Reports and rankings

: The report, ‘The Toxic Truth: Children’s exposure to lead pollution undermines a generation of potential’ has been launched by UNICEF in collaboration with Pure Earth, an international non-profit organization.
Around 1 in 3 children – up to 800 million globally – has blood lead levels at or above 5 micrograms per decilitre (µg/dL), a level that the World Health Organization have stated it requires global and regional interventions.
Nearly half of these children live in South Asia.
It notes that lead is a potent neurotoxin which causes irreparable harm to children’s brains. It is particularly destructive to babies and children under the age of five as it damages their brains before they have had the opportunity to fully develop, causing them lifelong neurological, cognitive and physical impairment.
The report notes that informal and substandard recycling of lead-acid batteries is a leading contributor to lead poisoning in children living in low and middle-income countries

The FutureBrand Index is a global brand perception study based on the PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) Global Top 100 Companies by market capitalisation. Now in its sixth year and fifth iteration, the ranking re-orders the PwC Top100 in terms of brand perception strength, rather than just financial strength.
Reliance Industries of India has ranked second after Apple in FutureBrand Index 2020. Its PWC 2020 position was 91.

The Global Gender Gap Report published by the World Economic Forum since 2006 is designed to “measure gender-based gaps in access to resources and opportunities in countries rather than the actual levels of the available resources and opportunities in those countries.”
As per the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2020 rankings, India ranks 112 among 153 countries. China was ranked 106 while Iceland topped the table.

Digital Quality of Life (DQL) Index, 2020 has been released by SurfShark, an online privacy solutions provider.
The index ranks countries by looking at five fundamental pillars: Internet affordability, Internet quality, Electronic government availability and advancement, Electronic infrastructure development and State of electronic security.
Information points used to index the digital quality of life around the world were gathered from open data sources provided by the United Nations, World Bank, International Telecommunications Union etc.
Scandinavian countries Denmark and Sweden topped the index with Canada rounding up the top three.
India: Overall ranks of 57 out of the 85 countries but stands out in relatively affordable internet and in the field of e-government advancement despite lower than average digital quality of life level.

Statement 1 is incorrect. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World is an annual flagship report jointly prepared by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO to inform on progress towards ending hunger, achieving food security and improving nutrition and to provide in depth analysis on key challenges for achieving this goal in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Statement 2 is correct. Since 2017, SOFI presents two key measures of food insecurity: the conventional measure called the Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU) and a new measure called the Prevalence of Moderate and Severe Food Insecurity (PMSFI).
The prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) is an estimate of the proportion of the population whose habitual food consumption is insufficient to provide the dietary energy levels that are required to maintain a normal active and healthy life. It is expressed as a percentage. This indicator measures progress towards SDG Target 2.1.
# SDG Target 2.1: By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round.

The Remote Learning Reachability report has been issued by United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recently.
– At least a third of the world’s schoolchildren, 463 million children globally, were unable to access remote learning when COVID-19 shuttered their schools.
– Just 24% of Indian households have internet connections to access e-education.

# UNICEF’s Framework for Reopening Schools, issued jointly with UNESCO, UNHCR, WFP and the World Bank, offers practical advice for national and local authorities.

The Global Food Security Index considers the core issues of affordability, availability, and quality across a set of 113 countries. It was first published in 2012, and is managed and updated annually by the Economist’s intelligence unit.
The index is a dynamic quantitative and qualitative benchmarking model, constructed from 34 unique indicators, that measures these drivers of food security across both developing and developed countries.

India’s profile on the GFSI is given below (Dec. 2019).

The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) is a common measure of market
concentration and is used to determine market competitiveness, often pre- and post-
Merger & Acquisition transactions.
•It is calculated by squaring the market share of each firm competing in a market
and then summing the resulting numbers. It can range from close to zero to 10,000.
•Regulators use the HHI Index using the 50 largest companies in a particular
industry to determine if that industry should be considered competitive or as close
to being a monopoly.

