UAE enjoys world's best social cohesion

Social cohesion is fundamental to long-term prosperity, competitiveness and political stability of a country as witnessed during the recent upheavals and social unrest in Ukraine, Venezuela and the Arab Spring due to high unemployment and cost of living there.

But the GCC has been immune from such upheavals, thanks to the governments’ initiatives to provide basic necessities and employment opportunities to citizens. These measures have helped create social cohesion among the citizens of Gulf nations, resulting in achieving the best social unity rating in the comity of nations by independent think-tanks.

IMD World Competitiveness said in its monthly note that UAE enjoys the best social cohesion in the world followed by Qatar, Brazil, Canada, Malaysia, Norway, Philippines, Kazakhstan, Sweden and Taiwan.

While Venezuela, Argentina, Bulgaria, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Ukraine and Italy have been rated at the bottom for social cohesion.

Arturo Bris, Director of the IMD World Competitiveness Center and Professor of Finance, said: “Social cohesion is a very important driver of long-term prosperity and competitiveness. Cohesive societies are politically stable and focus on economic growth and business development. Social cohesion itself is built over years, not overnight. It results from policies that allow everybody in society to share its prosperity. It makes competitiveness sustainable. Our ranking of social cohesion in 2008 explains 20 per cent of the variation in Political Instability in 2013. By the way, on the “Risk of Political Instability", the worst two countries in 2013 are...the Ukraine and Venezuela.”

Selected countries’ scores on social cohesion:

Ranking                 Country                           Score

1                              UAE                                 7.75

2                              Qatar                               7.31

3                              Brazil                                6.67

4                              Canada                            6.49

5                              Malaysia                           6.44

12                            Singapore                         5.62

18                            Switzerland                       5.28

19                            Japan                               5.24

23                            Australia                           5.09

27                            India                                 4.93

33                            USA                                  4.69

37                            China                               4.39

38                            Germany                          4.35

40                            UK                                    4.28

49                            Russia                              3.19

50                            France                             3.15

51                            Italy                                  3.09

52                            Ukraine                            2.98

59                            Argentina                         2.18

60                            Venezuela                        1.10
 

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