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How can we move forward with measuring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? This was the key topic of the World Statistics Congress, held last week in in Marrakech, Morocco, at which UNECE highlighted its broad contribution to the statistical work needed to monitor and…
Source: UNECE Statistical Database (www.unece.org/stats/data), Eurostat and CISSTAT In 2016, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the European Union (EU) increased by 1.9 per cent compared to the previous year. GDP also grew in the USA by 1.6 per cent. In the countries of the Commonwealth of…
The capability to incorporate new data sources and to benefit from emerging technologies such as smart meters, web technologies and user experience platforms is critically important if official statistics are to remain relevant. These capabilities require new types of skills and competences that…
Many production lines have gone global, which makes changes in production patterns even faster and more difficult to follow. One top management decision may quickly relocate assets or production from one country to another. Suddenly, a country may receive huge investment flows. The parts of a…
Women’s empowerment has an important role in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. One way to empower women is to improve their opportunities to take on leadership roles at all levels of decision-making in political and public life. Among the many ways to measure this is the share of…
Four years after the adoption of Armenia’s Plan of Action on Ageing, an evaluation team visited the country to assess the situation of older persons and discuss the progress made in the implementation of the Plan with relevant stakeholders. The team visited the residential older people home and…
Unemployment rates fell in the overwhelming majority of UNECE member states that reported data in 2016. Compared with 2015, unemployment decreased in 27 out of 32 reporting countries, with 13 countries publishing rates that were over one percentage point lower in 2016. The largest decreases were…
“Accessible, timely and reliable statistics are a prerequisite for effective action on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” said Peter Thomson, the President of the United Nations General Assembly at the 48th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission. He underlined the need…
In recent decades, family patterns have changed substantially in the UNECE region. Longer cohabitation before marriage and childbearing after personal establishment in the labour market has become more common for both men and women. As an example, the mean age at first marriage for both men and…
Share of the labour force involved in agriculture, forestry and fishing in 2015, according to the ISIC rev. 4 classification of economic activities. Not all UNECE countries shown.In 2015, less than five percent of employed persons worked in the agricultural, forestry and fishing industries in…
A goal of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is to “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels” (Goal 16). One way of analysing justice systems in…
In the UNECE region, employed people spend two to three hours per day on domestic work[1] according to data from time-use surveys around 2010. But these average figures hide wide gender differences: for example, employed women in Albania spend eight times as long on domestic tasks as employed…
As highlighted by recent political developments in several UNECE countries, migration continues to play a substantial role in shaping responses to economic and foreign policy challenges. Member countries of the United Nations recently emphasised the importance of addressing migrant movements in…
Who is telling the story? Changes in the proportion of women among journalists since 2000 In today’s data-rich environment, the news media plays a vital role in identifying and reporting the most useful and relevant topics to the general public. But who is telling the story?One target of the 2030…
The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in September 2015 by the UN General Assembly brought challenges to national statistical systems worldwide. Measuring the 17 Goals and 169 targets with reliable, consistent and comparable indicators is a complex task, comprising multiple policy…
What is free time, and how can we measure it? Following increased demand for time-use data from both policymakers and researchers, in 2013, UNECE published the Guidelines for Harmonizing Time-Use Surveys. Free time was defined as time spent on activities such as volunteer work and meetings,…
Source: UNECE Statistical database www.unece.org/stats/dataFrom September 2015 to September 2016 most West and Central European countries experienced modest increases in consumer prices, as measured by the 12-month rate of increase of the consumer price index (CPI).For instance, Germany and…
Taking feelings away, the famous quote by Leo Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”, could be easily applied to poverty. It is a widespread belief that life is easier for the relatively rich than for the poor. More importantly, however, every poor…
To say that we live in an information age is starting to seem like an understatement. Data are available in unimaginable quantities and humankind is continuously producing more. Around 90% of existing data have been created in the past few years and according to estimates, the amount of data is…
The Paris Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), agreed in December 2015, will come into force in November following today’s vote of the European Parliament, which agreed to ratification by the European Union.With this vote, preceded by clear commitments…
Almost all countries in the world conduct a population and housing census at least every ten years, to produce key data for planning and administration at national and local level. In recent decades, census methodology and technology has developed significantly. Countries in the UNECE region are…
The UNECE region has neither the high economic inequalities typical for the Latin American region nor the high extreme poverty rates faced by some African countries. Yet, poverty continues to be widespread, especially affecting vulnerable population groups, such as ethnic minorities, immigrants…
A majority of the 53 UNECE member countries reported a decrease in the unemployment rate in 2015. The average unemployment rate in the UNECE region in 2015 was 8.8 per cent, which is 1.1 percentage points lower than in 2014 (9.9 per cent) and 1.7 percentage points less than in 2013 (10.5 per…
UNECE member States are expected to submit national reports that provide an analysis of the current state of realization of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing and its Regional Implementation Strategy (MIPAA/RIS), by 31 October this year, as part of a five-year reporting cycle.…
The 2012 Vienna Ministerial Declaration on Ageing underlines the importance of life-long learning, longer working life and access to information for older persons. A key factor in facilitating the participation of older persons in political, economic, cultural and social life is their access to…