PHL score improves across the board in 2017 Social Progress Index report

THE PHILIPPINES saw its score improve on an index measuring social progress, with gains recorded across most indicators.

With 67.10 points, the Philippines placed 68th of 128 countries in the 2017 Social Progress Index (SPI) prepared by Washingtonbased group Social Progress Imperative. The outcome is an improvement over the 2016 index score of 65.92, which placed the country at the same rank, but among 133 nations surveyed.

The think tank defines social progress as “the capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential.”

The index — which includes data from 128 countries or 98% of the world’s population — is intended to supplement traditional measures of national performance like gross domestic product (GDP), and also allows social progress comparisons among countries ranked in the same wealth class.

“While quality of life is improving across the globe, world leaders must confront two deeply troubling trends: declining personal rights, personal safety, and tolerance and inclusion, as well as slow and uneven progress worldwide,” the SPI said in its findings.

“The 2017 SPI finds that since 2014, Personal Rights — which includes measures of political rights and freedom of expression — declined in more countries than it improved,” it added.

“The Social Progress Index is the first holistic measure of a country’s social performance that is independent of economic factors. The index is based on a range of social and environmental indicators that capture three dimensions of social progress: basic human needs, foundations of well being, and opportunity ... it is designed as a complement to GDP and other economic indicators to provide a more holistic understanding of countries’ overall performance.”

The index measures a country’s social progress based on 12 indicators: nutrition and basic medical care, water and sanitation, shelter, personal safety, access to basic knowledge, access to information and communications, health and wellness, ecosystem sustainability, personal rights, personal freedom and choice, tolerance and inclusion, and access to advanced education.

This year among ASEAN countries, the Philippines was ahead of Indonesia (79), Myanmar (96), Cambodia (98), and Laos (99), and behind Malaysia (50) and Thailand (62). Denmark meanwhile is the top performing country with a 90.57 SPI score, followed by Finland (90.53), Iceland (90.27), Norway (90.27), and Switzerland (90.10).

On the bottom tier were the Central African Republic (28.38), Afghanistan (35.66), Chad (35.69), Angola (40.73) and Niger (42.97) reflecting conditions of extreme poverty and conflict.

The Philippine ranking was above the world average score of 64.85, or 2.6% higher compared to the 2014 score of 63.19.

The Philippines was classified in a tier of 31 countries labeled “upper middle” in terms of social progress — placing in the top half of countries globally — but with more areas for improvement.

“Whereas higher-tier countries have generally eliminated extreme hunger and have near universal access to water and basic education, many upper middle social progress countries still face challenges in these areas,” the 95-page report read.

The Philippines has shown a marked improvement in providing shelter — which includes measures of availability of affordable housing and access to electricity. This has shown the biggest improvement, according to the SPI report, among the 12 sub-categories reported by the index, coming in with an increase of 2.24 points from 2014 to 2017.

This is followed by improvements in the areas of access to advanced education and personal freedom and choice, showing an increase of 2.02 points and 1.67 points respectively over the four-year period.

Other indicators where the Philippines showed relative strength and improvement include access to basic knowledge (92.61) and nutrition and basic medical care (88.65). Access to advanced education (47.56) and the broader measure of opportunity (58.23).

The SPI report said these are areas where the Philippines is “over-performing” as compared with countries with the same GDP PPP per capita.

Areas where the country did not perform as well include tolerance and inclusion (55.38) — particularly discrimination and violence against minorities and religious tolerance — health and wellness (61.04), with both showing a drop of 1.36 points and 0.12 points respectively.

The personal safety index also remained a concern in the country, although the current 58.74 score was better compared to the 2016 finding of 57.10. Particularly, the areas were the country was underperforming are homicide rate (9.9 from 9.31), level of violent crime (unchanged at four), perceived criminality (steady at four) and political terror (3.5 from the 2016 score of four).

Other concerns for the country are quality of electricity (3.99), wastewater treatment (2.58), freedom of assembly (0.65), freedom of religion (four), early marriage (five), years of tertiary schooling (0.70), inequality in the attainment of education (0.12). —