The Fraser Institute produces the annual Economic Freedom of the World
report in cooperation with the Economic Freedom Network, a group of independent research
and educational institutes in nearly 100 countries and territories.
It’s the world’s premier measurement of economic freedom, measuring and ranking
countries in five areas:
•size of the government,
•legal structure and security of property rights,
•access to sound money,
•freedom to trade internationally and regulation of credit,
•labour and business.

Recently ‘Global Migration Report 2020’ was published by the International Organisation for Migration.
• In 2019 international migrants are estimated at 270 million where more than half of all international migrants (141 million) live in Europe and North America.
• Top destination remains the United States at nearly 51 million.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has released its report titled Economic Outlook for South East Asia;
• The report said that India’s reliance on consumption will continue due to large informal labor share which indicates that there is room to strengthen the consumption base.
• India’s gross domestic product (GDP) is projected to grow at 6.6% in 2020-24 lower than its 2013-17 average of 7.4%.

Knight Frank’s Prime Global Cities Index tracks the performance of luxury residential prices across key global cities on a quarterly basis using data compiled by our global research network.
• National capital New Delhi has emerged as the 10th fastest growing city globally for luxury residential real estate with a rise of 4.4 per cent in capital value over the past one year, says the latest report by Knight Frank

•Bengaluru with a rise of 2.8 per cent in capital value year-on-year and Mumbai (up 0.8 per cent) are ranked 15th and 30th, respectively in the 46 cities tracked by Knight Frank globally.

Brazil’s “dirty list” of employers that have engaged in slave labour is considered one the country’s best tools in its efforts to end slave labor.
• It is a registry of employers that have been found by the government to have engaged in slave labour.
• It gives transparency to a decision already reached by the Brazilian state.
• Created in 2004, it has been hailed by the United Nations as a key tool in Brazil’s anti-slavery drive.

India has been ranked very low at 76th place out of 82 countries on a new Social Mobility Index compiled by the World Economic Forum, while Denmark has topped the charts.
The report, released ahead of the 50th Annual Meeting of the WEF, also lists India among the five countries that stand to gain the most from a better social mobility score that seeks to measure parameters necessary for creating societies where every person has the same opportunity to fulfill his potential in life irrespective of socioeconomic background.

The key message from the UN’s World Population Prospects 2019 report is that national leaders must redouble their efforts to raise education, health and living standards for people everywhere.

 India is projected to become the most populous country by 2027 surpassing China, and host 1.64 billion people by 2050;

 The world as a whole could be home to 8.5 billion people in just over a decade from now, and the number could go up to 9.7 billion by mid-century.

 The largest increases in population between 2019 and 2050 will take place in: India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt and the United States of America (In descending order of the expected increase).

 The UN report shows migration to countries with a falling ratio of working-age people to those above 65 will be steady, as those economies open up to workers to sustain economic production.

 Japan has the lowest such ratio, followed by Europe and the Caribbean; in over three decades, North America, Eastern and Southeastern Asia will join this group.

 India meanwhile will have a vast number of young people and insufficient natural resources left for exploitation. Preparing for the changes and opportunities migration offers will depend on a skills revolution.

The Poverty and Shared Prosperity biennial series published by the World

Bank provides a global audience with the latest and most accurate estimates on trends in

global poverty and shared prosperity.

Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune report presents new

estimates of COVID-19’s impacts on global poverty and inequality. Harnessing fresh data

from frontline surveys and economic simulations, it shows that pandemic-related job losses

and deprivation worldwide are hitting already-poor and vulnerable people hard, while also

partly changing the profile of global poverty by creating millions of “new poor.”

Global extreme poverty is expected to rise for the first time in 20 years because of the

disruption caused by COVID-19. Around 9.1% to 9.4% of the world will be affected by

extreme poverty in 2020.

2020 CRI Index: Fighting Inequality in the Time of Covid-19 has been

recently released by the Oxfam. The CRI Index database is updated annually by

Development Finance International (DFI) and Oxfam.

Only one in six countries assessed for the CRI Index 2020 were spending enough on health,

only a third of the global workforce had adequate social protection, and in more than 100

countries at least one in three workers had no labour protection such as sick pay.

