2016 Global Youth Development Index: Results and Analysis Table 2.12  Regional YDI and domain ranks, 2016 Region YDI overall score Civic Participation Education Employment and Opportunity Health and Well-being Political Participation North America 1 1 1 1 4 7 Europe 2 4 2 2 2 4 Asia-Pacific 3 3 6 3 7 8 South America 4 9 3 5 6 1 Central America and Caribbean 5 2 5 9 3 2 Russia and Eurasia 6 8 4 4 8 6 MENA 7 6 7 8 1 9 South Asia 8 5 8 6 5 3 Sub-Saharan Africa 9 7 9 7 9 5 in the Civic Participation and Political Participation domains. North America and Europe score well in Education and Health and Well-being but lag behind some parts of the world in Civic Participation and Political Participation domains. Table 2.12 shows the overall and domain scores of the 2016 YDI by region. There are marked differences in regional ranks across the domains. Europe is the most consistent, ranking second and fourth across all domains. 2.5.1  Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific is home to nearly one-third (29 per cent) of the world’s youth population. With over 525 million young people, it comprises the largest youth population of any region. China has by far the largest youth population in this region, accounting for 60 per cent of the region’s youth. Youth make up one-quarter of the total population of the region. Asia-Pacific’s overall YDI rank is third out of the nine world regions. This region performs better than the global average in all the YDI domains except for Political Participation. Figure 2.13 shows the regional YDI change in AsiaPacific between 2010 and 2015. Asia-Pacific had the second largest improvement in its overall YDI score over this period. The region demonstrated improvement in all domains, most significantly in Civic Participation and Political Participation. Progress in Education and Health and Well-being was the slowest. Of the 27 countries in the region, 23 improved their YDI scores between 2010 and 2015, with Myanmar and Malaysia logging the greatest amount of improvement. The four AsiaPacific countries whose YDI scores deteriorated during this period were the Federated States of Micronesia (4 per cent), Philippines (4 per cent), China (2 per cent) and Laos (2 per cent). Myanmar and Malaysia improved the most, both by 16 per cent, largely because of gains in Political Participation and Civic Participation. These improvements moved Myanmar from a low to medium YDI country. Nevertheless, Myanmar’s scores in Education and Political Participation remained relatively low compared with the global average, with the indicator score for ‘digital natives’ being particularly low. Malaysia’s score for Civic Participation and Political Participation improved strongly and it made moderate gains in the other three domains, despite a small deterioration of scores in adolescent fertility, drug abuse and NEET rates. Indonesia improved its YDI score by 14 per cent in the past five years, although its Health and Wellbeing indicators showed a slight dip owing to a marginal increase in drug abuse and HIV rates. In the Education domain, Indonesia recorded significant improvement in secondary school enrolment. It had notable improvements in the Civic Participation domain in the ‘helped a stranger’ and ‘volunteered time’ indicators, with the proportion of the youth population who volunteered in the past five years more than doubling to 32 per cent. \ 47