REPORT 2023/2024

Reimagining
cooperation ina polarized world

Copyright @ 2024
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Breaking the gridlock
Reimagining cooperation in a polarized world

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REPORT 2023/2024

Reimagining
cooperation ina polarized world

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The 2023/2024 Human
Development Report

H U M A N D E V E LO P M E N T
REPORT 2023/2024

Breaking the gridlock
Reimagining cooperation in a polarized world

H UM A N D EVE LO P ME NT RE P O RT 2 02 3/ 2 02 4

Team

Director and lead author
Pedro Conceição
Research and statistics
Cecilia Calderón, Pratibha Gautam, Moumita Ghorai, Divya Goyal, Yu-Chieh
Hsu, Christina Lengfelder, Brian Lutz, Tasneem Mirza, Rehana Mohammed,
Josefin Pasanen, Fernanda Pavez Esbry, Antonio Reyes González,Som Kumar Shrestha, Ajita Singh, Heriberto Tapia and Yanchun Zhang
Digital, data and knowledge management, communications, operations,
National Human Development Reports
Nasantuya Chuluun, Jon Hall, Seockhwan Bryce Hwang, Nicole Igloi,
Admir Jahic, Mohammad Kumail Jawadi, Fe Juarez Shanahan, Minji Kwag,
Ana Porras, Stanislav Sailing, Marium Soomro and Sajia Wais

iii

HUM A N D E V ELO P M E NT RE P O RT 2 02 3/2 02 4

The 2023/2024 Human Development Report
Advisory Board

Co-chairs Tharman Shanmugaratnam
President of the Republicof Singapore

Joseph E. Stiglitz
University Professor,
Columbia University

Members

Olu Ajakaiye
Executive Chairman,
African Centre for Shared
Development Capacity
Building, Nigeria

Scott Barrett
Lenfest-Earth Institute
Professor of Natural
Resource Economics,
Columbia University

Kaushik Basu
Professor of International
Studies, Cornell University

Laura Chincilla
Former President of the
Republic of Costa Rica

Diane Coyle
Bennett Professor of Public
Policy and Co-Director of
the Bennett Institute for
Public Policy, University ofCambridge

Oeindrila Dube
Philip K. Pearson Professor,
Harris School of Public
Policy, University of
ChicagoCai Fang
Chief Expert of National
Think Tank, Chinese
Academy of Social
Sciences

Marc Fleurbaey
Research Director, CNRS;
Professor, Paris Schoolof Economics; Associate
Professor, Ecole normale
supérieure, Paris

Ravi Kanbur
Professor,
Cornell University

Judith Kelley
Dean, Duke Sanford
School of Public Policy,
Duke University

Melissa Leach
Director, Institute ofDevelopment Studies

Harini Nagendra
Director, Research Centre,
and Professor and Lead,Centre for Climate Change
and Sustainability, Azim
Premji University

Abebe Shimeles
Honorary Professor,
Department of Economics,
University of Cape Town,
South Africa and Senior
Economic Advisor;
Outgoing Directorof Research, African
Economic ResearchConsortium

Belinda Reyers
Professor, Universityof Pretoria; AffiliatedResearcher, Beijer Instituteof Ecological Economics,
Swedish Royal Academy of
Sciences

Ilona Szabo De Carvalho
Co-founder and president,
Igarape Institute, Brazil

Krushil WatenePeter Kraus Associate
Professor in Philosophy,
University of Auckland

Foreword

We live in a tightly knit world. Yet shared, interlinked
global challenges, such as runaway climate change,
are outpacing our institutions’ capacities to respondto them. We face “a global gridlock,” exacerbated by
growing polarization within our countries, which translates into barriers to international cooperation.
Why, despite all our riches and technologies, are weso stuck? Is it possible to mobilize action to address globally shared challenges in a world that is intensively polarized? These questions motivate the 2023/2024 Human
Development Report. Firmly grounded in the advancement made in its predecessors, the Report reminds usthat our shared aspirations for development need to go
beyond wellbeing achievements to also enable people
to feel more in control of their lives, less threatened andmore empowered to act on shared challenges.
The human toll of this growing gridlock is huge. In
lives lost, in opportunities forgone, in feelings of despair. After 20 years of progress, and for the first time onrecord, inequalities in Human Development Index (HDI)
values­—­which measure a country’s health, educationand standard of living­—­are growing between countries
at the bottom and countries at the top of the index. Following the 2020 and 2021 declines in the global HDI
value, the world had the opportunity to build forward
better. Instead, this Human Development Report showsthat our global community is falling short. Deaths inbattle and displacement from violent conflicts are increasing, reaching the highest levels since World War II.
Leading up to a decade of increasingly higher temperatures, 2023 has been the hottest ever recorded. The
path of human development progress shifted downwards and is now below the pre-­2019 trend, threatening
to entrench permanent losses in human development.
Unless we change course.
We can still redress inequalities in human development, but we must rapidly learn some lessons. To
start, the Report argues that we need to capitalize on
our global connections, choosing cooperation overconflict. The Report shows how the mismanagementof cross-­border interdependencies (the response to
the Covid-­19 pandemic, for example) is at the root ofmany contemporary challenges, ranging from debt
distress in numerous low- and middle-­
income countries to threats to food security to a pervasive sense of

Foreword

disempowerment around the world. New analysis in theReport using data from the World Values Survey showsthat only half the global population feels in control of
their lives and that only one-­third of people believe that
their voice is heard in their political system.
Looking ahead, there will only be more globally shared
opportunities and challenges. Besides the high economic
interdependence, two main drivers of interdependence
are likely to shape our future in the decades to come. First,
the dangerous planetary changes of the Anthropocene
are deepening the global connections among societies, economies and ecosystems: viruses, microplastics
in our oceans and forest fires do not care much fornational borders. As the Report argues, we may choose
to de­globalize, but we cannot “deplanetize.” Second, an
unfolding Digital Revolution has led to a dizzying increasein the sharing of data, ideas and culture across societies.
To break the gridlock, the Report is an invitation toreimagine cooperation by pursuing three ideas that it
encourages the world to fight for.
First, it is imperative to pursue common ground while
accepting that people will have the right to retain theirdiverse interests and priorities. Piercing a fog of false
differences, or misperceptions, is one of the most effective ways of changing behaviour towards cooperationthat addresses shared challenges.
Second, we must enable people to pursue their legitimate and natural human security ambitions without
protectionism. It has now been 30 years since the 1994
Human Development Report introduced the notion ofhuman security. It focuses on what gives people agency
to shape their lives free from fear, want and living
without dignity. From the energy transition to artificial
intelligence, discussion of risks and challenges needs
to be rebalanced with the consistent articulation of thepotential to live, for the first time ever, with a surplusof energy and with artificial intelligence that augments
what people can do.
Third, we need a 21st century architecture for international cooperation to deliver global public goods.
This includes the planetary public goods required tonavigate the Anthropocene­—f­rom climate change
mitigation to pandemic preparedness to biodiversity
preservation­—­as well as the digital public infrastructureand digital public goods that would enable the Digitalv

Revolution to be harnessed to enable people to flourish
in more equitable ways. Global public goods are vital for
our interdependent future as global citizens and require
rethinking international finance to complement development assistance (supporting poor countries) andhumanitarian assistance (saving lives in emergencies).
Indeed, we need to recognize the undeniable factthat we now have access to new financial mechanisms,

extraordinary technologies and our greatest asset:
human ingenuity and our cooperative capacities. Yet
today, psychologists warn that many children reportfeeling anxious and that they feel they live in a worldthat does not care about their future. This Report is arallying cry­—­we can and must do better than this. It
charts ways forward and invites to a conversation onreimagining cooperation.

