Albania has placed at number 54 out of 163 countries for its social progress over the last year. With a score of 75.41 out of 100, it ranks above the “world score” of 64.24 which is the average of every country surveyed.
The Social Progress Index looks at three broad dimensions; Basic Human Needs (including nutrition and medical care, water and sanitation, shelter, and personal safety) , Foundations of Wellbeing (including access to basic knowledge, access to information and communications, health and wellness, and environmental quality), and Opportunity (personal rights, personal freedoms, inclusiveness, and access to advanced education). The world scored as 74.65 for Basic Human Needs, 60.82 for Foundations of Wellbeing, and 57.25 for Opportunity. According to the report, creating a society with real opportunity for citizens remains an elusive goal that many nations have failed to achieve.
In Albania, a cause for concern with a noted poor performance was child stunting. The rates of death from infectious diseases, maternal mortality, and undernourishment were rated as average for its Tier group. It also performed “average” in access to electricity, air pollution, unsafe water and sanitation, political killings and torture, traffic deaths and the homicide rate. It got a bad rating for perceived criminality.
In the Foundations of Wellbeing section, Albania performed badly for media censorship. It did however get good marks for access to healthcare and essential services. It was ranked as average for women with no schooling, access to education, and premature deaths from non-communicable diseases.
In terms of Opportunity, the country got a good ranking for access to justice, but failed to impress in employment, corruption, access to contraception, equality in politics, acceptance of LGBTIQ people, and university quality. There was room for improvement in the way minorities are treated, providing advanced education for women, and early marriage.
These results are nothing surprising and have been confirmed through the issuance of various other reports from other organisations over the last few years.
Ranked as a Tier 3 country out of 6 tiers, Albania was surpassed in its group by Serbia, Belarus, Hungary, Croatia,and Bulgaria. It performed better than Montenegro, Ukraine, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Moldova.
Unsurprisingly, those at the top of the list in Tier 1 include Sweden, New Zealand, Finland, Denmark, and Norway at number 1. Each of those in the top 5 had scored of over 91. The five worst on the list in descending order were Somalia, Eritrea, Central African Republic, Chad, and South Sudan. These scores ranged between 31.06 and 35.58.
