New Global Study Ranks Countries on Youth Development
By Abdi Ali
Published August 13, 2021
A new survey that looks at the status of people aged 15 – 29 years around the world shows that sub-Saharan Africa has made the greatest strides in improving the health of the youth between 2010 and 2018.
The 2020 Global Youth Development Index by Commonwealth Secretariat that ranks youth development in 181 countries has Mauritius followed by Seychelles, Cape Verde, São Tomé & Príncipe and Botswana in the top five scoring countries from sub-Saharan Africa.
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The index ranks countries between 0.00 (lowest) and 1.00 (highest) according to the developments in youth education, employment, health, equality and inclusion, peace and security, and political and civic participation. It looks at 27 indicators including literacy and voting to showcase the state of the world’s 1.8 billion people between the age of 15 and 29.
Singapore ranks at the top followed by Slovenia, Norway, Malta and Denmark while Chad, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Niger come last, respectively.
While Afghanistan, India, Russia, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso are the top five improvers, advancing their score, on average, by 15.74 per cent, Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Jordan and Lebanon show the greatest decline in youth development between 2010 and 2018.
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The index shows advances in youth’s participation in peace processes and their education, employment, inclusion and health care since 2010.
Health makes the largest gains of 4.39 per cent driven by a 1.6 per cent decline in global youth mortality rates and a 2 per cent drop in each HIV, self-harm, alcohol abuse and tobacco use. Sub-Saharan Africa made the greatest strides in improving the health of young people.
Advances in equality and inclusion are led by improved gender parity in literacy as well as fewer child marriage cases and pregnancies in girls under 20. Yet no progress occurs in women’s safety.
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The global education score has increased by 3 per cent, with South Asia making the largest improvement of 16 per cent followed by sub-Saharan Africa with 10 per cent. Peace and security has improved by 3.41 per cent, resulting from fewer young people dying from direct violence. Somalia records the largest gains in the peace and security of young people, followed by Colombia, Sri Lanka, Eritrea and Russia.
Youth participation in politics is the only domain to record a decline in most parts of the world, reporting a deterioration in 102 countries. However, sub-Saharan Africa records a 5 per cent improvement in the average regional score.
Globally, Sweden leads on education, Luxembourg on equality and inclusion, Indonesia on political and civic participation while Singapore tops the employment, health, and peace and security domains.
Commonwealth countries’ average youth development score shows a 2.8 per cent improvement, slightly behind the global average of 3.1 per cent. Of the 48 Commonwealth countries included in the index, 40 show improved scores.
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Calling for more investment in lifelong digital skilling of young people, mental health services, apprenticeships, road safety and youth participation in decision-making to reverse trends which adversely impact them, the index, that can be used as reference material by researchers, policy-makers and civil society, urges governments to improve data collection on education and diversify how they measure digital skills and online engagement of youth.
Though the data used to compile the index was gathered before the COVID-19 pandemic and uses the latest available data to enable global comparability, the index, while setting a baseline to build upon as the world recovers from the impacts of COVID-19, does not take into account the pandemic’s impact.