En­er­gy Cham­ber

Many coun­tries around the world have set them­selves a tar­get of be­com­ing "de­vel­oped," but there is no stan­dard de­f­i­n­i­tion of what this means. The most com­mon way in which coun­tries are as­signed a "de­vel­oped" or "de­vel­op­ing" sta­tus is through their gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) mea­sured on a per capi­ta ba­sis. How­ev­er, many peo­ple have ar­gued that this is not al­ways a good mea­sure to de­ter­mine the ac­tu­al life ex­pe­ri­ences of in­di­vid­u­als liv­ing with­in a coun­try and that a more nu­anced ap­proach is need­ed.

This de­sire to have a more nu­anced ap­proach gave rise to the Unit­ed Na­tion's Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex (HDI). This is a com­pos­ite in­dex mea­sur­ing a coun­try's av­er­age achieve­ments in three ba­sic di­men­sions of de­vel­op­ment-a long and healthy life, ac­cess to knowl­edge and a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing. In­di­ca­tors such as life ex­pectan­cy at birth, mean years of school­ing, ex­pect­ed years of school­ing and gross na­tion­al in­come per capi­ta are used to de­ter­mine a coun­try's HDI per­for­mance. In 2010, the HDI in­clud­ed three new in­dices: the gen­der in­equal­i­ty in­dex, the mul­ti-di­men­sion­al pover­ty in­dex and the in­equal­i­ty ad­just­ed HDI.

Tak­en in prop­er con­text, the in­dex is a use­ful tool, pro­vok­ing pol­i­cy de­bates and changes for the coun­try or at the very least guid­ing di­a­logue. Sec­tions of the HDI re­port ex­am­ine and en­cap­su­late the ob­sta­cles in­di­vid­ual coun­tries must over­come to en­sure vary­ing is­sues do not neg­a­tive­ly im­pact health care, ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion and gen­er­al de­vel­op­ment. The in­dex even takes in­to ac­count a coun­try's re­spons­es to po­lit­i­cal and press free­dom, job sat­is­fac­tion, ac­cess to wa­ter, air and wa­ter pol­lu­tion and per­cep­tions of safe­ty.

Progress and pit­falls

For T&T, the re­port pro­vides an in­ter­est­ing ref­er­ence point for our coun­try. Giv­en T&T's dri­ve for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, the re­port paints a clear pic­ture of where the coun­try needs to go and pit­falls to avoid. With the world be­gin­ning to show slow signs of re­cov­er­ing from the fi­nan­cial cri­sis and the emer­gence of new threats and op­por­tu­ni­ties for the coun­try's cru­cial en­er­gy sec­tor, an analy­sis of the re­port can help guide fu­ture pol­i­cy di­rec­tives aimed at aid­ing na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex:

T&T's Rank

In 2010, T&T ranked 59 out of 169 coun­tries and falls in brack­et of coun­tries with a high Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex. The coun­try's rank im­proved by one place be­tween 2009 and 2010 but, in­ter­est­ing­ly, be­tween 2005 and 2010, there has al­so on­ly been an av­er­age HDI rank change of one place. This demon­strates that, while the coun­try scores rel­a­tive­ly high, there have not been any sig­nif­i­cant ad­vances to im­pact T&T's place­ment on the in­dex. In fact, we cur­rent­ly trail some of our neigh­bours, like Bar­ba­dos, and al­so rank much low­er than coun­tries we are seek­ing to em­u­late, such as Sin­ga­pore and Nor­way (See Chart 1).

De­mo­graph­ic trends

The re­port presents some in­ter­est­ing sta­tis­tics re­lat­ing to T&T's de­mo­graph­ic trends, par­tic­u­lar­ly the coun­try's rate of nat­ur­al in­crease (the pro­por­tion of pop­u­la­tion growth or de­cline based on births and deaths), fer­til­i­ty rates (births per woman) and the de­pen­den­cy ra­tio (the per­cent­age of the work­ing age pop­u­la­tion-those be­tween 15 to 64-com­pared to the to­tal pop­u­la­tion). A low­er de­pen­den­cy ra­tio tends to in­di­cate a high­er de­pen­den­cy on so­cial spend­ing, es­pe­cial­ly for pen­sions.

