Abstract
When we mention social inclusion, most of us think of political participation, social rights, civil liberties, equal access to race, ethnicity and gender, access to social services and the labour market, basically to a broader concept than social development. Social inclusion is a concept that can actually be defined, which means it can probably be measured. On this basis, a continuous effort is being made to measure the social inclusion elements, so the results can be used to build new indicators that help measure the multiple dimensions of social inclusion: The Social Inclusion Index, the Human Opportunity Index. This paper presents the development, based on multivariate data analysis techniques and methods, of an aggregated indicator of social inclusion for the member countries of the European Union which, besides the traditional variables (GDP), also measures the factors related to civil and political rights, women’s rights or perception of the LGBT community.
Highlights
Social inclusion is a complex phenomenon and cannot be described directly, and due to its’ multidimensionality, to use a relatively large number of indicators should be used, in order to study it
In order to be able to make comparisons between countries, in the case of the construction of the Social Inclusion Index for European Union (EU) countries, we considered it useful to include the Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate per capita and an indicator to identify the amounts allocated by each country for social protection (Percentage of GDP spent on social protection)
The indicators combine national information on specific challenges with the transnational key objectives agreed by the Heads of State and Government of the EU. This issue was debated in the convention Davos 2018, organized by the World Economic Forum (WEF), by analyzing the Inclusive Development Index (IDI) that measures the economic performance of 103 countries, on namely how they perform in the 11 dimensions of economic progress beyond GDP (World Economic Forum, 2018a, 2018b)
Summary
Social inclusion is a complex phenomenon and cannot be described directly, and due to its’ multidimensionality, to use a relatively large number of indicators should be used, in order to study it. When we refer to social inclusion as a result of economic development, it is essential that one of the indicators included in the analysis be able to quantify a country’s level of well-being. For Jenson (2007) this political response is to ensure full access for all people to human fundamental rights, which is considered a strategy that is more successful when such rights are included in the laws of a country (Schrecker et al, 2010) In this context, the inclusion of the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) in the calculation of the Social Inclusion Index (SII) for EU countries only serves to highlight the link between corruption and inequality, as levels of corruption perception are correlated with those of economic and social. People are deprived of basic needs, which is reflected in the CPI (Transparency International, 2016) results which indicate high levels of perceived corruption in emerging countries, practically measuring the perceived level of corruption rather than the actual level of corruption (Budsaratragoon & Jitmaneeroj, 2020)
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