Reports and Indices Current Affairs MCQs

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The World Wealth Report 2025, released by Capgemini Research Institute, shows India had 378,810 millionaires in 2024 with total wealth of $1.5 trillion. India’s high-net-worth individual (HNWI) wealth rose by 8.8 percent, with strong gains in the “millionaires next door” segment. India had 333,340 millionaires next door and 4,290 ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs) in 2024. The report covers 71 countries and highlights U.S. leadership in wealth growth, while India and Japan led in Asia-Pacific.

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The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its 2025 State of World Population (SOWP) Report titled ‘The Real Fertility Crisis’. It highlights that one in three adult Indians face unintended pregnancies. It also states that 30% of Indians experience unfulfilled desires to have more or fewer children. United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) was created to support population and reproductive health programmes. Its mission is to ensure every pregnancy is wanted, childbirth is safe, and youth potential is fulfilled.

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The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently released the 2025 Review of the State of World Marine Fishery Resources. The report highlights that deep-sea species are hard to manage due to their slow growth, late maturity, long lifespans, low natural death rates, and rare spawning. Only 29% of deep-sea fish stocks are being fished sustainably, making them highly vulnerable. It raises concern over overfishing and Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing. Globally, 64.5% of all fishery stocks are within sustainable levels, but 35.5% are overfished.

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The World Bank released the State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2025 as carbon pricing now covers 28% of global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and raises over $100 billion in revenue. Carbon pricing attaches a cost to emitting GHGs to encourage emission reductions and reflect environmental costs. There are 80 active carbon pricing instruments, up from 5 in 2005, including Emissions Trading Systems (ETS), carbon taxes, and carbon credit markets. India introduced ETS rules in 2024 for its industrial sector, using rate-based benchmarks instead of emission caps.

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The Global Drought Outlook 2025 was recently released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). It warns that 40% of the world’s land area now faces more frequent and severe drought. Recent major droughts occurred in Europe (2022), California (2021), and the Horn of Africa including Somalia. The economic cost of an average drought is rising by 3% to 7.5% annually. Countries like India and Australia may face disruptions in hydroelectric power generation due to water shortages.

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The Ministry of Education released the Performance Grading Index (PGI) 2.0 report for 2022–23 and 2023–24 to assess school education. Chandigarh secured the top rank while Meghalaya was ranked lowest. PGI 2.0 is an evidence-based tool to evaluate the performance of States and Union Territories in school education. PGI 2.0 has a total weightage of 1000 points spread over 73 indicators under two categories: Outcome and Governance & Management.

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The Global Peace Index (GPI) 2025 by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) shows a 0.36 per cent drop in global peacefulness due to rising geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty. This marks the worst global peace level deterioration since World War II. India ranks 115th with a GPI score of 2.229, improving by 0.58 per cent from last year. India’s ranking has improved steadily from 141 in 2019 to 115 in 2025. India showed improvement in nine peace indicators, while nine remained the same and three worsened. Iceland remains the most peaceful country since 2008.

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Recently, NITI Aayog released the third edition of its quarterly insights series, Future Front, titled India’s Data Imperative: The Pivot Towards Quality, in New Delhi. The report highlights the urgent need to improve data quality for stronger digital governance, better public trust, and efficient service delivery. It discusses the major issues caused by poor data quality and suggests simple and practical tools to improve it.

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Recently, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the Financial Stability Report for June 2025. The Financial Stability Report is a twice-yearly report by the Reserve Bank of India. It shows the joint assessment of the Sub-Committee of the Financial Stability and Development Council on risks to financial stability and the strength of the Indian financial system. The report highlights that India continues to drive global growth due to solid economic fundamentals and wise policies. Risks include geopolitical tensions, trade disruptions, and weather-related uncertainties.

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The Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2025 reported a record 1,523 unicorns, which are privately held startup companies valued over 1 billion. This marks an increase of 70 unicorns compared to last year, with a total combined valuation of 5.6 trillion. The United States of America leads with 758 unicorns, including 55 new ones, and has six of the ten most valuable unicorns. China holds second place with 343 unicorns. India ranks third with 64 unicorns, with Bengaluru at rank 7 globally, Mumbai at 22, and Gurugram debuting at 27.