Achim Steiner
Administrator
United Nations Development Programmevi

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Acknowledgements

How to make sense of producing a Human Development Report at a time ofwar? Not only of wars between and withincountries but also with our planet, withourselves and with our future? These
questions weighed heavily on our minds.
But over time they strengthen the resolveof the team, fuelled by the conviction thatthe recurring messages of successive
Human Development Reports are more
relevant than ever. They bear repeating
and reaffirming, because even though
they may have been said many times before, they seem to be pushed more andmore into the background. The primacyof people as the purpose and agents ofdevelopment. The crucial importance ofenabling people to live free from want,fear and indignity, still relevant 30 years
after the introduction of the concept ofhuman security in the 1994 Human Development Report.
This, as other Human Development
Reports, is an examination of the barriers
that enable people to live their lives totheir full potential and what to do about
them. And here there is much that is
new in the world today. Building on the2021/2022 Human Development Report,
which identified polarization as a barrier to addressing shared challenges as
one of the novel layers of uncertainty
confronting the world, this Report doesa deep dive into the reasons why polarization is increasing, how that creates
gridlock in collective action and how toreimagine cooperation to break the gridlock. The Report was possible only because of the encouragement, generosityand contributions of so many, recognized
only imperfectly and partially in theseacknowledgments.
The members of the Advisory Board arerecognized next to the report team, given
their fundamental contributions to theframing and analysis in the report. But wewould like to recognize in particular co-­chair President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, who has graciously and generously
been co-­chair since 2019, and has agreed
to remain in this role even after assuming
high office. We, and everyone interested
in human development and development
more broadly, owe President Tharman ahuge debt of gratitude.
Complementing the advice from ourAdvisory Board, the Report’s Statistical
Advisory Panel provided guidance on
several methodological and data aspectsof the Report­—­particularly those related
to calculating the Report’s human development indices. We are grateful to all thepanel members: Mario Biggieri, Camilo
Ceita, Ludgarde Coppens, Koen Decancq,
Thomas Helgeson, Jason Hickel, Milorad Kovacevic, Steve Macfeelys, Silvia
Montoya, Shantanu Mukherjee, Ekaterina
Poleshchuk, Michaela Saisana, HanyTorky, Mohd Uzir and Dany Wazen.
Appreciation is also extended for all
the data, written inputs and peer reviewsof draft chapters to the Report, including
those by Barbara Adams, Scott Barret,
Cornelia Betsch, Robert Böhm, Wolfgang
Buchholz, Leonardo Bursztyn, Fernando
Casal Bertoa, Patricia Clavin, Tiago Devesa, Charles Efferson, Charlotte Fiedler,
Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, Katha Freistein,
Karla Daniela González, Kenneth Harttgen, Nicole Hassoun, Luca Henkel, Joseph Henrich, Tadashi Hirai, Ingrid Home
Sjursen, Eduardo Ibarra-Olivio, Solava
Ibrahim, Otto Ilona, Julia Leininger, Andrea Marinucci, Ronald Mendoza, José
Antonio Ocampo, Laura Pereira, Hannah
Pool, Marcela Rios Tobar, Todd Sandler,
Emanuele Sapienza, Armin von Schiller,
Tobias Schillings, Phillip Sprengholz,
Andrew Thompson, Jurel Yap and SarahWhite.

Acknowledgements

We are especially thankful for our close
collaborations with our partners: the International Science Council, including Peter
Gluckman and Megha Sud; Lloyd’s Register Foundation, including Suela Aksoy and
Ed Morrow; McKinsey Global Institute, including Anu Madgavkar; Peace ResearchInstitute Oslo, including Siri Aas Rustad,Andrew Arasmith, Kristine Helskog and
Gudrun Østby; South-North Scholars,
including Nino Nadirashvili and Charlie
Zong; the Climate Impact Lab, including
Hannah Hess; Gallup, including Jon Clifton and Andrew Rzepa; the Global Policy
Laboratory, including Solomon Hsiang,
Jonathan Proctor and Luke Sherman;
the Human Development and Capability
Association, including Ann Mitchell andMelanie Walker; the International Institutefor Applied Systems Analysis, including
Luis Gomez Echeverri, Pratik Patil and Elena Rovenskaya; the Oxford Poverty and
Human Development Initiative, including
Sabina Alkire, Maya Evans, Alexandra Fortacz and Usha Kanagaratnam; the World
Bank, including Indermit Gill and Luis
Felipe López-Calva; the World Inequality Lab, including Lucas Chancel; as well
as research collaborations with IngvildAlmås, David Blanchflower, Alexander
Bryson, Erle Ellis, Nicholas Depsky, Paul
Hufe, Diren Kocakusak, Justin E. Lane,
Stephen Sepaniak and F. LeRon Shults.
Several consultations with thematicand regional experts and numerous informal consultations with many individuals
without a formal advisory role were heldin the process of preparing this year’s
Report. We are grateful for input in these
consultations from Ima Abdul Rahim, Lina
Abirafeh, Jeremy Adelman, Arun Agrawal,
Aroe Ajani, Fonteh Akum, Henry Alinaitwe,
Ingvild Almås, Tariq Al-­
Olaimy, Sherine
Al-­Shawarby, Phillip Apuuli Kasaija, Elsie
Attafuah, Tan Sri Azman Hj Mokhtar, Joevii

