Sen’s influential work on human development has led economists to explore new areas that have become increasingly important for human well-being. In particular, Sen emphasizes the importance of the "freedom to choose". Freedom, however, is not always an exact (crisp) outcome, and membership in...

Assessing changes in living standards in Southeast Asia in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries -- The colonial period: population and output growth in agricultural and non-agricultural sectors -- The colonial period: measures of welfare and changing living standards -- Confronting the...

This paper relates different subjective approaches to wellbeing to different traditions of economic analysis. The dominant formula of ‘Subjective Well-Being’ is attractive because it promises a direct measure of utility, but other approaches bring different strengths to policy evaluation....

This year's Human Development Report explains why we have less than a decade to change course and start living within our global carbon budget, and how climate change will create long-run low human development traps, pushing vulnerable people into a downward spiral of deprivation.

Climate change is the defining human development challenge of the 21st Century. Failure to respond to that challenge will stall and then reverse international efforts to reduce poverty. The poorest countries and most vulnerable citizens will suffer the earliest and most damaging setbacks, even...