This paper is a review of the broad human development trends in the South Asian region over the last twenty years. It attempts to identify the changing patterns, the region’s persisting sluggish performance on human development indicators in general as well as country-specific and intracountry...

This report reviews patterns and trends in human development (HD) in East and Southeast Asia (ESA) since 1990, analyzes causes and consequences of this development, highlighting both structural and institutional factors, and identifies the basic principles for durable enhancements in HD. The...

This paper presents an initial review of the theoretical and measurement discussions of sustainability and its relation to human development. As we show in this paper, there is an overall consensus about the importance of sustaining development and well-being over time, but in reality different...

Mankind must cooperate to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperature, with its concomitant effects on sea level, rainfall, drought, storms, agricultural production, and human migration. What is the appropriate way of evaluating how the costs of...

This paper argues against a natural resource curse for human development. We find evidence that changes in human development from 1970 to 2005, proxied by changes in the Human Development Index, are positively and significantly correlated with natural resource abundance. While our results are...

This paper explores the opportunities for a ‘just transition’ to low carbon and sustainable energy systems; one that addresses the current inequities in the distribution of energy benefits and their human and ecological costs. In order to prioritize policies that address energy poverty...

It is widely accepted that country-averages of income, literacy, life expectancy and other indicators conceal widespread human deprivation and inequality. The measures of human development based on these indicators are also averages, and therefore mask disparities in the overall population....

In 2010 the UNDP unveiled a new methodology for the calculation of the Human Development Index (HDI). In this paper I investigate the normative and practical properties of this change vis a vis the original formulation of the HDI in 1990. The main conceptual innovation of the new index can be...

This paper analyzes the theoretical and empirical links between inequality in human development on the one hand and sustainability on the other. It specifically looks at causality in both directions. Inequality in various dimensions of human development is analyzed with respect to both weak and...

We use two distinct panel datasets to extract and examine data on the labor share of output. From the first, we examine trends in the economy-wide labor share and from the second, we examine trends in the labor share of the manufacturing sector over the last three decades. Both datasets show...