The report ‘World Economic Outlook, October 2020: A Long and Difficult

Ascent’ has been published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

As per the report, the Indian economy is expected to contract by 10.3 percent in 2020 and

Global output is projected to contract by 4.4 for this year.

The World Happiness Report is a publication of the Sustainable

Development Solutions Network, powered by data from the Gallup World Poll. The 2020 edition is the eighth World Happiness Report.

India is ranked 144 out of 153 countries. The first five ranks go to Finland, Denmark,

Switzerland, Iceland and Norway, respectively. Even India’s neighbours are ahead —

Bangladesh (107), Sri Lanka (130), Nepal (92) and Pakistan (66). The unhappiest people are in Afghanistan (153), South Sudan (152), Zimbabwe (151), Rwanda (150) and the Central African Republic (149).

The Global Innovation Index 2020 (GII), in its 13th edition this year, is copublished

by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property

Organization (WIPO, a specialized agency of the United Nations).

The Global Innovation Index (GII) ranks world economies according to their innovation

capabilities. Consisting of roughly 80 indicators, grouped into innovation inputs and

outputs, the GII aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation.

Switzerland, Sweden, and the U.S. lead the innovation rankings, followed by the U.K. and

the Netherlands. This year marks the first time a second Asian economy—the Republic of

Korea—cracks the top 10, next to Singapore.

Moving up four positions from last year, India ranks 48th (of 131) and makes it into the

top 50 for the first time in 2020.

-India performs better in innovation outputs than innovation inputs in 2020.

-This year India ranks 57th in innovation inputs, higher than last year and compared to

2018.

-As for innovation outputs, India ranks 45th. This position is higher than last year and

compared to 2018.

-India ranks 3rd among the 29 lower middle-income group economies.

-India ranks 1st among the 10 economies in Central and Southern Asia.

The Economic Freedom of the World: 2020 report has been recently

released by the Fraser Institute in Canada.

The index of global economic freedom ranks countries based on five areas—size of

government, legal structure and property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade

internationally, regulation of credit, labour and business.

Hong Kong is ranked number one and the rankings of some major countries are Japan

(20th), Germany (21st), Italy (51st), France (58th), Mexico (68th), Russia (89th), India

(105th), Brazil (105th), and China (124th).

The Human Capital Index is a report prepared by the World Bank; it is an

international metric that benchmarks key components of human capital across countries. Measuring the human capital that a child born today can expect to attain by her 18th

birthday, the HCI highlights how current health and education outcomes shape the

productivity of the next generation of workers. The HCI was launched in 2018 as part of the

Human Capital Project (HCP).

The 2020 Human Capital Index update includes health and education data for 174

countries – covering 98 per cent of the world’s population – up to March 2020, providing a

pre-pandemic baseline on the health and education of children, with the biggest strides

made in low-income countries.

India has been ranked at the 116th position.

The United in Science 2020 Report has been compiled by the World

Meteorological Organization (WMO) under the direction of the United Nations

Secretary-General to bring together the latest climate science related updates from a group

of key global partner organizations: WMO, Global Carbon Project (GCP), UNESCO

Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (UNESCO-IOC), Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change (IPCC), UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Met Office.

Statement 1 is correct. Doing Business is a World Bank Group flagship

publication, it is a series of annual studies measuring the regulations that enhance

business activity and those that constrain it. Doing Business presents quantitative

indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be

compared across 190 economies—from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe—and over time.

Statement 2 is correct. Doing Business covers 12 areas of business regulation. Ten of

these areas—starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity,

registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading

across borders, enforcing contracts, and resolving insolvency.

Doing Business also measures regulation on employing workers and contracting with the

government, which are not included in the ease of doing business score and ranking.

# The World Bank has paused the publication of its ‘Doing Business’ report because of

statistical irregularities.

The World Energy Outlook (WEO), International Energy Agency’s flagship

publication, provides critical analysis and insights on trends in energy demand and supply,

and what they mean for energy security, environmental protection and economic

development.