Bak-­Coleman, Anne Bardsley, Carl Bergstrom, Amar Bhattacharya, Debapriya
Bhattacharya, Haroon Bhorat, Roberto
Bissio, Lia Brazil, Carlos Brown, Joanna
Bryson, Vural Çakır, Miguel Centeno,
Tan Sri Dato Seri Jeffrey Cheah, Sysan
Clayton, Sarah Cliffe, Dawnelle Clyne,
Flavio Comim, Alistair Cook, Vanesa
D’Alessandre, Yves Daccord, Isabel deSaint Malo, Dagomar Degroot, Faisal
Devji, Catherine D’Ignazio, Ishac Diwan,
Jamie Drummond, Jaco Eyelu, Nadim
Farajalla, Hege Fisknes, Peter Frankopan,
Jemima Garcia-­
Godos, Nilanjan Ghosh,Andrew Grotto, John Haldon, Corinne
Heckmann, Oli Henman, Luis Hernán Vargas, Eria Hisali, Karla Hoff, Nadim Houry,
Saleemul Huq, Nigar Islamli, Andry Ivanov,Jennifer Jacquet, Rasha Jarhum, Xu Jin,
Mitzi Jonelle Tan, Tehmina Kaoosji, Ibrahim
Kasirye, Lina Khatib, Julius Kiiza, Ruth Kitamirike, Martin Korte, Nagesh Kumar, Oliver
Lacey Hall, Michèle Lamont, Lyse Langlois,
Julia Leininger, Sharachchandra Lele,
Hod Lipson, Genevieve Lively, Hela Lotz-­
Sisitka, Winnifred Louis, Fatmata Lovetta
Sesay, Tan Sri Jamilah Mahmod, Andrés
Malamud, Beckie Malay, Yadvinder Malhi,
Kanchan K. Malik, Heghine Manasyan,
Emma Marris, Steve McCorriston, Tarik
Megerisi, Emel Memis, Rana Mitter, Roman Mogilevskii, Petra Molnar, Samar
Muhareb, Khalid Mustafa Medani, Mwambutsya Ndebesa, Sjeila Ngatria, Dianah
Ngui Muchai, Ibrahim Okumu, Iliana Olivié,
Margie Ong, Mavis Owusu-­Gyamfi, Foteini
Papagioti, Toril-­
Iren Pedersen, Tawana
Petty, Seeta Prabhu, Cristelle Pratt, Satin
Seri Sunita Rajakumar, Michael Robbins,
Emma Ruttkamp-­
Bloem, Silvia Salvatici,
Marc Saner, Mahendhiran Sanggaran
Nair, Carlos Scartascini, Mario Scharfbilli,
Kareem Shaheen, Binyam Sisay Mendisu,
Scott Smith, Masashi Soga, Hema Sridar,
Erika Stael von Holstein, Abida Suleri,
Zeynep Tufekci, Gatoloaifaana Tilianamua
Afamasaga, Lucas Tse, Tania Vásquez
Luque, Harvey Whitehouse, Deborah Willing, John Willshire, Jiajun Xu, Ong KengYong, Zhang Yujun, Anis Yuszal Yusoff andYingqin Zheng.
We are thankful for especially close
dialogues at Duke University, with
Stephanie Alt Lamm, Sarah Bermeo,

Nadia Chamberlain, Judith Kelley, Anirudh Krishna, Eddy Malesky and Kerilyn
Shewel; at the University of Chicago, withNatalie Arsenault, Alison Baulos, Luis
Bettencourt, Christopher Blattman, Emily
Grant, Michael Greenstone, Gary Herrigel and Mathias Staisch; at Georgetown
University, with Dagomar Degroot; and at
Yale University, with David Alzate, DavidEngerman, Jessica Faieta, Ardina Hasanbasri, Jim Levinsohn, Costas Meghir, Aishwarya Ratan, Ernesto Zedillo and with Yale
Greenberg World Fellow Emma Sky. We
appreciate the collaboration of academics
from the South-South Global Thinkers.
Further support was also extended byothers too numerous to mention here.
Consultations are listed at https://hdr.undp​.org/towards-­hdr-2023. Contributions, support and assistance from many colleagues
across the UN family is gratefully acknowledged. They include the Executive Officeof the Secretary-General, through Michèle
Griffin; the UN Office of South-South Cooperation, including Dima Al-Khatib, Zanofer
Ismalbebbe and Naveeda Nazir; the United Nations SDG Action Campaign, including Xavier Longan, Marina Ponti and Olcay
Tetik; the United Nations Entity for Gender
Equality and the Empowerment of Women,
including Ginette Azcona and Papa Seck;
the International Labour Organization,
including Rafael Díaz de Medina, Youcef
Ghellab, Roger Gomis, Steven Kapsos andSangeon Lee; the United Nations Population Division, including Patrick Gerland; theUnited Nations Environment Programme,
including Dany Ghafari; the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics, including
Olivier Labé, Alasdair McWilliam, Patrick
Montjouides and Said Ould Ahmedou
Voffal; and the United Nations University
World Institute for Development Economics Research, including Rahul Lahoti. All
United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) regional and central bureaus andcountry offices are also acknowledged
with much gratitude.
Colleagues in UNDP provided advice
and inputs and organized consultations.
We are grateful to Jairo Acuna Alfaro,
Tehmina Akhtar, Abdallah Al Dardari, Darah Aljoudar, Elsie Attafuah, Julie Axelsen,

viii

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Niloy Banerjee, Fiona Bayat-Renoux,
Julie Berg, Tessa Bertrand, Georgiana
Braga’Orillard, Michele Candotti, Alessandra Casazza, Angelique M. Crumbly,
Mirko Ebelshaeuser, Maja Edfast, Ahunna
Eziakonwa, Alfonso Fernández, Almudena
Fernández, Sara Ferrer, Arvinn Gadgil,
Raymond Gilpin, Carolina Given Sjölander,
George Gray Molina, Janil Greenaway,
Niamh Hanafin, Wenwen He, Caroline
Hopper-Box,
Vanessa
Howe-Jones,
Ghida Ismail, Tomohiro Kawase, Julia
Kercher, Adithya Kumar, Raquel Lagunas,
Bas Leurs, Sarah Lister, Fatmata Lovetta
Sesay, Zhaoxi Meng, Ulrika Modeér, Luca
Monge Roggarello, Annet Mpabulungi
Wakabi, Michelle Muschett, Marcos Athias
Neto, Sjeila Ngatria, Shoko Noda, Mizuho
Okimoto-Kaewtathip, Robert Opp, Anna
Ortubia, Thangavel Palanivel, Prachi Paliwal, Stefano Pettinato, Ricardo Pineda,
Sarah Poole, Corli Pretorius, Georgios
Profiliotis, Soha Rasheed, Luca Renda,
Carolina Rivera Vázquez, Sara Maaria
Saastamoinen, Philip Schellekens, Bahdja
Sehli, Narue Shiki, Ashvinder Singh Pramjit
Singh, Ben Slay, Anca Stoica, Rania Tarazi,
David Tat Ui Tan, Claire van der Vaeren,
Federico Vaz, Francis Wasswa, Kanni
Wignaraja, Bronwyn Williams, Clarise
Wilson, Haoliang Xu, Shinobu Yamaguchi
and Ivana Živković. We are also gratefulto all the UNDP Signals Scanners and the
UNDP Accelerator Labs that participatedin consultations.
We were fortunate to have the supportof operations consultants Judey Austin,
Beatrice Chinapen and Milagros Feliciano
and talented interns and fact checkers:
Dopé Adjor, Natalia Aguilar Ruiz, Edwige
Bayili, Parth Chawla, Seussler Daniel,
Modi Michael Elisa, Morgane Hamza, Sijie
Han, Yingyilong Hu, Jessica Karki, Alive
Lassman, Danielle Mallon, Luiza Nakamura, Paricia Noguieira, Nazifa Rafa, Maria
Nathalia Ramirez, Yu-­Ya Rong, Laura Sanzarello, Zahraa Shabana, Ching To Chung,
Diego Vallejo, Yuqing Wang, Xuan Yi andMoya Zhu.
The Human Development Report Office also extends its sincere gratitude
to the Republic of Korea as well as theGovernments of Japan and Portugal for
their financial contributions. Their ongoingsupport is much appreciated and remains
essential.
We are grateful for the highly professional work of our editors and layout artists
at Communications Development Incorporated—led by Bruce Ross-Larson with
Joe Caponio, Meta de Coquereaumont,Mike Crumplar, Christopher Trott andElaine Wilson. Bruce, especially, is somuch part of the process that he feelspart of the team, as he has been for all
the Human Development Reports overthe decades.

