Redundancy, Unilateralism and Bias beyond GDP – results of a Global Index Benchmark

Eight out of ten leading international indices to assess developing countries in aspects beyond GDP are showing strong redundancy, bias and unilateralism. The quantitative comparison gives evidence for the fact that always the same countries lead the ranks with a low standard deviation. The dependency of the GDP is striking: do the indices only measure indicators that are direct effects of a strong GDP? While the impact of GDP can be discussed reverse as well, the standard deviation shows a strong bias: only one out of the twenty countries with the highest standard deviation is among the Top-20 countries of the world, but 11 countries among those with the lowest standard deviation. Let’s have a look at the backsides of global statistics and methods to compare their findings. The article is the result of a pre-study to assess Social Capital for development countries made for the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The study leaded to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG) project World Social Capital Monitor.