As a measure of wellbeing, national income misses variations in the things income can and cannot buy. It also misses variations in people’s claim on that aggregate income. The Human Development Index attempts to address the first weakness by incorporating two additional dimensions, health and...

The 2011 Human Development Report argues that the urgent global challenges of sustainability and equity must be addressed together – and identifies policies on the national and global level that could spur mutually reinforcing progress towards these interlinked goals. Bold action is needed on...

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...

The 2010 Report continues the tradition of pushing the frontiers of development thinking. For the first time since 1990, the Report looks back rigorously at the past several decades and identifies often surprising trends and patterns with important lessons for the future. These varied pathways...

This paper surveys the main informational, conceptual and theoretical adjustments made to the HDI in the Mexican Human Development Reports and presents a way in which the calculation of the HDI could be carried out to the individual level. First, informational changes include redistributing...

This paper examines levels and trends in human development in the 27 European Union Member States and four of the EU’s nearest neighbours (Iceland, Switzerland, Norway and Turkey). Its starting point is the UNDP Human Development Index but the paper goes beyond the HDI in three main ways....

The purpose of this background paper is: i) to synthesize the discussions regarding the concept of human development, so as to inform the 2010 Report’s definition, and ii) drawing on the extensive policy and academic literatures, to propose relationships between the concept of human...

The 1998 Report investigates the 20th century's growth in consumption, unprecedented in its scale and diversity. The benefits of this consumption have spread far and wide. More people are better fed and housed than ever before. Living standards have risen to enable hundreds of millions to enjoy...

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...

This 2005 Human Development Report takes stock of human development, including progress towards the MDGs. Looking beyond statistics; it highlights the human costs of missed targets and broken promises. Extreme inequality between countries and within countries is identified as one of the main...