We would like to warmly invoke thememory of Inge Kaul, an early leader ofthe Human Development Report Office
and a pioneer on global public goods­—t­owhich this Report returns­—­and a fiercely
independent thinker and mentor. Inge isvery much missed.
It is hard to express how much we
owe to UNDP Administrator Achim
Steiner. In giving us the space andfreedom to explore and take risks, to try
new things­—­not only in Human Development Reports but beyond, including

unprecedented innovations such as
the Human Climate Horizons Platform(https://horizons.hdr.undp.org/)­—­he has
always been generous in sharing histime (a precious commodity!) and wisdom with the team. Our office is named
the Human Development Report Office,but, as he always reminds us, the goal is
not to produce a report but to advancedebates around human development
and to invite decisionmakers to engage
with the analysis. As always, we strive tomeet this aspiration.

Pedro Conceição
Director
Human Development Report OfficeAcknowledgementsix

Contents

Foreword

v

Narrowing agency gaps to foster collective action

148

Acknowledgements

vii

Snapshot1Institutions to bring collective action to scale­—­people-­centred,co-­owned and future-­oriented

158

Overview

11PART I

Advancing human development in an interdependent world

CHAP TER 625

C H A PTER 1
Human development suffers when interdependence ismismanaged

27

Building forward weaker? An unequal and incomplete recovery inhuman development from the 2020–2021 dip

29

Mismanaging interdependence imposes costs on human development 34
Prospects for advancing agency and wellbeing will be shaped by
the management of interdependence

38

C H A PTER 2
Global interdependence persists—but is being reshaped

45

The persistence of global ties­—­a hyperconnected world withmultiple global interdependences

47

Global interdependence is being reshaped and likely to persist
well into the future

56

CHAPTER 3
Providing global public goods to manage interdependence

71

What are global public goods?

73

What does it take to provide global public goods? They are notcreated equal

76

Applying a global public goods lens to the response to Covid-19

79

PART II

Breaking the gridlock to enhance collective action

173

How does political polarization come about?

175

Political polarization imperils cooperation

177

Enhancing international collective action­—n
­ ow

180

Notes

207

References

227

BOXES
O.1

Global public goods 101: What are summation, best-­shot andweakest-­link global public goods?

18

2.1

A smartphone’s global journey­—­a tale of cross-­border economic,
social and environmental impacts

49

2.2

Human mobility in the face of climate change: The case of Viet Nam 60

S2.2.1

Relational and interdependent wellbeing

68

3.1

Digital public infrastructure and digital public goods

75

3.2

What drives countries to contribute to global public goods?

79

4.1

A standard selfish choice model of behaviour

103

4.2

A behavioural choice model of decisionmaking

106

4.3

Social preferences can scale up

107

4.4

“It’s not a lie if you believe it”—Beliefs, social norms andcollective action

108

4.5

The promise and peril of nudges in changing behaviour

111

4.6

Social context shapes what people do and how they see
themselves

112

4.7

Where are the politics?

114

5.1

Promoting more deliberative forms of citizen participation

155

5.2

Social dialogue in the world of work

155

97

6.1

Public reasoning and deliberation for human development

176

Examining how to enhance collective action

99

S.1

A permanent shift in the Human Development Index (HDI) trajectory?

4

Start with a standard selfish choice model of behaviour

102

S.2

Apply insights from behavioural science, but handle with care

105

Recovery of Human Development Index (HDI) values since the2020–2021 decline is projected to be highly unequal

4

Recognize how culture shapes behaviour and institutions

109

S.3

Inequality between very high Human Development Index (HDI)
and low HDI countries is increasing, bucking long-­run declines

5

S.4

Self-­reported stress rose in most countries, even before theCovid-­19 pandemic

6

S.5

The democracy paradox? Unwavering support for democracy but
increasing support for leaders who may undermine it

7

Reimagining cooperation by expanding agency and easingpolarizationC H A PTER 4

FI G URESC H A PTER 5
Expanding agency for collective action

143

How agency gaps hinder collective action

145

S.6

Reasons for hope: Improvements on the Human Development
Index without increasing planetary pressures

2.11

Decoupling of planetary pressures and the Human Development
Index (HDI)

S.7

Agency gaps in collective action are higher than those in control
over one’s own life

2.12

Digital technologies are driving shifts in global economic
interdependence, with dramatic increases in modern service
exports since 2000

9

O.1

War deaths and forced displacement are getting much worse

13

61

3.1

Authorization for Covid-19 vaccines was unprecedently fast

82

O.2

Climate change could result in an explosion of inequalities

14

O.3

Economic interdependence is stabilizing at very high levels

15

S3.1.1

About one-third of the world’s fishery stocks are overfished

84

O.4

Profit shifting to tax havens has skyrocketed

16

4.1

Behavioural change and institutional reform influence eachother—jointly shaping and being shaped by social choiceprocedures

O.5

Lower confidence in national government tends to correlate withlower confidence in the United Nations

19

102

O.6

Freedom of expression goes hand-­in-hand with agency and has
been receding in recent years

4.2

Widespread efforts draw on behavioural insights to informpublic policy

21

110

4.3

Effects of several behavioural phenomena are stronger in moreeducated and wealthier segments of the population

The higher the perceived human insecurity, the lower the senseof control over one’s own life

21

115

4.4

There are widespread differences in fairness preferences aroundthe world

O.8

The perception of agency (control over one’s own life) is shapedby income

22

116

O.9

Gender equality in politics is being constrained by biased social
norms against women

4.5

The world is undergoing a major transition from accelerating todecelerating population growth

23

119

S4.2.1

The identification of 180 cognitive biases makes it hard to derive
insights about how to change behaviour to enhance collective
action1.1

The global Human Development Index (HDI) value is below its
pre-2019 trend

30

1.2

The recovery in Human Development Index (HDI) values is incomplete 31

126

S4.4.1

Most people in African countries think that not paying taxes on
income is at least “wrong, but understandable” and are closer toagreeing than to disagreeing that the tax authority always has theright to make people pay taxes

1.3

The recovery in Human Development Index (HDI) values is
projected to be highly unequal

1.4

Low Human Development Index (HDI) countries have been left behind 32

137

S4.4.2

Redistribution through taxation is not a salient election issue inmost African countries, nor is it a strong priority of their citizens

1.5

Each developing region’s projected 2023 Human Development
Index value is below its pre-2019 trend

33

138

1.6

Unprecedented declines in learning outcomes, as measured by
PISA test scores

5.1

The democracy paradox? Unwavering support for democracy
along with increasing support for leaders who may undermine it