The first WEO was published in 1977 and it has been an annual publication since 1998.

International Energy Agency (IEA), in collaboration with NITI Aayog, presented a ‘Special

Report on Sustainable Recovery’ recently.

Part of IEA’s flagship World Energy Outlook series, the report proposes a number of actions

that could be taken over the next three years to revitalize economies and boost employment

while making energy systems cleaner and more resilient.

Freedom in the World, Freedom House’s flagship publication, is the
standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties.
Freedom House is a U.S.-based rights watchdog.
The Human Development Report (HDR) is an annual report published by the Human
Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has released a report titled “Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Trade and Development: Transitioning to a New Normal”.
It projects that the global economy would contract 4.3 per cent this year due to the pandemic. It warned the crisis could send an additional 130 million people into extreme poverty.
Further, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 could be derailed unless immediate policy actions are taken.

Statement 1 is incorrect. 2020 Human Development Report, ‘The Next Frontier: Human Development and the Anthropocene’ has been published by the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme.
Statement 2 is correct. India ranked 131 among 189 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI) for 2019, slipping two places from the previous year, according to the Human Development Report (HDR) 2020.
India’s HDI value for 2019 is 0.645, which put the country in the medium human development category, positioning it at 131 out of 189 countries and territories. Between 1990 and 2019, India’s HDI value increased from 0.429 to 0.645, an increase of 50.3%.
Norway topped the index, followed by Ireland, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Iceland complete the top five.

The Human Freedom Index presents the state of human freedom in the world based on a broad measure that encompasses personal, civil, and economic freedom. The report is co‐ published by the Cato Institute and the Fraser Institute.
The Human Freedom Index 2020, which uses data from 2008 to 2018, by the Cato Institute in the United States and Fraser Institute in Canada, noted a decrease in personal freedoms since 2008 globally.
The jurisdictions that took the top 10 places, in order, were New Zealand, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Estonia, and Germany and Sweden (tied in 9th place).
India ranks at 111 out of 162 countries, China at 129 rank, Bangladesh at 139 and Pakistan at 140.

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a report titled Global Status Report for Building and Construction, 2020.
The report has been prepared by the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC), the Secretariat of which is hosted by the UNEP.
— The construction activities dropped by 20-30% in 2020 compared to 2019 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and 10% of overall jobs lost or at risk in the building construction sector.
— The building sector emitted more than a third of global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) in 2019.
— The CO2 emissions increased due to a high proportion of fossil fuels used for power generation, combined with higher activity levels in regions where electricity remains carbon-intensive.

Both Global Economic Prospect Report and Global Financial Development
Report are released by World Bank.
NOTE: Global Financial Stability Report is released by International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Global Forum on Environment (GFENV) is a venue that brings together international experts from member and non-member economies to share experiences and explore common policy issues focusing principally on the environmental dimension of sustainable development and its linkages with economic and social policies.
Issues to be addressed in the Global Forum on Environment are shaped based on the current work of the OECD Environment Programme, by focusing on one or two priority issues on the global environmental agenda each year.

Nine in 10 people are prejudiced against women, such as thinking university education is more important for men or that men deserve jobs more if work is scarce, the United Nations said.
More than a quarter of men and women also think it is justified for a husband to beat his wife, found the Gender Social Norms Index by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), designed to measure how social beliefs obstruct gender equality.

It is becoming clear that climate crisis is creating more refugees than war. Instead of focusing on weeding out ‘illegal immigrants’, the government should stress on what is a much larger issue: the irreversible damage we are causing our environment and the rise in climate refugees.
• Before you roll your eyes at the comparison, you may want to look at these hard-hitting statistics on environmental migrants from the World Migration Report, 2020.
• It states that by end-2018, there were a total of 28 million new internal displacements across 148 countries and territories.
• Nearly 61% (17.2 million) of these new displacements were triggered by disasters, and 39% (10.8 million) were caused by conflict and violence.
• Brought out by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the report highlights that, as in previous years, weather-related disasters triggered the vast majority of all new displacements across the world.