Our misconceived measurement
of progress
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF
Associate since 1991
Comments directly to
JonatPower@aol.com
December 7, 2007
LONDON - National income figures give us only the bare bones of a society’s progress. They neither reveal the real beneficiaries nor the composition of that income. Neither do they value the things that human beings consider important for themselves but have little or no market value for other people or for those beholden to statistical aggregates- better nutrition and health services, greater access to knowledge, more secure livelihoods, better working conditions, security against crime and physical violence, satisfying leisure hours and a sense of participating in the economic, cultural, religious and political activities of their communities. Of course, people also want higher incomes. But income is never the sum total of human life.
For most people, health, security and love are the three important things in life, and how many people can put their hand on their heart and say they are sure that in their own lives these three things are eternally spoken for?
This debate reaches back in European thought at least to the time of Aristotle. “Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful for the sake of something else,” he wrote. Even the 19th century philosophers never were gross national product absolutists after the fashion of today. Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill, from very different perspectives, all saw the creation of wealth as only one part of a complicated whole.
How marvellous it is then at the gloomy end of a gloomy year to be presented with a report by the United Nations Development Programme that actually makes the reader feel good about human progress. In its just released Human Development report there are long, sophisticated tables encompassing all the world’s countries in which countries are not ranked by income per head but by yardsticks which are considered more telling- longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living. Cold and wintry though it is, Iceland comes out top, followed closely by Norway, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan in that order. (The weather obviously is not a factor.) Hong Kong is higher up the table than Germany or Israel and Barbados is the top of the Third World countries with, surprise, surprise, Argentina, yesterday’s basket case, not far behind, which goes to show how with dynamic leadership, sound economic policies and a social will, how quickly a country can be turned around.
The report also presents another way of looking at progress- the countries with a relatively crime-free environment. If you want to live in a country with a high standard of living, low violence and a miniscule murder rate one would choose Japan first and foremost, with Hong Kong as a close second, or perhaps Jordan (although poorer) where I am now. Indeed all the Muslim countries, in particular the Arab ones, have extremely low murder rates. Then come Norway, Austria, and Greece. The countries best to avoid are Colombia, South Africa, Venezuela, Jamaica, El Salvador and Russia. Surprisingly, the U.S. although much worse than the European average, compared with these six countries is only moderately violent. But then, as is true with all these statistics, if you exclude the urban slum parts of America, its status improves remarkably: it is not only fairly low in crime but also very high on the human development index.
Today many governments are finding, after many decades of stressing the pursuit of high growth rates, that they have failed to reduce the social and economic deprivation of a substantial number of their people.
At the same time we have become aware that a number of low-income countries have achieved high rates of human development by a judicious use of their scarce resources to ensure a basic level of well being throughout their societies- Costa Rica, Uruguay, Cuba, and the ex-British Caribbean islands are good examples. Few outsiders looked at China, Taiwan and South Korea thirty years go and anticipated their present fast growth rate. The present income of a country may offer little guidance to its future growth prospect if is nurturing its resources by investing in its people, as these countries did in the early years of their decision to modernise and develop economically.
Not least we should be aware of how misleading aggregate figures can be. Income is a means not an end. It may be used for essential medicines or narcotics, for sitting in a luxury car in a traffic jam or for a high-speed train link. For green spaces or multi-storey car parks. Everyone in any country that has experienced rapid economic growth, whether it be a mature economy like the U.S. and Denmark or an up and coming one like Malaysia and Brazil, knows from their own firsthand experience that it doesn’t tell you that much about a society. It gives a kind of useful benchmark of aggregate economic momentum. But, beyond that, the more one looks at it the more misleading it can become.
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan
Power
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Jonathan Power can be
reached by phone +44 7785 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Jonathan
Power
2007 Book
Conundrums
of Humanity
The Quest for Global Justice
“Conundrums
of Humanity” poses eleven questions for our future progress, ranging
from “Can we diminish War?” to “How far and fast can
we push forward the frontiers of Human Rights?” to “Will
China dominate the century?”
The answers to these questions, the author believes, growing out of
his long experience as a foreign correspondent and columnist for the
International Herald Tribune, are largely positive ones, despite the
hurdles yet to be overcome. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, London, 2007.
William Pfaff, September 17, 2007
Jonathan Power's book "Conundrums" - A Review
"His is a powerful and comprehensive statement of ways to make the world better.
Is that worth the Nobel Prize?
I say, why not?"
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