34

147

5.2

Large and increasing shares of the population support leaders
who may bypass democratic norms and practices, 1994–2022

Civilian fatalities as a result of conflict are surging after yearsof declining

36

148

5.3

Economic shocks are associated with lower trust in institutions­—­
but the relationship is weaker for trust in the United Nations and in
one another

1.8

People forced to flee their homes trending upwards towards
record levels

37

1.9

Planetary pressures are decoupled from their geographic andtemporal effects

149

5.4

Agency gaps in collective action are higher than those in control
over one’s own life

38

150

1.10

Climate change could result in an explosion of inequalities inhuman development

39

5.5

Reducing corruption increases confidence in government but sodoes narrowing agency gaps

1.11

Trends in reducing global hunger have reversed

40

150

5.6

Agency in control over one’s own life and trust

151

1.12

The Covid-­19 pandemic may have permanently shifted the
trajectory for poverty reduction

40

5.7

The perception of agency (control over one’s own life) is shapedby income

1.13

Freedom of expression­—­receding in recent years

152

42

5.8

Hyperglobalization is down, but interdependence remains
unprecedentedly high

The higher the income, the more likely people are to report being
interested in politics and voting

2.1.

152

48

5.9

2.2

Remittances to low- and middle-­income countries areapproaching the level of foreign direct investment

The higher the education level, the more likely people are toreport being interested in politics and voting

152

50

5.10

2.3

Support for anti-elite politics is on the rise52

The higher the perceived human insecurity, the lower the senseof control over one’s own life

153

2.4

Mismanaged interdependence leads to demand for populism
through welfare losses and beliefs

5.11

53

Perceived human insecurity is related to generalized trust,especially for higher Human Development Index (HDI) groups

154

2.5

Even prior to 2020, worry and stress were rising in most countries

54

5.12

2.6

Elites have been able to cash in on hyperglobalization, as profit
shifting to tax havens has skyrocketed

Perceived human insecurity is related to confidence in state
institutions

154

55

5.13

Biased gender social norms limit women’s political agency

157

2.7

Discontent is costly: Lower GDP trajectories in countries withpopulist episodes

5.14

55

Gender inequalities in agency gaps in facing future disasters
are pervasive

158

S5.1.1

Proposed elements of social cohesion

164

6.1

Support for national redistribution is correlated with support for
global redistribution in Germany, but some people want extensive
national and very little global redistribution and vice-­versa

182

More universalist beliefs are correlated with concerns both for the
global poor and for the global environment

183

O.7

1.7

8

31

2.8

Violent conflicts affected 15 percent of the global population in 2022 56

2.9

Inequalities and the Anthropocene­—­higher Human Development
Index countries put higher pressures on the planet

57

2.10

Pushing possibility frontiers­—­higher Human Development Index
values at lower planetary pressures

57

6.2

Contents

58

xi

6.3

Universalist beliefs are associated with global redistribution andglobal environment in high-­income countries, but the culturalcontext matters

183

6.4

Confidence in national institutions is correlated with confidence inmultilateral institutions, key for international collective action

184

6.5

Confidence in several institutions is highly correlated withconfidence in the national government

185

6.6

The misperception of the share of immigrants in the population ishigh and widely shared across society

187

S6.1.1

How group identification might increase polarization

190

S6.2.1

Half a billion people live in politically estranged situations, about
five times more than in 2010

195

SPOTL I G H TS
2.1

The human toll of mismanaging interdependence: Insights fromnational and international history Patricia Clavin

2.2Managing global interdependence to advance human development 67

3.1

The global commons of ocean fisheries Scott Barrett

84

3.2

Assessing the net benefits from global public goods and theirdistribution Ronald U. Mendoza and Jurel Yap

89

3.3

How inequity in access to Covid-19 vaccines unfolded: An
account using a global public goods lens94

A technology-centred approach to climate change negotiations
Scott Barrett

​
120

4.2

Using insights from behavioural science: Watch out!

125

4.3

Cultural evolution and development policy Joseph Henrich

129

4.4

The role of trust and norms in tax compliance in Africa
Odd‑Helge Fjeldstad and Ingrid Hoem Sjursen

135

5.1

Strengthening social cohesion to mitigate human insecurity:
Promise and peril Julia Leininger, Armin von Schiller andCharlotte Fiedler

163

5.2

Solidarity and creative resolve Nicole Hassoun

167

5.3

The role of multilateral development banks in the provision of global
public goods José Antonio Ocampo and Karla Daniela González

170

4.1

xii

​

6.1

Identity, polarization and their societal and political consequences ​Robert Böhm, Philipp Sprengholz, Luca Henkel and Cornelia Betsch 190

6.2

International collective action in a time of geopolitical upheaval

6.3

Geopolitics and the early history of the United Nations: Friend or foe? ​Andrew Thompson
197

6.4

(Mis)perceiving others Leonardo Bursztyn

194

201

TABL ES
3.1

Recommendations for how to improve the provision of different
types of global public goods

S3.2.1

Summary of global public good assessments: Five cases

93

S4.4.1

Types of norms and examples

136

6.1

Confidence in national and international institutions is higher
among people who trust others

184

77

63

STATISTICAL AN N EX
Readers guide

269

HUMAN DEVELOP MENT COMP OSI TE I NDI CES 
1

Human Development Index and its components

2

Human Development Index trends, 1990–2022

279

3

Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index

283

4

Gender Development Index

288

5

Gender Inequality Index

293

6Multidimensional Poverty Index: developing countries

298

7Planetary pressures-adjusted Human Development Index

301

Developing regions

306

Statistical references307

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

274

Breaking the gridlock
A snapshot of the 2023/2024
Human Development Report1Breaking the gridlock

A snapshot of the 2023/2024 Human Development Report2

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

We can do better than this. Better than runaway climate change and pandemics. Better than a spate of
unconstitutional transfers of power amid a rising,globalizing tide of populism. Better than cascading
human rights violations and unconscionable massacres of people in their homes and civic venues, in hospitals, schools and shelters.
We must do better than a world always on the brink,a socioecological house of cards. We owe it to ourselves, to each other, to our children and their children.
We have so much going for us.
We know what the global challenges are and who
will be most affected by them. And we know there
will surely be more that we cannot anticipate today.
We know which choices offer better opportunities
for peace, shared prosperity and sustainability, betterways to navigate interacting layers of uncertainty andinterlinked planetary surprises.1
We enjoy unprecedented wealth, knowhow andtechnology­—­unimaginable to our ancestors­—­that withmore equitable distribution and use could power boldand necessary choices for peace and for sustainable, inclusive human development on which peace depends.
So why does pursuing the ambitions of the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris
Agreement feel like a half-­hearted slog throughquicksand?
Why in many places does restoring peace, evenpauses or ceasefires as hopeful preludes to peace, feelso elusive?
Why are we immobilized on digital governancewhile artificial intelligence races ahead in a data
goldrush?
In short, why are we so stuck? And how do we
get unstuck without resorting myopically to violence or isolationism? These questions motivate the2023/2024 Human Development Report.
Sharp questions belie their complexity; issues withpower disparities at their core often defy easy explanation. Magic bullets entice but mislead­—­siren songs
peddled by sloganeering that exploits group-­based
grievances. Slick solutions and simple recipes poison
our willingness to do the hard work of overcoming
polarization.
Geopolitical quagmires abound, driven by shifting power dynamics among states and by nationalgazes yanked inward by inequalities, insecurity andpolarization, all recurring themes in this and recent

