sowm_2015__int__africa_full_report_low_res

of factors of production owned by the rest of
the world, converted to U.S. dollars using the
World Bank Atlas method, divided by midyear
population. Data are for 2013 or the most
recent year available. Sources: The World Bank
Data Catalog; supplemented with data from: UN
National Accounts Main Aggregates Database.
Accessed March 29, 2015
Participation of women in national government:
The share of seats occupied by women
in a single house or, in the case of countries
with bicameral legislatures, upper and lower
houses of national parliament. Data reflect
the situation as of February 1, 2015. Source:
Inter-Parliamentary Union. Women in National
Parliaments. Accessed March 29, 2015
Calculation methodology
1. All countries with a 2014 population
over 100,000 (Source: UN DESA. World
Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision. (2014))
and data available (2000 or later) for all five
indicators were included in the Mothers’ Index.
Countries missing one data point were included
in the Index table, but not in the rankings.
Notes on specific indicators:
• Where primary to secondary SLE estimates
were higher than primary to tertiary, primary
to secondary were used. Where primary to
tertiary estimates were not available, primary
to secondary or SLE estimates published by
UNDP (the secondary source), whichever
were highest, were used.
• To avoid rewarding school systems where
pupils do not start on time or fail to progress
through the system at expected rates, countries
with SLEs over 18 years and gross enrollment
ratios (primary to tertiary) over 105 had their
school life expectancy discounted to 18.0 years
before calculating indicator ranks.
• In countries where parliaments are no longer
functioning, the most recent information
before the parliament’s suspension or dissolution
was used. Where recent election results
were pending at the time of analysis, the latest
available data were used.
2. Where relevant, data points were rounded to
the nearest tenth for analysis purposes.
3. Countries were arrayed and ranked from 1 to
179 (1 being the best and 179 the worst) for each
of the five indicators of maternal well-being.
4. Composite scores were then calculated as the
average of these five indicator ranks with each
indicator given equal weighting.
5. Scores were sorted from low to high and
ranked from 1 to 179 to give the overall Mothers’
Index rank.
Urban Child Survival Gap Scorecard
The Scorecard presents inequality in survival
chances within and across cities in countries
monitored by the Countdown to 2015 movement.
To assess survival chances across cities, the
under-5 mortality rate (U5MR) for the capital
city (or its metropolitan area) was used. Where
the capital is not the country’s largest city (e.g.,
Pakistan, Nigeria, Tanzania), data for the largest
city were also included. Where city estimates
were unavailable, data for the administrative
region the city resides in (e.g., the state or
province) were used. If regional data were not
available, the national urban average U5MR
was used, but only so long as urban survival gap
data were also available.
In total, data were sufficient to report
U5MRs for 47 major cities and 7 urban areas
in 52 (of 75) Countdown countries. The latest
available survey data (as of March 2015)
were used.
Any exclusion of a country or city from this
analysis was due to one or more of the following
factors:
• National urban population under 300,000 in
2014 (3 countries)
• No data (6 countries)
• Latest available data from 2008 or earlier
(9 countries)
• National urban average available, but no survival
gap data (5 countries)
• City represents less than 60 percent of the
population of the closest administrative region
with available data (8 cities)
66 Methodology and Research Notes