This blog is just a bit of background about the attached paper, which is still an early draft, circulated for comments.
There is a big debate within the field of development between those who believe that the promotion of “national development” (a four fold transformation of countries to a more productive economy, a more capable administration, a more responsive government and generally more equal treatment of all citizens) will lead to higher wellbeing and those who think that “national development”–and in particular, “economic growth” is overrated as a means to produce human well being. The alternative is to focus more directly on specific, physical, indicators of human wellbeing, with the idea that this “focus” on the “small” can lead somehow to “big” gains.
The attached paper examines indices and data on country level human wellbeing from Social Progress Imperative whose mission statement involves creating a Social Progress Index as part of their advocacy against the use of economic indicators:
We dream of a world in which people come first. A world where families are safe, healthy and free. Economic development is important, but strong economies alone do not guarantee strong societies. If people lack the most basic human necessities, the building blocks to improve their quality of life, a healthy environment and the opportunity to reach their full potential, a society is failing no matter what the economic numbers say.
The Social Progress Index is a new way to define the success of our societies. It is a comprehensive measure of real quality of life, independent of economic indicators.
In the paper I examine the empirical connections between the Social Progress Index, its components, subcomponents, and indicators, and three measures of national development: GDP per capita, state capability, and democracy. One basic finding is that for the Social Progress Index and its three major components the relationship between country measures of human wellbeing and national development is very, very, strong. Put another way, national development is both empirically necessary (there are no countries with high human wellbeing and low national development) and empirically sufficient (there are not countries with high national development and low human wellbeing).
The paper is much more interesting than just that as I explore the relationship between the various components of the Social Progress Index and the components of national development (e.g. how much does GDP per capita versus state capability matter for access to sanitation versus personal freedom, or indoor air pollution deaths than outdoor air pollution deaths). This leads to a set of what I argued are both interesting but ultimately intuitive findings.