Jordan ranks 5th regionally on 2022 Social Progress Index

AMMAN — The Kingdom ranked 5th regionally and 82nd globally in the 2022 Social Progress Index (SPI).

According to the Social Progress Organisation, the SPI is among the world’s largest curated collections of transparent social and environmental data, and is the only measurement tool focusing “exclusively [and] comprehensively” on non-economic indicators of social performance worldwide.

The SPI “enables an assessment of not just absolute country performance but also relative performance compared to a country’s economic peers”, according to the organisation’s website.

The 2022 edition of the index fully measured the social performance of 169 countries and partially assessed the performance of 27 countries, using 12 components and 60 indicators. The index aims to accelerate social progress by understanding how people live.

The index showed that, since 2011, individual rights scores have declined globally, whereas 111 countries — or 66 per cent of all countries evaluated in the index — have declined in the index’s personal rights assessment since 2011.

The report also indicated that social progress is relative to a country’s GDP per capita, adding that “the world is getting better in terms of social progress, but the rate of progress has slowed significantly”.

According to recent statistics from the Ministry of Finance, Jordan’s GDP is expected to grow by 2.7 per cent in 2023.

Jordan scored 67.3 out of 100 points in this regard, positioning itself in eighth place in the region. Kuwait ranked number one regionally and 55th globally, scoring 74 points, followed by the UAE which came second place, ranking 68th globally.

The 2022 SPI ranked Norway first globally, followed by Denmark, Finland and Switzerland.