Human Development Reports. Yet we need not sit on
our hands simply because great power competition isheating up while countries underrepresented in global governance seek a greater say in matters of global
import. Recall that global cooperation on smallpox
eradication and protection of the ozone layer, among
other important issues such as nuclear nonproliferation, happened over the course of the Cold War.
Slivers of hope have emerged even now. The
Ukraine grain deal, before its suspension in 2023,
averted widespread food insecurity, which would
have hurt poorer countries and poorer people most.
The production of Covid-­19 vaccines, which saved
millions of lives, relies on global supply chains, although, tragically, many more lives could have beensaved if vaccine coverage had been more equitable.2
Countries continue to cooperate on genomic sequencing of variants, even as shameful inequities invaccine access persist.3 At the 28th Conference of theParties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change, the world established a new loss and damage fund to benefit more than 3 billion people, withpledges totalling over $600 million.4 Global clean
energy investment, and the jobs and opportunities
that come with it, reached an all-­time high of $1.8 trillion in 2023 (equivalent to the size of the economy of
the Republic of Korea), almost twice the amount in2020.5
However challenging they are, geopolitics are simply not an excuse to stay stuck in gridlock. There arepaths through. Reimagining and fully providing global public goods in ways that meet national development needs at the same time is one of them.
The 2021–2022 Human Development Report argued that a new uncertainty complex is unsettling lives
the world over and dragging on human development.
The global Human Development Index (HDI) value
fell for the first time ever­—in both 2020 and 2021.
The global HDI value has since rebounded to a
projected record high in 2023 (figure S.1). All components of the global HDI are projected to exceed theirpre-­2019 values.6
Despite being projected to reach a new high, theglobal HDI value would still be below trend. And
the global figure masks disturbing divergence acrosscountries: every Organisation for Economic Co-­
operation and Development country is projected
to have recovered, but only about half of the Least

Snapshot — Breaking the gridlock3

Figure S.1 A permanent shift in the Human Development Index (HDI) trajectory?

Global HDI value
0.800
019

2
Pre-

d

tren

0.750

al

Actu

0.700
2015
0.650

0.600

2017

2019

2021

2023
(projected)

1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023
(projected)

Note: The global HDI value for 2023 is a projection. The pre-2019 trend is based on the evolution of the global HDI value in the previous 20 years.
Source: Human Development Report Office calculations based on data from Barro and Lee (2018), IMF (2023d), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO Institute for
Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division (2023) and World Bank (2023).

Figure S.2 Recovery of Human Development Index (HDI)
values since the 2020–2021 decline is projected to behighly unequal
Country recovery by 2023 fromthe HDI setback in 2020 or 2021

51%
did not
recover100%
recovered49%
recovered

Least Developed
Countries

Organisation for Economic
Co-operation andDevelopment

Note: Least Developed Countries have low levels of income and face vulnerabilities that make them “the poorest and weakest segment” of the international community (https://www.un.org/ohrlls/content/about-least-developed​-countries). Recovery means that countries that suffered a decline in HDI value
in 2020 or 2021 are projected to reach or surpass their pre-decline HDI value
by 2023.
Source: Human Development Report Office calculations based on data from
Barro and Lee (2018), IMF (2023d), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO Institutefor Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division (2023) and World Bank
(2023).

4

Developed Countries are projected to have done so(figure S.2). After 20 years of steady progress, inequality between countries at the upper and lower
ends of the HDI has reversed course, ticking up eachyear since 2020 (figure S.3).
If the global HDI value continues to evolve below
the pre-­2019 trend, as it has since 2020, losses will bepermanent. Based on the 1999–2019 trend, the global HDI value was on track to cross the threshold defining very high human development (a value of 0.800)
by 2030—coinciding with the deadline to meet the
Sustainable Development Goals. Now, the world is
off track. Indeed, every region’s projected 2023 HDI
value falls below its pre-2019 trend. Whatever its
future trajectory, the global HDI value will capture­—­incompletely, if at all­—­many other important elements, such as the debilitating effects of chronic illness
or the spikes in mental health disorders or in violenceagainst women, all restricting people’s possibilities fortheir lives. For rich and poor countries alike some losses will never be recovered. Whatever the charts andindicators may say about people today, the Covid-­19
pandemic took some 15 million lives.7 We cannot getthem back. Nor the time siphoned off in so many ways­—­in isolation, in caregiving, in not attending school.
The HDI is an important, if crude, yardstick forhuman development. Just a few years ago wellbeing
had never been higher, poverty never lower. Yet people

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure S.3 Inequality between very high Human Development Index (HDI) and low HDI countries is increasing, bucking
long-­run declines

Difference in HDI value between
very high and low HDI countries
0.44

0.39

0.42

0.38

2017

2020

2023
(projected)

0.40

0.38

1990

1993

1996

1999

2002

2005

2008

2011

2014

2017

2020 2023(projected)

Note: The difference in HDI values for 2023 is based on projections.
Source: Human Development Report Office calculations based on data from Barro and Lee (2018), IMF (2023), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO Institute for
Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division (2023) and World Bank (2023).

around the world were reporting high levels of sadness, stress and worry (figure S.4).8 Those self-­reported
measures have since risen for nearly 3 billion people.9
And while 9 in 10 people show unwavering support
for the ideal of democracy, there has been an increasein those supporting leaders who may undermine it:today, for the first time ever, more than half the global
population supports such leaders (­figure S.5).10
The uncertainty complex has cast a very long shadow on human development writ large, with recent
years marking perhaps an unfortunate and avoidable
fork in its path rather than a short-­lived setback.
What gives?
Progress feels harder to grasp, especially whenplanetary pressures are brought into view; ourstandard development measures are clearly missing some things. One of those things may be thedisempowerment of people­— ­gaps in human agency­—­which is taking combined hits from new configurations of global complexity and interdependence,
uncertainty, insecurity and polarization.
People are looking for answers and a way forward.
This can be channelled helpfully via shared ambition that brings everyone along (not necessarily
on everything) in areas of cooperation that are notzero-sum, enabled by cooperative narratives andinstitutions built on a bedrock of generalized trust.
Over the past 10 years both very high and high HDI
countries have improved their HDI values without
increasing planetary pressures, a shift from previous
trends of the two increasing together, so there are reasons to hope that this might be possible (figure S.6).
Or it can be channelled, as it seems now, into vicious cycles of demonizing blame games that breed,at best, suspicion and distrust and, at worst, prejudice, discrimination and violence.
Troublingly, populism has exploded, blowing past
last century’s peaks, which roughly corresponded toperiods of mismanaged globalization.11 That is happening alongside, and in many cases exploiting, wicked forms of polarization, such as the winnowing andhardening of narrow identities, a sort of coercion or
unfreedom enabled, if not outright celebrated, by anongoing fetishization of so-­called rational self-­interest.
People’s ability to determine for themselves what itmeans to live a good life, including defining and reassessing their responsibilities to other people and to theplanet, has been crowded out in many ways. Metastatic hands-­off dogma hides the raiding of the economicand ecological cookie jar. Dog-­eat-dog and beggar-­thy-neighbour mindsets harken back to mercantilist
eras. And policies and institutions­—­including those

