Amman-  The United Nations Development Programme on Monday launched the global Human Development Report, a blueprint for development efforts for governments, the private sector and civil society.

The UNDP has embarked on an effort to re-articulate human development for today’s world. Therefore, the report focuses on understanding the dimensions of inequality most important to people’s wellbeing, and what is behind them. The report goes beyond the dominant discourse focused on income disparities to also consider inequalities in other dimensions such as health, education, access to technologies, and exposure to economic and climate-related shocks. It uses new data and methods to highlight how inequality affects people’s lives in a way that measures based on averages cannot; and takes a long-term view towards 2030 and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and beyond.

The report took measures to make sure that data about Jordan is inclusive and fair. It noted that development disparities in gender are measured meticulously.

The report uses the Human Development Index as a measure to assess human developments. It calculates long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living. A long and healthy life is measured by life expectancy. Knowledge level is measured by mean years of schooling among the adult population, which is the average number of years of schooling received in a life-time by people aged 25 years and older; and access to learning and knowledge by expected years of schooling for children of school-entry age, which is the total number of years of schooling a child of school-entry age can expect to receive if prevailing patterns of age-specific enrolment rates stay the same throughout the child's life. Standard of living is measured by Gross National Income (GNI) per capita expressed in constant 2011 international dollars converted using purchasing power parity (PPP) conversion rates.

The report reveals that Jordan’s HDI value for 2018 is 0.723— which puts the country in the high human development category— positioning it at 102 out of 189 countries and territories. Between 1990 and 2018, Jordan’s HDI value increased from 0.616 to 0.723, an increase of 17.4 percent.

UNDP Resident Representative Sara Ferrer Olivella said the report highlights why understanding and addressing inequality is key to meeting the SDGs and be prepared for the challenges of the 21^st century such as the most visible seismic shifts climate change and technological transformation. To address inequalities, we need to understand them better.

“The report challenges conventional measures of inequality by going beyond purely economic measures such as GDP, beyond averages such Gini coefficient and beyond today to fully understand the impact of our actions today in future generations,” she added.

“Jordan has witnessed substantial gains in health, education and living standards, yet the basic needs of many remain unmet while a next generation of inequalities open,” Ferrer Olivella noted.

She added: “Recognizing the real face of inequality – one that weakens cohesion, damages people’s trust in government, institutions and in each other, and prevents talented people from reaching their potential - is a first step. This is why UNDP is pioneering these new measurements in Jordan. The price of inaction compounds over time, the report urges governments to address rapidly widening systemic inequalities.”

To ensure that average numbers do not mask inequality, the Human Development Report measures IHDI, which considers inequality in all three dimensions of the HDI by ‘discounting’ each dimension’s average value according to its level of inequality. The IHDI is basically the HDI discounted for inequalities. The ‘loss’ in human development due to inequality is given by the difference between the HDI and the IHDI, and can be expressed as a percentage.

Jordan’s HDI for 2018 is 0.723. However, when the value is discounted for inequality, the HDI falls to 0.617, a loss of 14.7 percent due to inequality in the distribution of the HDI dimension indices. The average loss due to inequality for high HDI countries is 17.9 percent and for Arab States it is 24.5 percent. The Human inequality coefficient for Jordan is equal to 14.7 percent.

On gender, the HDR measures the Gender Development Index (GDI) which is based on the sex-disaggregated Human Development Index, defined as a ratio of the female to the male HDI. The GDI measures gender inequalities in achievement in three basic dimensions of human development: health (measured by female and male life expectancy at birth), education (measured by female and male expected years of schooling for children and mean years for adults aged 25 years and older) and command over economic resources (measured by female and male estimated GNI per capita). The GDI is calculated for 166 countries. The 2018 female HDI value for Jordan is 0.654 in contrast with 0.754 for males, resulting in a GDI value of 0.868.

The report also calculates the Gender Inequality Index (GII) which reflects gender-based inequalities in three dimensions – reproductive health, empowerment, and economic activity. Reproductive health is measured by maternal mortality and adolescent birth rates; empowerment is measured by the share of parliamentary seats held by women and attainment in secondary and higher education by each gender; and economic activity is measured by the labour market participation rate for women and men. The GII can be interpreted as the loss in human development due to inequality between female and male achievements in the three GII dimensions.

Jordan has a GII value of 0.469, ranking it 113 out of 162 countries in the 2018 index. In Jordan, 15.4 percent of parliamentary seats are held by women, and 82.0 percent of adult women have reached at least a secondary level of education compared to 85.9 percent of their male counterparts. For every 100,000 live births, 58.0 women die from pregnancy related causes; and the adolescent birth rate is 25.9 births per 1,000 women of ages 15-19. Female participation in the labour market is 14.1 percent compared to 64.0 for men.

Going further beyond income, the report measures the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) which identifies multiple overlapping deprivations suffered by individuals in 3 dimensions: health, education and standard of living. The health and education dimensions are based on two indicators each, while standard of living is based on six indicators. All the indicators needed to construct the MPI for a country are taken from the same household survey. The indicators are weighted to create a deprivation score, and the deprivation scores are computed for each individual in the survey. A deprivation score of 33.3 percent (one-third of the weighted indicators) is used to distinguish between the poor and nonpoor. If the deprivation score is 33.3 percent or greater, the household (and everyone in it) is classified as multidimensionally poor. Individuals with a deprivation score greater than or equal to 20 percent but less than 33.3 percent are classified as vulnerable to multidimensional poverty. Finally, individuals with a deprivation score greater than or equal to 50 percent live in severe multidimensional poverty. The MPI is calculated for 101 developing countries in the 2019 HDR.

The most recent survey data that were publicly available for Jordan’s MPI estimation refer to 2017/2018. In Jordan, 0.4 percent of the population (42 thousand people) are multidimensionally poor while an additional 0.7 percent are classified as vulnerable to multidimensional poverty (67 thousand people). The breadth of deprivation in Jordan, which is the average deprivation score experienced by people in multidimensional poverty, is 35.4 percent. The MPI, which is the share of the population that is multidimensionally poor, adjusted by the intensity of the deprivations, is 0.002.

It shows that income poverty only tells part of the story. The multidimensional poverty headcount is 0.3 percentage points higher than income poverty. This implies that individuals living above the income poverty line may still suffer deprivations in health, education and/or standard of living.