New Research Reveals Data Gaps on Key Policy Issues Across G20 Countries

LONDON, Sept. 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Research released today reveals data gaps that could be preventing the G20 countries from designing effective policies to tackle critical global challenges.

The Evidence Initiative, a project of The Economist Group and The Pew Charitable Trusts, has released a first-of-its kind "Evidence Map", an interactive tool that tracks the availability and characteristics of publicly available policy-relevant data in the G20 countries.

The Map, which was produced by The Economist Intelligence Unit, assesses data across five policy domains that are central to the future of the G20 nations: ageing and retirement; digital inclusion; disaster risk; financial inclusion; and youth unemployment. Within these domains, the Map analyses the availability, accessibility, and core characteristics of expert-defined policy indicators at the international, national, and sub-national levels.

Highlights from the report include:

• None of the G20 countries collected more than 60% of the expert-recommended data.
• The availability of data around youth unemployment and financial inclusion was particularly weak.
• Youth employment was the weakest policy domain in terms of coverage, with only 48% of the relevant data available on average.
• A nation's economic development level does not appear to be the main determinant of its data coverage or characteristics. For example, countries like Mexico, Turkey and Argentina, all middle-income countries, performed reasonably well in the analysis.
• Only 54% of international data sources and 41% of national sources offered sound visualisation tools for interpreting data.
• The ageing and retirement domain had a high level of data coverage on average, with data available for 67% of the relevant indicators.

Leo Abruzzese, Senior Global Advisor for Public Policy at The Economist Intelligence Unit, said: "Incredible advances in communications technologies have made more data available than ever, but our research found too many gaps in areas where countries should be well prepared. Data gathering is not inexpensive, but it is money well spent. We hope the Data Map offers guidance in identifying those gaps and directing future investment."

The Evidence Map and the full report are available at www.evidenceinitiative.org.