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Education is essential to achieving gender equality. From the earliest schooling to the highest levels of post-graduate study, education influences the opportunities that can shape people’s lives. This is why education and training of women is one of the 12 critical areas of concern in the…
Tackling inequality between women and men in the sharing of power and decision-making at all levels is essential to strengthen democracy and achieve peace and sustainable development. Back in 1995, this was identified as one of twelve critical areas of concern in the landmark Beijing Platform For…
Innovation is great, but it is even more powerful when it is shared. That is the premise of a new venture by UNECE: an “Innovation Lab”, taking place on the margins of the World Statistics Congress in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, later this month.As in all fields and industries, innovation in official…
The world is full of data. There are new, large data sources, such as smartphone records, social media usage, store purchase information from barcode scanners, satellite images. Other sources of data have been around for a long time: hospital records, vehicle registrations, border crossings,…
Gender equality is taking an increasingly visible place at the heart of national and international development policymaking. As it becomes ever more clear that effective, sustainable development depends on a genuine inclusion of gender concerns in all areas, policymakers are finding that they…
A consumer price index, or CPI, is a statistical indication of how much money people would need to spend to maintain the same level of consumption over time. It compares the prices of goods and services on which a typical household spends money—such as food, transport, clothing, health care and…
No one left behind – this is the fundamental promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and one of its most important commitments at all political levels: international, national and local. To make good on this promise we need data to show us how different groups in society are doing…
Businesses have gone increasingly global. Their value chains are often supported by subcontractors from all over the world. The production process is a giant global jigsaw puzzle with all the pieces slotting together only in the final assembly line. The impact of this globalization of business…
“We pledge that no one will be left behind” — this is what countries declared when adopting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They vowed to reach the furthest behind first.Members of minority groups are often disadvantaged and discriminated against; in short, they are often the…
There are enormous differences in the distribution of wealth between the world’s richest and the world’s poorest people. While the bottom half of adults …
All over the world, people are moving. As they always have throughout human history, people today migrate in search of better opportunities, to escape hardship or conflict, or to connect with loved ones. Today, though, the scale of migration is unprecedented and the reasons ever more diverse –…
Censuses are the keystone of national statistics—only with comprehensive knowledge of the number of people in a country, how they are distributed across the towns, cities and villages of the country, and the shares of children, youth, working-age people and older people, can effective policies be…
Economic growth is an essential driver of sustainable development. Recognizing this, Goal 8 of the 2030 Agenda aims for sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth. What are the key trends in economic growth across the diverse economies of the UNECE region?Gross domestic product (GDP)…
The gender pay gap is the difference between men’s and women’s earnings from employment, shown as a percentage of men’s earnings. The gap results from many factors: horizontal and vertical gender segregation in the job market, differences in job flexibility, and, in some cases, wage…
In the last 15 years, UNECE countries have experienced an increase in deaths related to mental disorders and diseases of the nervous system and sense organs. Although this trend is evident for both sexes, men have a higher rate of mortality from these causes than women, and the gap has persisted…
Statistics are often used in the media “as a drunken man uses lamp posts—for support rather than illumination”.Martin Nicholls, head of strategic communication at the UK’s Office for National Statistics quoted the novelist Andrew Lang as he called on producers of gender statistics to guide their…
Unemployment rates generally fell in 2017 compared to the previous year in the UNECE member countries. In many countries, unemployment has come down close to the level before the global financial crisis in 2007-2009, but not in all.In eight countries - Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Iceland, Ireland,…
We cannot achieve what we cannot measure. The 2030 Agenda calls for participation of all United Nations Member States in providing national statistics to measure progress against seventeen sustainable development…
In 1941, Sir Winston Churchill was troubled by the “utmost confusion caused when people argue on different figures”. He gave official statistics the task to produce an “agreed body of information” to avoid such confusion. This task is still valid today as people need to be able to distinguish…
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are creating many challenges for official statistics. One of the most important ones is how to create and maintain the new types of strategic partnerships that are needed to provide statistics for the SDGs. Leaders from the world of official statistics…
The “Phillips curve” is an economic model which suggests that decreasing unemployment in an economy corresponds to higher rates of wage rises.The above graph shows the so-called Phillips curve for selected UNECE member States between 2016 and 2017. The curve displays the annual change in consumer…
The most common indicator used to measure and compare economic performance is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It looks at income, but says nothing about wealth and assets that underlie this income.For example, the exploitation of mineral resources increases GDP, but actually depletes the wealth of…
How to communicate more effectively with policy makers and the public is an increasingly hot topic within the statistical community. Statistical organizations are facing growing competition from alternative data providers and the traditional ways of messaging are being challenged by the rise of…
The environment in which official statistics operate has changed significantly over the last two decades and continues to evolve. Developments in digital technology have led to a rise in the number of alternative data providers, and new communication platforms such as social media have also…
The current global migration and refugee situation has put migration issues high on the political agenda of many countries and the international community as a whole. Recognizing the need to act together, United Nations Member States adopted the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants in…