Child Development Index

Countries like Malawi cut child deprivation in half, enrolling more than 90% of primary school children.

But some of the poorest children in Africa live in countries suffering from conflict and poor governance; such as Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Slow progress in reducing child mortality and malnutrition is a particular problem; one in six babies born in Africa will not live to see their fifth birthday.

This is because India (where almost three-quarters of the region's children live) made the least progress of any country in South Asia; just a 27% improvement.

Higher levels of economic growth in the region are not widely translating into reduced child deprivation.

This improvement was largely driven by reductions in child mortality and increases in primary school enrolment.

In addition, the region includes Iraq, Lebanon, and the occupied Palestinian territory where child deprivation has increased.

The region containing Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, for which data are much sparser in the early 1990s, saw an improvement of almost 15% in its index score between 1995–1999 and 2000–2006.

There is still some variation between these countries however; for example the United States has a child mortality rate that is twice of Japan's and worse even than that of Cuba's.

The paper was written by Sarah Hague at Save the Children UK, with support from Sophie Elmhirst and David Mepham.

In headline terms, the report shows that: In a note on the index,[2] Achim Wolf, a student at the University of York, observed that the CDI is obtained by averaging the three variables on health, education and nutrition.

He goes on to offer an alternative index using more established methods and finds that while, in general, the results do not vary considerably, some countries shift by up to 18 places in the ranking.