5 Stats That Explained the World This Week

Every week for Politico, I assemble five data points that provide a glimpse into the political dynamics behind current global trends. This week: migration to Europe spikes, Afghanistan looks toward China, and Hong Kong's wealth gap grows.

The Global Gender Gap

According to a new World Economic Forum report, over 100 countries narrowed gender gap-related disparities over the past year. But don’t celebrate too soon—the report also projects that, at current rates of improvement, the global gender gap won’t close for 81 years. On average women earn less than men in every single country on earth. In the United States, women earn roughly two-thirds of what men do, placing America 65th in terms of wage equality. Surprisingly, some of the world’s poorest countries lead the world in securing wage equality and equality of political representation. Burundi is no. 1 for women’s pay as a percentage of men’s. Rwanda is the only nation with more female members of parliament than male representatives—women hold 64 out of 100 seats.

Europe’s Immigrant Deluge

European nations are dealing with immigration on a massive scale. Only 60,000 migrants entered Europe from Africa in 2013; by October, the total for 2014 had reached 165,000, a new record. The influx stems largely from the refugee crisis created by conflicts in Iraq and Syria—three million Syrians have fled their country thus far. In the last two years, immigration to Germany has grown by a third. In Britain, net immigration skyrocketed 43 percent from June 2013 to June 2014.

Afghanistan’s Pivot to China

Is it China’s turn to engage Afghanistan? Even as the United States prepares its military withdrawal, foreign aid and spending, predominantly from the West, still account for over 90 percent of Afghanistan’s $20 billion GDP. Kabul is hedging its bets by courting China—the destination of new President Ashraf Ghani’s first state visit—as a potential new benefactor. The trip was a success: While in China, Ghani secured $327 million in aid through 2017. China had already committed funds to develop Afghanistan’s natural resources, including a $3 billion deal to develop the Aynak copper mine.

Hong Kong’s Wealth Gap

As Hong Kong’s Occupy Central protests lose steam and the city returns to business as usual, another more intractable problem has emerged as a ticking-time bomb for the city’s stability: income inequality. The city’s gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality where a score of ‘0’ represents perfectly even distribution of income and ‘1’ means that a single citizen takes home all profits) stands at 0.537, dwarfing the United States’ oft-lamented score of 0.41. Over the last decade, Hong Kong's monthly median earnings have increased by only 30 percent while its GDP has surged more than 60 percent. For residents between the ages of 16 and 24, monthly wages have flatlined since 2001. The city’s foreign-born, in particular, have felt the gap between rich and poor widen. Immigrant domestic-helpers account for some 8 percent of Hong Kong’s workforce but are mandated a far lower minimum wage than locals. This minimum allowable wage for foreigners has increased less than 6.5 percent since 1998.

Indian Falling Fertility

India is on track to become the world’s most populous country by 2030, with almost 1.5 billion people. In spite of this growth, India’s fertility rate has tapered off dramatically. In 1971, the average Indian woman had 5.1 children. Twenty years later, it was 3.6. Today, the average Indian woman has only 2.4 children, not far above replacement level of about 2.1. But the slowdown hasn’t spread through India equally. Half of the country’s major states have already fallen below the 2.1 threshold; the three states with the highest fertility rates account for one-third of India’s total population and are also among the country’s poorest. Female sterilizations in India have risen to 37 percent of all women. In China, the world’s current population leader, the rate is only 29 percent.

This piece is a version of a column published in Politico.

Photo credit: Gates Foundation / Flickr

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group and global research professor at New York University. You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.