The Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Team of the Government of the Republic of Serbia has prepared a new, amended edition of the Index of Social Development of Cities and Municipalities. Following the introduction of amendments for 2017, the Index is available for seven years (2011-2017), and thanks to methodological amendments and corrections over the previous years, the Index is stable and comparable over time. This year's edition of the Index of Social Development of Cities and Municipalities enables the presentation of results on an interactive map, as well as the monitoring of social development trends at the level of local self-governments.

The social development index is a composite index that enables comparison of the achieved level of social development of cities and municipalities in the Republic of Serbia. The Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Team has initiated the development of a methodology and application aimed at making this tool accessible to all interested users, from decision makers and policy makers to independent researchers and analysts.

The Social Development Index provides an opportunity to compare the quality of life between cities and municipalities, which can be sorted into six areas: demography, economic activity, education, social care, health care and other indicators of the quality of life and social participation. The index uses values from 1 to 100, so that a higher value of the index means better living conditions in a specific local self-governmental unit. The index was created by aggregating 30 indicators in six areas, including the adjustment of the direction of action of specific indicators. In other words, if a particular phenomenon adversely affects the quality of life, its reciprocal value is taken into account. Since the indicators used were expressed in different units of measure, the process of normalization was reduced to a range of 1 to 100, in order to form a single index of social development of cities and municipalities.

 The index of social development of cities and municipalities enables the following:

• Sustainable measurement of the achieved level of social development of cities and municipalities and easy understanding of the data and results;
• Comparison of cities and municipalities in Serbia through an adjusted summary indicator measuring the quality of life;
• Monitoring social development trends at the level of local self-governments, both for the Social Development Index and for all its domains;
• Creating national and local policies based on the data;
• Creation of policies/measures by local decision makers to improve the quality of life in the local community;
• Comparison of different priority areas for social development;
• Citizens, representatives of governmental institutions, civil society organizations, researchers and academic community to consider all aspects of the quality of life in cities and municipalities in the Republic of Serbia.

The index covers the period from 2011 to 2017 and all cities and municipalities in the Republic of Serbia. The application provides the choice of indicators and years that appear on the chart or map. Also, the Social Development Index application is optimized for use on all modern browsers, as well as on portable devices (smartphones and tablets) regardless of the operating system they use.  The web application is optimized to handle even the slowest internet connections, making it accessible to a wide audience    

The  revised edition of the Index of Social Development of Cities and Municipalities is available on http://www.socijalnoukljucivanje.gov.rs/indeks/index.html

Source: Social Inclusion and Poverty Reduction Team of the Government of the Republic of Serbia and Coordination Body