Category : Supplemental Material

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2016

Digital technologies have spread rapidly in much of the world. Digital dividends—that is, the broader development benefits from using these technologies—have lagged behind. In many instances, digital technologies have boosted growth, expanded opportunities, and improved service delivery. Yet their aggregate impact has fallen short and is unevenly distributed. For digital technologies to benefit everyone everywhere requires closing the remaining digital divide, especially in internet access. But greater digital adoption will not be enough. To get the most out of the digital revolution, countries also need to work on the “analog complements”—by strengthening regulations that ensure competition among businesses, by adapting workers’ skills to the demands of the new economy, and by ensuring that institutions are accountable.

http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2016

http://report.hdr.undp.org/

The World Health Statistics series is WHO’s annual
compilation of health-related data for its 194 Mem-
ber States, and includes a summary of the progress
made towards achieving the health-related Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) and associated targets.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, this edition of The State of the World’s Children calls for brave and fresh thinking to address age-old problems that still affect the world’s most disadvantaged children. The report is inspired by the work of innovators around the world – who are pushing boundaries and crafting solutions for local problems that reflect urgent global needs – towards a future in which all children can enjoy their rights.

This digital report is a crowd-sourced compilation of stories and videos. It includes an interactive platform that maps innovations in countries all over the world, and invites users to put their own ideas ‘on the map’. It is available at http://sowc2015.unicef.org/.

The Executive Summary provides an overview of the digital report and the context of UNICEF’s call for innovation for equity. It also presents key statistics on child survival, development and protection for the world’s countries, areas and regions. It is available at SOWC 2015 Executive Summary.

In very broad strokes one may think of the quality of life of an individual or community as a function of the actual conditions of that life and what an individual or community makes of those conditions. What a person or community makes of those conditions is in turn a function of how the conditions are perceived, what is thought and felt about those conditions, what is done and finally, what consequences follow from what is done. People’s perceptions, thoughts, feelings and actions, then, have an impact on their own and others’ living conditions.

This paper reviews the origins, promise, and subsequent development of social indicators /quality-of-life/well-being conceptualizations and research since the 1960s. It then assesses the state of this field in the 2010s and identifies four key developments – the development of professional organizations that nurture its conceptual and empirical development; the widespread political, popular, and theoretical appeal of the quality-of-life (QOL) concept; a new era of the construction of composite or summary social indicators; and a recognition of the key role of the QOL concept in connecting social indicators to the study of subjective well-being – that have evolved over the past five decades and that are very much with us today. The final section of the paper poses the question of where the field should focus its energies. Beyond carrying on the existing research program, it argues that the field needs to recognize the substantial changes in the social and economic organization of contemporary societies as compared to the mid-1960s launch period for the Social Indicators Movement and develop new research foci for the years to come.

Knowledge-based intervention has been a hallmark of community practice since the turn of the last century. Indeed, the social survey and charity organization movements of the 1900s were a direct outgrowth of efforts on the part of community practitioners to systematically: 1) identify the nature, extent and severity of new and emerging social needs in their communities; 2) organize people and institutions to respond more effectively to those needs; and 3) establish baseline measures against which intervention successes and failures could be assessed (Bartlett, 1928; Richmond, 1917; Zimbalist, 1977). Even the renaming of one of the profession’s leading journals of the day, Charities and the Commons, to The Survey illustrates the importance that practitioners assigned to the role of scientific inquiry for advancing practice. Mary Richmond’s Social Diagnosis (1917) offered further reinforcement of the important relationship that practitioners recognized to exist between knowledge-based intervention and the realization of more effective outcomes. Today, of course, community practitioners all over the world seek to incorporate rigorous approaches to needs assessment, planning, program development and evaluation in their work with communities (Community Indicators Consortium, 2010; Daskon & Binns, 2010; Environment Canada, 2010; Hung & Fung, 2010; Ravensbergen & VanderPlaat, 2010; Wehbi, et al., 2010).

The world is now in the midst of a major policy debate about the objectives of public policy. What should be the world’s Sustainable Development Goals for the period 2015-2030? The World Happiness Report 2013 is offered as a contribution to that crucial debate.

In July 2011 the UN General Assembly passed a historic resolution. 1 It invited member countries to measure the happiness of their people and to use this to help guide their public policies. This was followed in April 2012 by the first UN high-level meeting on happiness and well-being, chaired by the Prime Minister of Bhutan. At the same time the first World Happiness Report was published, 2 followed some months later by the OECD Guidelines setting an international standard for the measurement of well-being. 3 The present Report is sponsored by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network.