Research into foreign aid has mostly focused on its ability to affect economic (i.e., GDP per capita) growth. Conclusions have been mixed. I consider aid's effectiveness differently: by its ability to improve quality of life. I find that, though aid does not affect quality of life in the...

Both indigenous peoples and the capability approach (CA) take a holistic view on development and stress the multiple dimension of development as the expansion of people's well-being including social, cultural and spiritual elements. The paper investigates to what extent the capability approach...

An important literature examines the effect of environmental quality on self-reported measures of well-being. Some studies have focused on objective indicators of environmental quality, while other studies have explored how perceptions about environmental quality are correlated with happiness....

Three billion people will be added to the world ' s population over the next 50 years and 2.8 billion people today already live on less than $2 a day-almost all in developing countries. Ensuring these people have access to productive work and a better quality of life is the core development...

The unprecedented growth of data and its ubiquity in our daily lives signal that the digital revolution is transforming the world. But despite this growth, much of the value of data remains untapped, waiting to be realized. Data collected for one particular purpose has the potential to generate...

Migration, both within and beyond borders, has become an increasingly prominent theme in domestic and international debates, and is the topic of the 2009 Human Development Report (HDR09). The starting point is that the global distribution of capabilities is extraordinarily unequal, and that this...