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The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and Measuring Gender Inequality: A Technical Articulation for Asia-Pacific

Author

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  • Bhavya Aggarwal
  • Lekha S. Chakraborty

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, this paper analyzes the measurement issues in gender-based indices constructed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and suggests alternatives for choice of variables, functional form, and weights. While the UNDP Gender Inequality Index (GII) conceptually reflects the loss in achievement due to inequality between men and women in three dimensions--health, empowerment, and labor force participation--we argue that the assumptions and the choice of variables to capture these dimensions remain inadequate and erroneous, resulting in only the partial capture of gender inequalities. Since the dimensions used for the GII are different from those in the UNDP's Human Development Index (HDI), we cannot say that a higher value in the GII represents a loss in the HDI due to gender inequalities. The technical obscurity remains how to interpret GII by combining women-specific indicators with indicators that are disaggregated for both men and women. The GII is a partial construct, as it does not capture many significant dimensions of gender inequality. Though this requires a data revolution, we tried to reconstruct the GII in the context of Asia-Pacific using three scenarios: (1) improving the set of variables incorporating unpaid care work, pay gaps, intrahousehold decision making, exposure to knowledge networks, and feminization of governance at local levels; (2) constructing a decomposed index to specify the direction of gender gaps; and (3) compiling an alternative index using Principal Components Index for assigning weights. The choice of countries under the three scenarios is constrained by data paucity. The results reveal that the UNDP GII overestimates the gap between the two genders, and that using women-specific indicators leads to a fallacious estimation of gender inequality. The estimates are illustrative. The implication of the results broadly suggests a return to the UNDP Gender Development Index for capturing gender development, with an improvised set of choices and variables.

Suggested Citation

  • Bhavya Aggarwal & Lekha S. Chakraborty, 2016. "The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and Measuring Gender Inequality: A Technical Articulation for Asia-Pacific," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_859, Levy Economics Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_859
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Sudhir Anand and Amartya Sen, 1995. "Gender Inequality in Human Development: Theories and Measurement," Human Development Occasional Papers (1992-2007) HDOCPA-1995-01, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
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    Cited by:

    1. Lekha Chakraborty & Marian Ingrams & Yadawendra Singh, 2019. "Macroeconomic Policy Effectiveness and Inequality: Efficacy of Gender Budgeting in Asia Pacific," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_920, Levy Economics Institute.
    2. Chakraborty, Lekha, 2023. "Beyond GDP and Public Policies for Gender Equality: Gender Budgeting in Asia Pacific," Working Papers 23/404, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    3. Chakraborty, Lekha, 2019. "Federal fiscal policy effectiveness and Inequality: Empirical evidence on Gender Budgeting in Asia Pacific," Working Papers 19/273, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    4. Lekha Chakraborty, 2016. "Asia: A Survey of Gender Budgeting Efforts," IMF Working Papers 2016/150, International Monetary Fund.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Gender Inequality; Unpaid Work; Human Development; Composite Indicator;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

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