Snapshot — Breaking the gridlock

5

Figure S.4 Self-­reported stress rose in most countries, even before the Covid-­19 pandemic
Change in the percentage of people reporting experiencing stress,
2011–2019 (percentage points)
Increase
60

40

Low HDI
group

Medium HDI
group

High HDI
group

Very high HDIgroup

24 out of 30
countries

25 out of 32
countries

24 out of 40
countries

39 out of 59
countries

20

0

–20

–40

–60

–80

Decrease DI is Human Development Index.
H
Note: Values refer to the change in the percentage of people who reported experiencing stress “during a lot of the day yesterday.”
Source: Human Development Report Office, based on Gallup (2023).

that have mismanaged globalized market dynamics­—­
default to “me” before “we.”We are at an unfortunate crossroad. Polarizationand distrust are on a collision course with an ailing
planet. Insecurity and inequalities have a lot to dowith it. So does a constellation of disempoweringnarratives that engender defensive fatalism and catastrophic inertia­— ­all circumscribed and, in somesense fuelled by, dizzying political polarization.
What can we do to help turn things around? Quite
a lot.

Build a 21st century architecture for global public goods
First, we should build out a 21st century architecture
to deliver the global public goods that we all depend
on. It would function as a third track to international6

cooperation, complementing development assistance focused on poorer countries and humanitarianassistance focused on emergencies. These tracks are
not silos. Distinctively, a global public goods architecture would aim for transfers from rich countries
to poorer ones that advance goals for every country
to benefit. Every country has a chance to have a say,as well as an opportunity to contribute. As such, thisthird track is intrinsically multilateral.
Global public goods will require additional financing as a complement, rather than substitute for orcompetitor, to traditional development assistance.
The financing can come in many forms. For example, when some portion of an investment in a poorer
country generates global benefits, the corresponding
financing (or technology transfer) should tend to beconcessional, so that alignment is achieved between
who benefits (the rest of the world) and who pays (theHUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure S.5 The democracy paradox? Unwavering support for democracy but increasing support for leaders who
may undermine it
Percent of population that thinks positively
about leaders who may undermine democracy
60
Majority of population thinks
positively about democracy
but also about leaders who may undermine it
2017–202250
2010–2014

2005–200940

1994–1998
1999–2004
Majority of population thinks
positively about democracy
and leaders who do not undermine it

30
40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Percent of population that thinks positively about having a democratic system
Note: Data are population-­weighted averages for a panel of countries representing 76 percent of the global population. Percent of population on the vertical axis refers to people who responded that having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections is “very good” or “fairly
good.” Percent of population on the horizontal axis refers to people who responded that having a democratic political system is “very good” or “fairly good.”
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from multiple waves of the World Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

rest of the world). The flipside is the case of hazards
or shocks that are not of a single country’s making.
Automatic triggers can be embedded in bonds orloan agreements, especially state-­contingent debt instruments, to help poorer countries cope with crisesthat they had little part in generating, as with climatechange. This would create more predictable conditions in navigating an uncertain world that could mobilize and attract private finance to those countries.

Dial down temperatures and push back polarization
Second, we need to dial down the temperature andpush back on polarization, which poisons practicallyeverything it touches and impedes international cooperation. Providing global public goods will help. So

will correcting misperceptions about other people’s
preferences and motivations. All too often people
make biased assumptions about other people, including people on the other side of political divides.
Often, people agree with one another more thanthey think. For example, while 69 percent of people around the world report being willing to sacrificesome of their income to contribute to climate change
mitigation, only 43 percent perceive others believing the same (a 26 percentage point misperceptiongap).12 The result is a false social reality of pluralistic
ignorance where incorrect beliefs about others hamstrings cooperation that, if recognized and corrected,
could help build collective action on climate.
Not all polarization can be reduced to misperception, however big a role it plays. That makes it important to create spaces of deliberation to bridge divides.

Snapshot — Breaking the gridlock

7

Figure S.6 Reasons for hope: Improvements on the Human Development Index without increasing planetary pressures
Index of Planetary Pressures value
0.180
1990

0.160
0.140

Very high HDI
countries

2022

The HDI value of high HDI countries is approaching
the HDI value of very high HDI countries in1990 but with lower planetary pressures

0.120

2022

0.100
0.080

The 2022 HDI value of low HDI countries issimilar to the HDI value of medium HDI countries
in 2003 but with lower planetary pressures

0.060
0.040

Low HDIcountries
0.020
1990
0.000

0.350

1990

Medium HDI
countries

The 2022 HDI value of medium HDI countries
is similar to the HDI value of high HDI countries
in 2002 but with lower planetary pressures

1990
2022

0.450

High HDI
countries

0.550

2022

0.650

0.750

0.850

0.950

Human Development Index (HDI) value
Note: The Index of Planetary Pressures is constructed using the per capita levels of carbon dioxide emissions (production) and material footprint ineach country (it is 1 minus the adjustment factor for planetary pressures presented in table 7 in the Statistical Annex).
Source: Human Development Report Office. See specific sources in tables 2 and 7 in the Statistical Annex.

Citizen assemblies can function in this way, but they
are not the only means. Practical schemes to facilitate more deliberative processing of information canhelp counter the growing danger of people becoming
trapped in beliefs that have no basis in fact.13 In contexts of intergroup conflict, presenting information
in a frame that does not provoke anger can be depolarizing.14 Interventions that rely on qualitative andnarrative-­based approaches, such as storytelling andvignettes, are particularly effective.15
The key words are deliberate and deliberative. Polarization is more likely to self-­destruct badly than toself-­correct helpfully. Steady positive pressure that encourages empathy, builds interpersonal trust and emphasizes overlapping, shared identities is the way to go.

