Walking Together Indicator (WTI): Understanding and Measuring World Inequality

Socio-economic inequality may be addressed at a different scale. Its impact at a micro and macro level on very many social issues is well-known, as well as its effects on global development being extensively reported in literature, where inequality is often seen as a clear barrier on the path to a sustainable development. That becomes extremely critical in light of major global challenges, such as climate change. The quantification of inequality in the different contexts, its interpretation, as well as its impact on society at a different level are object of major interest and discussion within the scientific community. Inspired by the famous African proverb "if you want to go fast go alone;If you want to go far go together", we propose an indicator-Walking Together Indicator (WTI), based on a simple model to foster transparency and broad communication. It relies on the statistical standard deviation to facilitate the measurement of inequality looking at single metrics (e.g., GDP) as well as considering broad categories (e.g., Economy) composed of multiple indicators. Despite evident limitations, simplifications (context-less comparison among countries) and approximations (significant lack of data), the study conducted on well-known macro indicators presents a fundamental coherence in the result. Indeed, it shows a reducing inequality in the main trends. On the other side, the performed computations also point out a relevant exception for the main economic indicator, which is characterised, overall, by an increasing inequality among the considered countries. Such a contrasting trend is partially explainable looking at the simplifications in the model, which neither considers dependencies among indicators nor assumes weighting. The indicator provides a very encouraging and optimistic figure. However, the recent pandemic has shown a world running at different speeds. It advises a more conservative interpretation of the indicator as the exception related to economy is relevant.

The impact of socio-economic indicators on COVID-19: an empirical multivariate analysis of sub-Saharan African countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an unprecedented social and economic crisis. This study aims at investigating the impact of socio-economic indicators on the levels of COVID-19 (confirmed and death cases) in sub-Saharan Africa. The investigation makes use of the readily accessible public data: we obtain COVID-19 data from Johns Hopkins and socio-economic indicators from the World Bank. The socio-economic indicators (independent variables) used in the multilinear regression were GDP per capita, gross national income per capita, life expectancy, population density (people per sq. km of land area), the population aged 65 and above, current health expenditure per capita and total population. The dependent variables used were the COVID-19 confirmed and death cases. Amongst the seven socio-economic indicators, only 4 showed a statistically significant impact on COVID-19 cases: population density, gross national income per capita, population aged 65 and above and total population. The obtained R 2 of 69% and 63% indicated that the socio-economic indicators captured and explained the variation of COVID-19 confirmed cases and COVID-19 death cases, respectively. The startling results obtained in this study were the negative but statistically significant relationship between COVID-19 deaths and population density and the positive and statistically significant relationship between gross national income per capita and COVID-19 cases (both confirmed and deaths). Both these results are at odds with literature investigating these indicators in Europe, China, India and the UK.

Research on Schistosomiasis in the Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Bibliometric Analysis.

The objectives of this work are to check whether the COVID-19 pandemic affected the research on schistosomiasis, to provide an insight into the most productive countries and journals and the most cited publications, and to analyse any association between the total publications of countries and a set of socio-economic and demographic factors. Based on PRISMA methodology, we used the Scopus database to search for articles published between 1 January 2020 and 26 March 2022. VOSviewer was used to generate the co-authorship and the co-occurrence networks, and Spearman's rank correlation was applied to study associations. A total of 1988 articles were included in the study. Although we found that the year-wise distribution of publications suggests no impact on schistosomiasis research, many resources have been devoted to research on COVID-19, and the Global Schistosomiasis Alliance revealed the main activities for eradication of schistosomiasis had been affected. The most productive country was the United States of America. The articles were mainly published in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. The most prolific funding institution was the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The total publications per country were significantly correlated with population, GERD, and researchers per million inhabitants, but not with GDP per capita and MPM.

Eating habits of children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic: The impact of social isolation.

BACKGROUND: The social isolation enforced as a result of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic may impact families' lifestyle and eating habits. The present study aimed to assess the behaviour and dietary patterns of Brazilian children and adolescents during the social isolation imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: The present study was conducted using an online, anonymous cross-sectional survey with 589 children and 720 adolescents from Brazil during a nationwide social isolation policy. The Mann-Whitney U-test or the Kruskal-Wallis with the Dunn post-hoc method and a radar chart were used to compare the weekly consumption of each food by age group and isolation status. p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Analyses were conducted using R statistical software, version 4.0.2 (R Foundation for Statisitical Computing). RESULTS: We found that isolated families showed breakfast eating habits and the consumption of raw salad, vegetables, beans and soft drinks. Lower-class isolated families and those from the Northeast region consumed fruits, juices, vegetables and beans less frequently. Compared to children, adolescents were less isolated (p = 0.016), less active (p < 0.001), exposed to longer screen time (p < 0.001), showed an inadequate sleeping pattern (p = 0.002) and were from lower-class families (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Social isolation affected the eating habits of children and adolescents. Non-isolated families presented a lower consumption of healthy food, especially those among the lower class, from Northeast Brazil, as well as adolescents.