On May 3, ISET Policy Institute co-hosted a public event organized by World Bank Georgia where representatives of the World Bank and co-authors of the study, Jamele Rigolini and Sarah Call-Black, presented the resilience report "Protecting Human Capital in Times of Shocks and Crises".

Excessive tobacco consumption is an important public health policy issue. According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), 32% of the adult population in Georgia smoked tobacco in 2019 (WHO, 2021). The prevalence of smoking in men was 56.9 percent – the fourth in the world and first in Europe.

Gender inequality has been a persistent (albeit steadily improving) problem for years. The COVID-induced crisis put women in a disproportionately disadvantaged position, jeopardizing decades of progress achieved towards equality between men and women.

Recently, Geostat revised upward its real GDP growth for the third quarter of 2021 to 9.1% (by 0.1 ppt). The real GDP growth rate amounted to 12% year-on-year for November 2021. Consequently, the estimated real GDP growth for the first eleven months of 2021 was 10.7%.

The global economy continues to recover in Q2 2021 following the deep economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The growth accelerated as a result of the easing of virus-containment restrictions in most countries. IMF (July 2021) estimates that global GDP growth will reach 6% year over year (y/y) in 2021. Though this rebound is uneven – compared to the previous estimates (April 2021), growth projections for emerging markets and developing economies are revised downward.