BAHRAIN has been ranked among the top 50 countries in the world in the latest edition of a UN report that measures healthcare, education, income and gender development.
The kingdom is placed 45th overall in the 2019 Human Development Report which studies 189 countries.
The document, ‘Beyond Income, Beyond Averages, Beyond Today: Inequalities in Human Development in the 21st Century’, groups countries into four main categories: very high, high, medium or low.
Bahrain features in the “very high” category and is placed fourth among GCC countries.
The UAE was the highest ranked GCC country at 35, followed by Saudi Arabia (36), Qatar (41), Bahrain (45), Oman (47) and Kuwait (57).
The report lists countries on five different indexes: the Human Development Index (HDI), the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), the Gender Development Index (GDI), the Gender Inequality Index (GII), and the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).
The top three countries in the latest report are Norway, Switzerland and Ireland, while those in the bottom three are Niger, Central African Republic and Chad.
Bahrain’s HDI score is 0.838 that measures decent standard of living, access to knowledge and a long and healthy life.
Bahrain has gone up six positions, making it the Arab country with the largest upwards leap in terms of the HDI ranking between 2013 and 2018 followed by the UAE (five positions) and Tunisia (three) in the same period.
Bahrain’s HDI score has constantly improved over the years
Education
The average life expectancy in the country is pegged at 77.2 years, with 99.7 per cent of births handled by health professionals and maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births was 15.
On the education front, the expected years of schooling is 15.3, while there were 12 pupils per teacher in primary schools.
The adult literacy rate is 94.9pc and there is 100pc access to the Internet in primary and secondary schools.
The report published by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) says 18.8pc of parliament seats are held by women and 64.2pc of adult women have achieved at least a secondary level of education compared with 57.5pc of their male counterparts.
In addition, female participation in the labour market is 44.5pc compared with 87.3pc for men, while female graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics programmes is 10.9pc.
The report also says the suicide rate among males is 7.9 per 100,000 people compared with 2.1 among females.
The prison population is put at 233 per 100,000 people, and military expenditure from 2010 until last year is 3.6pc of the gross domestic product (GDP).
Other interesting statistics show mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution at 40 per 100,000, while the natural resource depletion is 3.2pc and the richest one per cent hold 18pc of national income.
“Analysis of inequality can be a powerful lens to understand recent events in the region,” said UNDP acting associate administrator and regional director for Arab states Mourad Wahba.
Meanwhile, the report states the region has one of the widest gaps in the world for women’s labour force participation, as well as one of the lowest percentages of women without access to banking services.
It further records a 14pc gap in human development between men and women in the Arab states region.
Vulnerability to conflict or crisis has also rolled back the region’s human development progress, with new data showing that Syria has lost 15pc of its value on the HDI since 2010, and Libya has shed 10pc in the same period.
Climate change will fuel inequality as it hits developing countries, many with limited capacity to resist threats from malnutrition, disease and heat stress.
“Under the shadow of the climate crisis and sweeping technological change, inequalities in human development are taking new forms,” the report said.
“The climate crisis is already hitting the poorest hardest, while technological advances such as machine learning and artificial intelligence can leave behind entire groups of people, even countries.”
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