PHM-Exch> 2010 Human Development Report: 40-year Trends Analysis Shows Poor Countries Making Faster Development Gains

[Claudio Schuftan]

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   2010 Human Development Report:
40-year Trends Analysis Shows Poor Countries Making Faster Development Gains

HDRO/UNDP
4 November 2010

*20th anniversary UNDP report finds long-term progress in health, education
not determined by income; introduces new indices for gender, poverty,
inequality*

*United Nations, 4 November 2010*—Most developing countries made dramatic
yet often underestimated progress in health, education and basic living
standards in recent decades, with many of the poorest countries posting the
greatest gains, reveals a detailed new analysis of long-term Human
Development Index<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163776/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/hdi/>(HDI)
trends in the 2010
*Human Development
Report*<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163777/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/mediacentre/>,
released here today.

Yet patterns of achievement vary greatly, with some countries losing ground
since 1970, the 2010 *Human Development Report* shows. Introducing three new
indices<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163778/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/indices/>,
the 20th anniversary
edition<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163779/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/mediacentre/summary/>of
the Report documents wide inequalities within and among countries,
deep disparities
between women and
men<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163780/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/mediacentre/summary/gender/>on
a wide range of development
indicators<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163781/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/data/indicators/>,
and the prevalence of extreme multidimensional
poverty<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163782/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/mediacentre/summary/poverty/>in
South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The Human Development Reports, commissioned annually by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) since 1990, are editorially
independent<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163783/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/reports/>from
UNDP.

The 2010 Report—*The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development*—was
launched today by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UNDP Administrator Helen
Clark> and Nobel laureate Amartya
Sen<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163784/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/humandev/origins/>,
who helped devise the
HDI<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163785/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/hdi/>for
the first
* Human Development Report in
1990<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163786/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr1990/>
* with the late economist Mahbub ul
Haq<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163787/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/humandev/>,
the series founder. The Human Development Reports and the HDI challenged
purely economic measures of national achievement and helped lay the
conceptual foundation for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, calling for
consistent global tracking of progress in health, education and overall
living standards.

“The *Human Development Reports* have changed the way we see the world,” Ban
Ki-moon said today. “We have learned that while economic growth is very
important, what ultimately matters is using national income to give all
people a chance at a longer, healthier and more productive life.”

The first *Human Development
Report*<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163788/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr1990/>introduced
its pioneering HDI<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163789/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/hdi/>and
analyzed previous decades of development indicators, concluding that
“there is no automatic link between economic growth and human progress.” The
2010 Report<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163790/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/mediacentre/>’s
rigorous review of longer-term trends—looking back at HDI
indicators<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163791/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/data/>for
most countries from 1970—shows there is no consistent correlation
between national economic performance and achievement in the non-income HDI
areas of health and education.

Helen Clark said, “the Report shows that people today are healthier,
wealthier and better educated than before. While not all trends are
positive, there is much that countries can do to improve people’s lives,
even in adverse conditions. This requires courageous local leadership as
well as the continuing commitment of the international community.”

Overall, as shown in the Report’s analysis of all countries for which complete
HDI data<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163792/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/data/>are
available for the past 40 years, life expectancy climbed from 59 years
in 1970 to 70 in 2010, school enrolment rose from just 55 percent of all
primary and secondary school-age children to 70 percent, and per capita GDP
doubled to more than US$10,000. People in all regions shared in this
progress, though to varying degrees. Life expectancy, for example, rose by
18 years in the Arab states between 1970 and 2010, compared to eight years
in sub-Saharan Africa. The 135 countries studied include 92 percent of the
world’s population.

“Our results confirm, with new data and analysis, two central contentions of
the *Human Development Report* from the outset: human development is
different from economic growth, and substantial achievements are possible
even without fast growth,” said Jeni Klugman, the lead author. “We also
gained new insights about the countries that performed best, and the varying
patterns of progress.”

The “Top 10 Movers” highlighted in the 2010 Report—those countries among the
135 that improved most in HDI terms over the past 40 years—were led by Oman,
which invested energy earnings over the decades in education and public
health.

The other nine “ Top
Movers<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163793/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/data/trends/hybrid/>”
are China, Nepal, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Laos, Tunisia, South Korea,
Algeria and Morocco. Remarkably, China was the only country that made the
“Top 10” list due solely to income performance; the main drivers of HDI
achievement were in health and education. The next 10 leaders in HDI
improvement over the past 40 years include several low-income but high
HDI-achieving countries “not typically described as success stories,” the
Report notes, among them Ethiopia (#11), Cambodia (#15) and Benin (#18)—all
of which made big gains in education and public health.

