Major changes in the political regime and decentralization strategy over the last few decades make Chile an interesting case-study of decentralization. Chile is a "narrow" nation covering almost three-hundred thousand square miles, ranging from coastal lands to the Andean mountain range. Its...

Zimbabwe has achieved impressive strides in human development since independence, as reflected by improvements in such indicators as literacy, child mortality and life expectancy which stand well above regional averages (see table 1). Access to services important for human development also...

This paper explores the links between economic growth and human development, identifying two chains, one from economic growth to human development, the other from human development to economic growth. The importance of various links in each chain are explored empirically with the help of...

This paper explores the two-way relationships between Economic Growth (EG) and Human Development (HD), building on an earlier work by Ranis, Stewart, and Ramirez (2000). Here, we show that HD is not only a product of EG but also an important input to it. The paper develops new empirical...

Social protection for Africa's children / Stephen Devereux, Douglas Webb, and Sudhanshu Handa -- The case for social protection for children / Lorraine Blank, Stephen Devereux, and Sudhanshu Handa -- Reaching orphans and vulnerable children through cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa :...

This paper explores ways of enlarging the measurement and understanding of Human Development (HD) beyond the relatively reductionist Human Development Index. From the extensive literature on well-being, we derived eleven categories of HD. Within each category, we then identified a potential set...

This paper explores the hypothesis that groups' behaviour is greatly influenced by the societal environment in which they operate. It does so by looking at societal norms over three eras in developing countries, and the ways in which these affected behaviour at a micro-level as evidenced by the...

This paper seeks to examine the interdependence between economic growth (EG) and human development (HD). It is concerned with changes in per capita income and its two-way relationship with the basic societal objective of human development. Regressions across various Latin American countries are...

Human development, reflected in the status of people's levels of health and education, affects future growth and, in turn, is affected by decentralization. Unlike earlier exclusive emphasis on budgetary issues, this study focuses on the impact of fiscal decentralization on the level of human...