The Dominican Republic is ranked 21st among 74 emerging economies in the Inclusive Development Index (IDI) of the recently published World Economic Forum “Inclusive Growth and Development Report 2018”. The report analyzed 103 countries, including 29 advanced economies and 74 emerging economies. Overall, the DR would be 50th of 103 countries in the index.
In Latin America, countries listed above the DR in the emerging economies category are Panama (6), Uruguay (8), Chile (9), Costa Rica (12), Peru (14) and Paraguay (20). The DR (21) is listed above Argentina (23), Mexico (24), Nicaragua, Colombia (30), El Salvador (35), Brazil (37), Bolivia (41), Guatemala (44) and Honduras (46).
The report presents a new economic policy framework and performance metric. It identifies 15 areas of structural economic policy and institutional strength that have the potential to contribute simultaneously to higher growth and wider social participation in the process and benefits of such growth. The World Economic Forum Inclusive Growth and Development Report 2018 analyzed the 103 countries based on three pillars: growth and development, inclusion and intergenerational equality.
The result of the analysis shows that during the last five years, despite the recovery of the world economy, social inclusion has become worse or not improved in 20 of the 29 advanced economies and that intergenerational equality has deteriorated in 56 of the 74 emerging economies. The conclusion was based on analyzing GDP per capital, employment, productivity, average household income, poverty rate, net adjusted savings, public debt, ratio of demographic dependence and national gross income.
The report is designed as an alternative to GDP and seeks to redirect policy to the changes in their households that most citizens use to evaluate their respective countries’ economic progress instead of the published GDP growth statistics. The focus is on factors that affect the standard of living – income, employment opportunity, economic security and quality of life. The key performance indicators are divided into growth and development indicators (GDP), labor productivity, employment, healthy life expectancy; inclusion (median household income, income gini, poverty rate, wealth gini; and intergenerational equity and sustainability (adjusted net savings, dependency ratio, public debt (as a share of GDP), carbon intensity of GDP.
The Gini coefficient (sometimes expressed as a Gini ratio or a normalized Gini index is a measure of statistical dispersion intended to represent the income or wealth distribution of a nation’s residents, and is the most commonly used measure of inequality.
Read more:
World Economic Forum
23 January 2018
