Fight Poverty with Data, Population and Beyond GDP indicators!

Welcome to this week’s review of progress initiatives, publications and articles. Here are the highlights from this week:

• Mesurer la pauvreté multidimensionnelle: cadres conceptuels, identification des facteurs et robustesse aux schémas de pondération, a study by Morocco’s High Commission of Planning on the measurement of multidimensional poverty, different approaches to measure it and their inherent limits.

• How can we provide enough jobs for young people in Africa? In this Guardian article Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s Finance Minister, proposes 5 recommendations that include: empowerment through education for girls and women and the development of skills.

• Characterizing Demand for ‘Beyond GDP’  report by BRAINPOoL.
• Where is the demand for Beyond GDP indicators? 
• Which actors are interested in using such indicators and how do they want to use them? 
•  How might a societal demand for these indicators be understood? And, when there is a lack of demand, what factors explain it? 

These are the questions that are posed and answered in this recent report by BRAINPOoL, the EU funded project on bringing alternative indicators into policy

Where is the demand for ‘Beyond GDP’ indicators? from Wikiprogress_slides

• Service Delivery Indicators Initiative, an Africa-wide initiative launched by the World Bank, the African Economic Research Consortium and the African Development Bank. It determines the links between public expenditure and human development outcomes. This initiative will assess the quality and performance of education and health services for decision-makers to track progress, and to hold governments accountable for citizens.

• Global Corruption Barometer 2013, yearly publication of the NGO, Transparency International. Based on a survey of 114,000 people in 107 countries, it shows that corruption is still widespread and remains a serious issue. Among the surveyed, 27% of respondents admitted to have paid a bribe when accessing public services and institutions in the last 12 months, revealing no improvement from previous surveys. This blog by Craig Fagan of Transparency International, Are Bribery Rates in Poor Countries Blocking Development, examines the links between governance, corruption and the Millennium Development Goals.

• Fight Poverty with Data by Varad Pande and Molly Elgin-Cossart addresses the need for a data revolution to eradicate poverty. For the authors, improved data will lead to better programs, foster accountability from citizens to their governments as well as tackling inequality by ensuring that no one is left behind in the policies.

• Aid for Trade at a Glance 2013: Connecting to Value Chains, a joint OECD-WTO report that assesses what is happening, what is not, and what needs to be improved in the Aid-for-Trade program. The report shows that the initiative is delivering tangible results in improving trade performance and bettering people’s lives, notably those of women in developing countries. Mr. Angel Gurria, OECD’s Secretary-General reviews the report and the program in this blog post.

• World Population Day was celebrated on 11 July and the theme for this year was Adolescent Pregnancy. UNFPA released a report, Marrying Too Young: Ending Child Marriage, with recommendation for policymakers on how to end child marriage.

We hope you enjoyed the week in review. Stay tuned the same time next week for another riveting read on the week that was.

Yours in progress,

Ousmane AlyDiallo