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Abstract
The paper reviews experience in advancing Human Development (HD) since 1970 by investigating behaviour among countries that made the largest improvement in HD and those that made the least improvement. The paper provides evidence on a range of indicators for the three best (and worst) performers among high, medium and low HD countries. It identifies alternative combinations of variables associated with success and failure. It then reviews performance on a range of other dimensions of Human Development, including political rights, gender empowerment, societal stability and environmental sustainability and shows these are only weakly associated with performance on the Human Development Index (HDI). To illuminate historical, political and institutional factors associated with success and failure, the performance of six countries (four successful and two weak performers) are briefly reviewed—Bangladesh, Chile, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos and Zambia.
Acknowledgements
This paper was originally prepared for the HDRO of the UNDP as background paper for the 2010 Report. We are grateful for their support. Thanks to George Gray Molina and Mark Purser for help on data, and to Daniel Vujcich and Cheryl Zhao for research assistance; to Rachael Diprose and Sarah Lowes for assistance on the Indonesian and Kazakhstan cases, respectively; and the HDRO office and participants at an HDCA seminar for helpful comments on a previous draft.
Notes
We ignore the experience of very small countries, following conventional practice, as their wider relevance is limited.
In principle, we would have liked to examine social expenditure, including health as well as education expenditure, but because of lack of data we only use education expenditure.
They were: mental wellbeing; empowerment; political freedom; social relations; community wellbeing; inequality; work conditions; leisure conditions; economic stability; political security; environmental conditions.
Stewart et al. (Citation2001), found that conflict that was confined to a peripheral part of the country had much less impact on economic and social variables than conflict that was centrally located.
‘One fifth of the government's investment expenditures during the 1970s oil boom went into agriculture – compared to 2% for Nigeria (World Bank, Citation2000, p. 3)’ (Ascher, Citation2008, p. 25).