What I find most interesting within the statistics about the world nations are embedded in the society frame. It seems quite interesting to measure the literacy rates and notice that there is little disparity between any two nations; all nations seem to at least reach the high 90 percentile mark (Central Intelligence Agency The World FactBook, 2010). Yet, how does this criterion explain anything about the policy dynamics these countries develop and implement? It would make sense to think that the higher level of literacy a population exhibits the better its societal framework, fiscal, and political policy bodies would be engaged. The ability to be literate would translate into education, maybe it would good to investigate how educated people within a country are and not just the literacy rate, the ability to read can be attained early in education, although literacy can develop later in life for some. My point is that education leads to increased life successes, such as career, financially, and health, among other important life matters. Yet what really strikes a poignant difference between all these countries is the poverty rates.
Russia has a poverty line of 15.8%(Central Intelligence Agency The World Factbook, 2010) As of 2008, Mexico has a poverty line very similar and increasingly high at 18.2%(Central Intelligence Agency The World Factbook, 2010). My best estimation would be that policy in these two countries centers around fiscal problems that limit the opportunity to create growth and also to provide educational resources. Perhaps fiscal policy centers on larger crisis issues such as conflicts or poor policy analysis that address economic stability of its citizens. According to Adolino & Blake, "Poverty can be defined in a relative sense...relative poverty in industrialized countries...the relative poverty rate as the percentage of households that earn less than 50 percent of the median household income," (Adolino & Blake, 2010, pp. 318). The need to educate in many ways would seem to be a standard of all countries; it would be a limiting factor if a country did not provide educational parameters for its people in some fashion. Adolino & Blake explain access to schooling and equality of opportunity (pp. 321). These two concepts can help gauge this perspective of Russia and Mexico, perhaps. Access to schooling endures a great financial investment, educated individual who can teach, places to learn, resources to use to educate, transportation, and general structuring and implementation of a school system/routine would be some investments needed. The financial resources for these needs might not be available for these two countries, and general economic growth may be moving too slow to afford them at a later time?
What can help gauge the problem of decreasing poverty and increasing educational opportunities rest upon design a policy on reform and re-invest in its citizens future capabilities. Adolino & Blake explain, “Social policy broadly defined is the largest single category of government spending in an industrialized country,” (pp. 319). Thus if these two countries are financially spending significant budget capital within education and reducing poverty it would incline us to at least investigate the merit that this spending is producing? It seems that the allocation of resources is not fully realizing a positive result within the population, because the poverty level is too high, and if it’s not the cause poor education, the n it needs to be derived to what is causing these high poverty rates.
References:
Adolino, Jessica R. & Blake, Charles H. (2010). Comparing Public Policies: Issues and Choices in Industrialized Countries. Washington D.C.: CQ Press
Central Intelligence Angency: The World Factbook (2010). Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2103.html
Fabian,
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting take on this weeks assignment. I also found the results for literacy rates somewhat surprising considering the huge socioeconomic differences between each country. I agree with you that these governments do not seem to have their political priorities in order; however it is difficult to allocate funds to education when more than half the population lives in urban slums where they lack the resources to sustain that level of policy implementation. In addition, social policy typically centers around health care and providing for the elderly and the unemployed. We can see from the spreadsheet that elderly populations around the world far outnumber the young and this reality will pose its own set of policy problems. So while we would like to put forth sufficient funding towards education and job creation, less industrialized countries are still fighting to provide citizens with the basic necessities of life (i.e. food, drinking water, clothing, etc.).
Thank you for your comments. I, too, found the high literacy rates surprising. It shows that there has indeed been vast improvement over time, and that many nations are recognizing the need for at least access to primary education to increase literacy. In fact, literacy rates are a measure of education outcomes, and they are also correlated with poverty. The higher the literacy rate, the lower the poverty. There is an initiative through the UN & UNESCO called Education for All that helps formulate and measure education goals worldwide. One of the primary goals is access to education for girls. It would be interesting to see what the literacy rates were for girls by country. You also allude to poor education possibly being a contributor to higher poverty rates. While receiving a quality education is a “right” worldwide, it is subjective to what that country defines as quality. And unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to do a cross country comparison of what constitutes “quality.” In fact, there is not a universal system of indicators to measure education that countries are universally able to use making it difficult to define what is considered a “poor” education.
ReplyDeleteThank you ladies, you definitely gave me some factors to re-consider and explore further.
ReplyDeleteFabian