From the da­ta, it is clear that T&T's rate of nat­ur­al in­crease and fer­til­i­ty rates have de­clined be­tween the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­ods (See Ta­ble 1). This ra­tio speaks di­rect­ly to a coun­try's abil­i­ty to re­plen­ish its work force. How­ev­er, it is in the de­pen­den­cy ra­tio where there has been a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline. In 1990, the de­pen­den­cy ra­tio was 65.9 and by 2010 slipped to 37.9, an over 50 per cent drop. These sta­tis­tics mean all the more for T&T where the pen­sion age pop­u­la­tion is ex­pect­ed to triple by 2055, putting a strain on so­cial se­cu­ri­ty spend­ing in com­ing years.

Mar­gin­al de­clines

The 7th Ac­tu­ar­i­al Re­view un­der­tak­en by the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board stat­ed that cur­rent­ly there are four NIS con­trib­u­tors to one pen­sion­er, by 2030 there will be two con­trib­u­tors to one pen­sion­er and it is es­ti­mat­ed that by 2055 there will one con­trib­u­tor for every pen­sion­er. Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, the coun­tries rank­ing high­er in the HDI saw on­ly mar­gin­al de­clines in their child de­pen­den­cy ra­tios, rates of nat­ur­al in­crease and their to­tal fer­til­i­ty rates over 5, 10 and 20 year spans.

The da­ta in­di­cates that T&T has ex­pe­ri­enced a ma­jor de­mo­graph­ic shift in the past two decades. This has re­sult­ed in changes to our na­tion­al in­sur­ance sys­tem, but the sig­nif­i­cance of this shift has not been cap­tured in wider pol­i­cy de­bates.

Con­clu­sion

The 2010 HDI sought to cap­ture new and wider rang­ing sets of in­di­ca­tors to mea­sure well be­ing and hap­pi­ness, civic and com­mu­ni­ty well be­ing as well as sus­tain­abil­i­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. In the HDI, there are sev­er­al ar­eas where T&T ranks high­ly in­clud­ing our com­mit­ment to gen­der equal­i­ty, adult lit­er­a­cy, pro­tect­ing civ­il lib­er­ties and pro­vid­ing ac­cess to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion. From the re­port, the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens ex­press over­all life sat­is­fac­tion, ex­press­ing ful­fil­ment with their jobs, health and so­cial sup­port net­work.

While there are con­cerns over per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty, T&T can take some cred­it for these ad­vance­ments, but we must al­so take a cal­cu­lat­ed look at the ar­eas where we fall short. These in­dices act as a barom­e­ter to gauge the ex­act pol­i­cy paths the coun­try must take in or­der to keep our de­vel­op­men­tal mo­men­tum go­ing. Based on the find­ings of the HDI, the coun­try has sev­er­al prob­lems to tack­le: build­ing the com­pe­ten­cy of our dwin­dling labour pool over the next three or four decades, ad­dress­ing any short­com­ings in our NIS/so­cial se­cu­ri­ty safe­ty nets as well as analysing our de­pen­den­cy ra­tio and rates of nat­ur­al in­crease.

Ques­tions over these prob­lems will not be an­swered overnight and point to a need for ex­ten­sive di­a­logue be­tween all stake­hold­ers. Any pub­lic or pri­vate sec­tor re­sponse to the HDI must be ground­ed in the in­sti­tu­tion­al re­al­i­ty of the coun­try and, as al­ways, the En­er­gy Cham­ber is will­ing to play its part in work­ing with acad­e­mia and Gov­ern­ment to iden­ti­fy key fo­cal points for the coun­try's sus­tain­able growth in the short, medi­um and long term.

In­ter­est­ing find­ings of HDI for T&T

In over­all life sat­is­fac­tion, T&T had an over­all score of 7.0 (with ze­ro be­ing least sat­is­fied and ten be­ing most sat­is­fied). On­ly 40 per cent of the peo­ple sur­veyed are sat­is­fied with their stan­dard of liv­ing while 76 per cent are sat­is­fied with their jobs and 82 per cent sat­is­fied with their per­son­al health. There ap­pears to be a de­gree sat­is­fac­tion with ed­u­ca­tion, air qual­i­ty and wa­ter qual­i­ty (all scor­ing over 70 out of 100)

Giv­en the con­cerns over crime, the re­spon­dents raised red flags about their per­cep­tions of safe­ty. In this cat­e­go­ry on­ly 42 per cent of re­spon­dents per­ceived the coun­try to be safe. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, T&T has one of the high­est homi­cide rates with just un­der 40 homi­cides per 100,000 (on­ly Ja­maica, Venezuela, Hon­duras and Guatemala have high­er homi­cide rates.)

For more in­fo con­tact Sher­win Long at: sher­win@en­er­gy.tt or 6-EN­ER­GY.

Vis­it: www.en­er­gy.tt