Within the pattern of overall global progress, the variation among countries
is striking: Over the past 40 years, the lowest-performing 25 percent
experienced less than a 20 percent improvement in HDI performance, while the
top-performing group averaged gains of 54 percent. Yet as a group, the
quartile of countries at the bottom of the HDI scale in 1970 improved even
faster than those then at the top, with an average gain of 61 percent. The
diverse national pathways to development documented in the Report show that
there is no single formula for sustainable progress, the authors stress.

The region with the fastest HDI progress since
1970<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163794/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/data/trends/hybrid/>was
East Asia, led by China and Indonesia. The Arab countries also posted
major gains, with 8 of the 20 world leaders in HDI improvement over the past
40 years. Many countries from sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union
lagged behind, however, due to the impact of AIDS, conflict, economic
upheaval and other factors. Life expectancy actually declined over the past
40 years in three countries of the former Soviet Union—Belarus, Ukraine and
the Russian Federation—and six in sub-Saharan Africa: the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and
Zimbabwe.

The dominant trend in life expectancy globally is convergence, with average
life spans in most poor countries getting increasingly close to those in
developed countries. In income, though, the pattern remains one of
divergence, with most rich countries getting steadily richer, while
sustained growth eludes many poor countries.

“We see great advances, but changes over the past few decades have by no
means been wholly positive,” the authors write. “Some countries have
suffered serious setbacks, particularly in health, sometimes erasing in a
few years the gains accumulated over several decades. Economic growth has
been extremely unequal, both in countries experiencing fast growth and in
groups benefiting from national progress. And the gaps in human development
across the world, while narrowing, remain huge.”

*2010 HDI plus new Indices for Inequality, Gender and Poverty*

The Report this year includes new 2010 HDI
rankings<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163795/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/>,
with modifications to several key indicators. The top 10 countries in the
2010 HDI are Norway, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Ireland,
Lichtenstein, the Netherlands, Canada, Sweden and Germany. At the bottom of
the 2010 HDI rankings of 169 countries are, in order: Mali, Burkina Faso,
Liberia, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Burundi, Niger, the Democratic
Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe.

Country ranking changes in the HDI are now reported over a five-year
comparative period, rather than on a year-to-year basis, to better reflect
long-term development trends. Due to methodological refinements of the HDI
formula, the 2010 rankings are not directly comparable to those in earlier
Reports.

The 2010 *Human Development Report* continues the HDI
tradition<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163796/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/mediacentre/summary/measures/>of
measurement innovation by introducing new indices that address crucial
development factors not directly reflected in the HDI:

*The Inequality-adjusted Human Development
Index<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163797/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/mediacentre/summary/inequality/>(IHDI)
*
For the first time, this year’s Report examines HDI data through the lens of
inequality, adjusting HDI achievements to reflect disparities in income,
health and education. “The HDI alone, as a composite of national averages,
hides disparities within countries, so these adjustments for inequality
provide a fuller picture of people’s well-being,” said Jeni Klugman.

*The Gender Inequality
Index<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163798/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/mediacentre/summary/gender/>(GII)
*
The 2010 Report introduces a new measure of gender inequities, including
maternal mortality rates and women’s representation in parliaments. “The
Gender Inequality Index is designed to measure the negative human
development impact of deep social and economic disparities between men and
women,” said Klugman. The GII calculates national HDI losses from gender
inequities, from the Netherlands (the most equal in GII terms) to Yemen (the
least).

*The Multidimensional Poverty
Index<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163799/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/mediacentre/summary/poverty/>(MPI)
*
The Report features a new multidimensional poverty measure that complements
income-based poverty assessments by looking at multiple factors at the
household level, from basic living standards to access to schooling, clean
water and health care. About 1.7 billion people—fully a third of the
population in the 104 countries included in the MPI—are estimated to live in
multidimensional poverty, more than the estimated 1.3 billion who live on
$1.25 a day or less.

The 2010 Report<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163800/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2010/>calls
for further research and better data to assess challenges in other
critical aspects of human development, including political empowerment and
environmental sustainability.

To encourage continuing innovation for the 20th anniversary of the Report,
the Human Development Report Office re-launched its
website<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163801/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org/>(
http://hdr.undp.org<http://e2ma.net/go/6844494422/208364524/216163802/36353/goto:http://hdr.undp.org>)
with extensive new resources, revised statistical country profiles for all
UN member states and interactive tools, including a “build your own index”
option for visitors.

Amartya Sen writes in his introduction to the new Report: “Twenty years
after the appearance of the first *Human Development Report*, there is much
to celebrate in what has been achieved. But we also have to be alive to ways
and means of improving the assessment of old adversities and of
recognizing—and responding to—new threats that endanger human well-being and
freedom.
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