By NAN Staff Writer
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Oct. 19, 2018: Just four Caribbean nations have made been ranked by the new World Bank Human Capital Index after being identified as countries that have recently made significant human capital gains.
The latest index ranked 157 countries by how much economic potential they’re losing in the long-term by not fully investing in human capital – “the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives,” as the World Bank defines it.
It does so by looking at five health and education indicators: child survival, school enrollment, quality of learning, healthy growth and adult survival.
Based on these indicators, the World Bank calculated a score between zero and one for each of the countries it looked at.
Those making the index are Trinidad and Tobago, followed by Jamaica, Guyana and the Dominican Republic, which have been identified as making some human capital gains.
But the World Bank said important gaps remain, pointing out that a child born today in Trinidad and Tobago will have 61 percent of the labor productivity it could have had if provided with complete education and full health.
In Jamaica, children born today, once they grow up, will be only 54 percent as productive as they could if they had enjoyed complete education and full health.
In Guyana and the in the Dominican Republic, that percentage dipped to 48.
Other Caribbean countries, including Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts & Nevis, Haiti and Suriname were not featured in the Human Capital Index due to the lack of internationally comparable data measuring quality of education.
