Climate Change Impact and Structural Reforms in Kiribati
KIRIBATI
Box 1. Construction of Gender Inequality Index (GII) for Kiribati
The Gender Inequality Index (GII), published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), provides a
measure of inequality across countries using indicators on reproductive health, labor market, and women's
empowerment variables. The index ranges from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating higher gender inequality.
Five representative indicators of the three aspects are used in the index's calculation: (i) maternal mortality ratio,
(ii) adolescent birth rates, (iii) proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females, (iv) female and male labor
market participation rates, and (v) proportion of adult females and males aged 25 years and older with at least
some secondary education.
In the latest publication (2020), the GII was unavailable for Kiribati due to missing information for indicators (iv)
and (v). The data gap is common among Pacific Island countries, where only four countries—Fiji, Samoa, Tonga,
and Papua New Guinea-had the indices published. Our attempt is to fill in the missing indicators for Kiribati,
either by locating other alternative sources of information and/or calculating approximations to calculate the
index.
Labor force participation rates (indicator iv) was augmented by using data from the 2020 Kiribati Census
published in November 2021. The UNDP usually uses the data from International Labor Organization which does
not have data on Kiribati.
Estimates for the education indicators (indicator v) proved to be more complicated, as there is no available
education data for the defined population of aged 25 years and older. However, the 2019 Household Income and
Expenditure Survey (HIES) provides useful information for approximating the numbers.
Percentage of population having at least some secondary education: According to the survey,
86.2 percent of the population aged 18 and older had attended secondary school. Given the recent efforts to
revamp education enrollment by the government and its positive impact on schooling for younger ages
(population aged 18-24 accounts for a quarter of total population aged 18+), excluding these young cohorts
from the adult population will likely lower the respective proportion in the remaining (aged 25+) population. The
analysis therefore assumes that the proportion of the population aged 25 and older having at least some
secondary education could range between 70 percent to 80 percent.
Gender disparity in education: As shown in Table 1, girls at the age of secondary school have 5 ppts higher
secondary enrollment rates than boys. The HIES 2019 survey also shows that the proportion of those having
attended secondary school was 63.3 percent for men and 66.8 percent for women. Based on the numbers, it
assumes that the differences between men and women could range between 3-5 ppts for the subjected
indicators.
With the aforementioned information, six scenarios are assessed, with the proportion of male with at least
some secondary education assumed to be 60 percent, 70 percent, and 80 percent, and those of female being
3-5 ppts higher than male for each scenario. The calculated Gll ranged from 0.3919 to 0.3931. The marginal
changes of Gll allow the stability of the estimated results of the growth decomposition exercise among different
scenarios. The calculated Gll is also more or less at the same level with other PICS countries. Compared to four
PICs countries having the index available, Kiribati's index was slightly higher (i.e., lower gender equality) than
those of Fiji (0.37), Samoa (0.36), and Tonga (0.35) but significantly lower (i.e. higher gender equality) than that of
Papua New Guinea (0.725).
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