In Brief

Moving up the ranks

Global foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows rose 16 percent in 2011, surpassing the 2005–07 precrisis level, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development reports. The agency’s World Investment Report 2012 predicts that the growth rate of FDI slowed in 2012, however, with flows leveling off at about $1.6 trillion.

The report’s FDI attraction index, which measures the success of economies in attracting FDI, features more developing and transition economies in the top 10 than in previous years. Newcomers in 2011 to the top ranks include Ireland and Mongolia. Resource-rich Chile, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the Republic of Congo also made the list.

Just shy of the top 10, a number of countries, including Ghana and Peru, exhibited sustained improvement in their ranking: both these countries moved up the list in each of the past six years.

Better educated, lower paid

Despite recent narrowing, the wage gap between men and women in Latin America prevails, according to a new study by the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank.

New Century, Old Disparities: Gender and Ethnic Earnings Gaps in Latin America and the Caribbean compares surveys of representative households in 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries. It finds that men earn 17 percent more than women of the same age and educational level. This wage gap has been decreasing in recent years, but at an unacceptably slow pace, the report says.

Though slightly better educated on average than men, women still dominate lower-paid occupations such as teaching, health care, and the service sector, the study says. According to the household surveys, women hold only 33 percent of the better-paid professional jobs in the region, which include those in the fields of architecture, law, and engineering. In these professions, the wage gap between men and women is significantly higher: 58 percent on average.

A change in household roles and stereotypes is essential to achieving gender equality in the labor market, the

study concludes.

Smart growth

Global urbanization will have significant implications for biodiversity and ecosystems if current trends continue, according to a new assessment by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

The Cities and Biodiversity Outlook report, which draws on contributions from more than 123 scientists worldwide, says that more than 60 percent of the land projected to be urban by 2030 has yet to be...