A
new UN report measures
human progress
By
Jonathan
Power
July 9, 2003
LONDON - By now it is fair to say that only the
economists and newspaper headline writers are still in
love with GNP (Gross National Product) as a way of
measuring progress. Everyone in any country that has
experienced rapid economic growth, whether it be a mature
economy like the United States or Sweden or an up and
coming one like Taiwan or Brazil knows from their own
bitter experience that it doesn't tell you that much
about a society. It gives a kind of useful bench mark of
aggregate economic momentum. But, beyond that, the more
one looks at it the more misleading it can
become.
For most people health, security and love are the
three important things in life, and how many people can
put their hands on their heart and say they are sure that
in their own lives these three things are eternally
spoken for. Besides, income is a means not an end. It may
be used for essential medicines or narcotics, for parks
and green spaces or for extra wide thoroughfares and
multi-storey car parks, for sitting in a luxury car in a
traffic jam or for resting in a high speed train link as
I am now, as I rush from a UN Development Programne press
conference in Copenhagen on how to measure human
development, convinced that the Scandinavians have come
nearer this ideal than the Americans and the British.
Once a year the UNDP delivers its snapshot on human
progress in an exercise pioneered by the former minister
of finance in Pakistan, the late Mahbub ul Haq. He was
long convinced that our attempt to measure progress by
statistical aggregates and technical prowess was
unpersuasive. We overlook that the main goal of life is
to insure survival and, beyond that, to enable the
pursuit of well being, achievement and, as the prescient
American constitution (not without a great debate at the
time) so aptly puts it, of happiness. (The opposition
wanted the 'pursuit of wealth'.)
This debate reaches back, in European thought at
least, to the ancient Greeks and the time of Aristotle.
"Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it
is merely useful and for the sake of something else."
Haq was convinced that the contemporary obsession with
increased income per head blinded both observers and
participants to the tremendous advances that could be
made in social well being, even in quite poor countries,
with only a modest rise in incomes. In today's report the
UN singles out Sri Lanka which, poor as it was in 1945,
managed by 1953 to increase life expectancy by 12 years.
During the 1990s Ghana reduced the percentage of its
people suffering from hunger from 35% of its population
to 12%. Haq produced sophisticated tables in which
countries were not ranked by income per head but on
yardsticks which he considered more telling- longevity,
knowledge and a decent standard of living. (Alas, he
never got round to measuring love, security and
happiness, although his widow, Barnie, with whom he spent
a very fulfilled marriage, has continued his work by
publishing today Pakistan's own internal human
development report.) In those early tables Japan came out
top, followed by Canada, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden.
Later he factored in the status of women and produced an
even more accurate profile of well being. Sweden and
Norway came out top with Denmark not far behind. Japan
fell to 17th place.
Then he did the same exercise for Third World
countries. Barbados came out first a triumph that Africa
should look to. It was followed by Hong Kong, Cyprus,
Uruguay, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and South Korea.
They, poor until relatively recently, have dramatically
lowered infant mortality rates that used to be at present
day African rates and assured life spans, only two
generations ago 50 years or less, that today are up to
the levels of the richest countries.
In 15 years not much in the pecking order has changed.
Those that used to do well still do very well. Those that
did particularly badly are still on the downward slope.
But in the middle ground some things have changed. India
and China and other parts of East Asia that account for
nearly 75% of the Third World's population have made
rapid strides forward in the human development index. One
can go even further and say with confidence that contrary
to our often tormented images of emaciated children,
economies overwhelmed by a tide of debt and mismanagement
and even the weather a hostile force whose spite seems to
worsen over time, the truth for most countries and most
people is that life over the last thirty years has become
more livable and probably, too, more fulfilling. Brazil,
for one, the power house of Latin America, has made
enormous steps forward.
What is most disturbing about this year's report,
however, is how many countries are slipping back, mainly
in Africa, many in the countries of the former Soviet
Union, also some in Latin America and even a handful in
Asia. Since 1990, 21 countries have seen a decline in
their human development index. In fourteen countries more
children are dying before the age of 5 than they were a
decade ago. The fact that a majority of the world is
going forward simply underlines how unnecessary such a
tragedy is. But given the way the world is going we can
expect more casualties like these, not less.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2003 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
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