtain by age 18 is combined with a measure of quality: how much children learn in school based on countries’ relative performance on international student achievement tests. This combination produces the expected years of learning-adjusted school. By adjusting for quality, this component reflects the reality that children in

3. Health. This component uses two indicators for a country’s overall health environment: (1) the rate of stunting of children under age 5; and (2) the adult survival rate, defined as the proportion of 15-year-olds who will survive until age 60. The first indicator reflects the health environment experienced during prenatal, infant, and early childhood development. The second reflects the range of health outcomes that a child born today may experience as an adult.

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is calculated each year by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and  highlights successes and failures in hunger reduction and provides insights into the drivers of hunger.

Main indicators of GHI

• Undernourishment: The share of the population that is undernourished i.e. whose caloric intake is insufficient.
• Child wasting: The share of children under the age of five who has low weight for height), are wasted i.e. who have low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition
• Child stunting: The share of children under the age of five who are stunted i.e. have low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition.
• Child mortality: The mortality rate of children under the age of five (in part, a reflection of the fatal mix of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments).

It is the newly constituted  21-member advisory panel on science, technology and innovation called Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council.

• It has replaced the earlier Scientific Advisory Committee to Prime Minister and to Cabinet.
• It is headed by Principal Scientific Advisor to government (K Vijay Raghavan now).
• It will actively aid in formulation and timely implementation of major science and technology missions and evolve interdisciplinary technology development programmes.
• It will also advise government on developing ‘Clusters of Excellence’ in science including city-based R&D clusters.

GenomeAsia 100K is a non-profit consortium with a mission to generate genomic information for Asian populations and to promote genetic understanding of Asian populations to support research and discovery for healthy living and longevity.

Key goal of the consortium is to accelerate precision medicine applications for Asian patients. It will also build advanced analytical capabilities to parse ‘big-data’ sets, leveraging advances in data science and artificial intelligence.