Part II Collecting and analysing data HELPFUL TIP The Toronto Initiative for Economic and Social Rights has a database of constitutional provisions from all over the world relating to 17 different rights. The dataset records the presence or absence of these economic and social rights and whether they are justiciable or aspirational. Visit: www.tiesr.org 6.3.3. Data on resource indicators This is data that can be used to measure the resources available for efforts to implement ESCR. For example, government revenue, tax collection, tax-GDP ratios and debt statistics can determine the overall of public finances. Statistics can also be used to determine the macroeconomic situation of a country by analysing growth rates, interest rates, exchange rates, rates of inflation, etc. The distribution of resources within the economy can be measured using poverty rates, the Palma ratio, or the Gini coefficient, which measures economic inequality. Finally, the economic situation of a country relative to others can be determined by looking at the terms of trade, balance of payments, development assistance and foreign direct investment statistics. Resource indicator data is necessary to analyse: • Resource allocation and expenditure: Allocation ratios (discussed further in Chapter 10) judged against reference points and over time can show the reasonableness of amounts spent; various governance tools, such as social audits, can be useful to review the disbursement of funds. • Resource generation: Evaluation of revenue sources, alongside relevant fiscal, monetary and macroeconomic policies, can be helpful in this regard. • Policy processes: This can be assessed by perception data that asks people how satisfied they are with the avenues for public participation in development of the government budget (e.g. whether people have access to information on budgetary processes). The Open Budget Index is a particularly useful source in this respect. Much of the secondary data used to analyse resources will take the form of socio-economic statistics, such as budgets and financial documents. This is often easily available online from finance ministries, as well as regional and international organizations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Women’s Centre in Chittagong District, Bangladesh. Photo by UN Women/Allison Joyce, reproduced under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 license. Chapter 6: Finding secondary data | 65