World Bank launches new human capital index, in which Moldova gets medium score

Chisinau, 11 October /MOLDPRES/ - A Human Capital Index was launched today at the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings. The new index shows that 56 percent of children born today across the world will lose more than half their potential lifetime earnings because governments are not currently making effective investments in their people to ensure a healthy, educated, and resilient population ready for the workplace of the future.

"Human capital is a key driver of sustainable, inclusive economic growth, but investing in health and education has not gotten the attention it deserves. This index creates a direct line between improving outcomes in health and education, productivity, and economic growth,"  World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said. According to the WB official, "for the poorest people, human capital is often the only capital they have."

Under the report, Moldova has a score of 0.58 (respectively 0.56 for men and 0.60 for women)., just as in Romania, but under the country score of Ukraine, respectively 0.65 and Russia - 0.73.

The reports authors says that a child born in Moldova today will be 58 percent as productive when she grows up as she could be if she enjoyed complete education and full health.  At least 98 out of 100 children born in Moldova survive to age 5. In Moldova, a child who starts school at age 4 can expect to complete 11.8 years of school by her 18th birthday, according to the study. Factoring in what children actually learn, expected years of school is only 8.2 years.

Across Moldova, 83 percent of 15-yearolds will survive until age 60. WB experts also find out gender difference as to the health, education, productivity of a child born at present, as future actor on the labour market. 

The index measures the volume of human capital which can be achieved by a child born at present till the age of 18, taking into account the risks to health and the bad education, prevailing in the country they live. Also, the human capital index shows the productivity of a child born at present, as future actor on the labour market, against the productivity which would exist in conditions of health and complete high quality education, on a scale from 0 to 1 – 1 being the best score possible. For instance, a country score of 0.5 means that the residents – and the country on the whole – lose a half of their future economic potential. Calculated after 50 years, this is transposed in deep economic losses: a yearly loss of 1.4 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product.   

The gender-disaggregated data is available for 126 out of those 157 countries included in the report. The index will be included in the future report on world development from 2019 on the changing character of labour, which refers to the importance of investments in human capital for a good education in the context of the future labour market.  

In the last quarter of 2017, the World Economic Forum also launched the Human Capital Index, in which Moldova was placed on the 62nd position out of 130 countries included in the ranking. When making the report, decision-makers took into account such criteria as accessibility to education, residents’ employment, improvement of the professional qualification and development of modern technologies.  

(Reporter V. Bercu, editor A. Raileanu)