Narrow agency gaps
Third, we need to narrow agency gaps­—­fuelled inpart by the divergence between what people believe
is possible or probable and what is objectively possible.16 Agency gaps are also apparent in half of people
8

worldwide reporting that they have no or limited control over their lives and more than two-­thirds perceiving that they have little influence in the decisions of
their government (figure S.7).
To help narrow agency gaps, institutions need
to become more people-­centred, co-­owned andfuture-­oriented.
People-­centred is about placing ultimate objectives
in terms of human development and human security,
recognizing the interdependence of people and theplanet.
Co-­owned is about the fair distribution of the power
to set collective goals, the responsibilities to pursue
them and the resulting outcomes. It stresses the formation of social norms that cultivate the value of collective achievements and cooperative behaviour.17
Future-oriented is about focusing on what we canshape and create if we work together, enriching thespace for deliberation and agreement.18 In the face ofchallenges, a future-­oriented perspective opens possibilities for hope and creative resolve.
Tailoring these principles to different contexts will
put us on the road to productive dialogue and action,

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure S.7 Agency gaps in collective action are higher than those in control over one’s own life

Control over own life
5 in 10 or about half the world’s people report not being in control of their own lives

Voice in political system
7 in 10 or 68 percent of people report that they have little influencein the decisions of their government

Note: Agency is the ability of people to act as agents who can do effective things based on their commitments (Sen 2013). It is proxied by two indicators: the share of the population that reported feeling in control over their lives (measured on a scale of 1–10, where 1–3 indicates an acute agency
gap, 4–7 indicates a moderate agency gap and 8–10 indicates no agency gap) and the share of the population that reported feeling that their voice isheard in the political system (those who responded “A great deal” or “A lot”). Data are computed using microdata and equal weights across countries.
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7 (2017–2022) of the World Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

which must be flexible and iterative amid so much
uncertainty, for lessons to inform course corrections.
They will help us break through the tyranny of single
adversarial narratives and single exclusive identities.

They will help us better manage evolving global
interdependence.
They will help us cooperatively and peacefully
break through the global gridlock.

Snapshot — Breaking the gridlock

9OV E R V I E WManaging
interdependence ina polarized world11

OV E RV IE W

Managing interdependence in a polarized world

12

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Mismanaged global
interdependence hurts people

Violent conflicts and their consequences for people
are the tip of the iceberg. Gridlock means that systemicrisks arising from global interdependence are mismanaged or simply unaddressed, that people are wallopedby surprises not capitalizing on them. In extreme cases
surprises spiral into full blown crises, ricocheting andamplifying in unexpected ways in an unequal, tightly
knit world. The extreme is becoming the norm.
A long series of disease outbreaks preceded theCovid-­19 pandemic, which caught the world flatfooted and struggling for a modicum of global coherence
over the course of the emergency. Some 15 million
people (perhaps more) died worldwide,3 and the global Human Development Index value tanked.
In addition to huge, unjust divides in access to effective vaccines, a missing ingredient was trust­—­in ourgovernments and in each other.4 According to one estimate, if all countries had attained the levels of interpersonal trust seen in the top quarter of countries, global
infections might have been reduced by 40 percent,saving millions of lives.5 In polarizing societies aroundthe world, vaccine status identification became anotherfactional marker separating one camp from the other.6
The Covid-­19 vaccine story exemplifies the possibilities of global cooperation, as well as the grave
injustices that can result when it breaks down. The
development of mRNA vaccines relied heavily on
cross-­border, cross-­regional partnerships for sourcing
components,7 for clinical development and trials8 and

The human toll of mismanaged interdependence ishuge­—­in lives lost or uprooted, in opportunities forgone, in feelings of despair. Aggression, conflict andviolence are extreme realities when complex webs ofinterdependence fester, especially against backdropsof prolonged power imbalances.
From wars in Gaza and Ukraine to Sudan, Yemen
and elsewhere, to gang violence and civil insecurity, peace and stability are under strain or breaking
down at alarming rates. Large-­scale conflicts involving major powers are escalating. War fatalities have
jumped (figure O.1). Sadly, we live in a violent new
era characterized by the highest level of state-­based
armed conflicts since 1945 and a growing share ofone-­sided conflicts where unarmed civil populations
are being attacked.1
Violence and peace can both be contagious. Major
political events such as coups, revolutions and democratic transitions have a habit of spilling across borders. Conflicts often change the perception of war,
making it more acceptable and increasing the likelihood of violent outbreaks elsewhere.
In 2022 the number of forcibly ­displaced people in
the world reached 108 million, the highest level sinceWorld War II (figure O.1) and more than two and ahalf times the level in 2010.2

Figure O.1 War deaths and forced displacement are getting much worse

Fatalities instate-based conflicts

Displaced people, total(millions)120

250,000

100

200,00080

150,000

60
100,000

40

50,000
0

20
1996

1998

2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

2018

2020

2022

0

Source: Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2023; UNHCR 2023c.

Overview — Managing interdependence in a polarized world

13

for manufacturing. But the Covid-­19 vaccine story
follows pernicious patterns of inequality in access totechnologies generally, including lifesaving ones.9
The pattern is all too familiar­—­and must be broken
for its own sake. And because technological trajectories, from artificial intelligence to synthetic biology,
are so steep, so fast and so powerful, the deep cleavages between haves and have-­nots could worsen.
Perhaps the greatest casualty of global gridlock, climate change is already exacerbating those cleavages.
Last year was the hottest in more than 140 years.10
The average belies considerable regional differencesthat the United Nations Development Programme’s(UNDP) Human Climate Horizons11 platform projects
will worsen under business-­as-usual climate scenarios (figure O.2), with climate change resulting in an
explosion of inequalities.
The consequences of climate change are alreadyshaking communities and societies, exacting social, emotional and mental tolls. Among the various
stressors of climate change is a crippling eco-­anxiety,a “generalized sense that the ecological foundationsof existence are in the process of collapse.” 12 Disappearing biodiversity, landscapes and ways of life canbe paralysing, skewing major life decisions such as investing in school or having a child.13 Effectively, thisis a restriction on human development­—­in freedoms
and possibilities in life­— ­owing to both the reality ofhuman-­induced planetary pressures and how thatreality is mediated by technical reports, the popularpress and political leaders. Narratives of shared futures rooted in denialism, fatalism or fearmongering
leave little space for agency and imagination.
Political systems mediate, for good or ill (or both),the impacts of crises on people, and the systems
themselves are often shaken by crises, including
those from mismanaged global interdependence.
The destabilizing effects of shocks, alongside the perceived inability of institutions to protect people fromthem, can stir populism.14
Owing to a shock or other cause, populist turns
often upset democratic norms and practices and tend
to be very costly economically.15 In parallel, recent literature suggests that the economic losses of certain

Figure O.2 Climate change could result in an explosion of inequalities

Change in deaths per 100,000 people
120

Arab States

100

South Asia

80

Sub-Saharan Africa

60
40
20

East Asia and the Pacific
Latin America and the Caribbean0

Europe and Central Asia

–20
–40
Developed–60–80

2020–2039(Next decades)

2040–2059(Mid-century)

2080–2099(End of century)

Note: Very high emissions scenario.
Source: Human Development Report Office based on Carleton and others (2022) and Human Climate Horizons (https://horizons.hdr.undp.org/).
14

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

kinds of shocks are never fully recovered, that trajectories on growth or poverty reduction permanently
downshift following crises.16 When crises and othershocks precede populist turns, and in some cases precipitate them, these populist turns can function as crisis refractors and compounders rather than buffers
and mitigators, twisting and propagating shockwaves
in an interdependent world.

fog­—­alongside uncertainty, insecurity, inequalities
and polarization­— ­complicates hopeful paths forward.
By some measures global interconnectivity is at record levels, even as the pace of economic integration
stabilizes (figure 0.3).17 Trade in intermediate goods
now slightly exceeds trade in final goods.18 Altogether, goods today travel twice as far as they did 60 years
ago, and cross more borders, before final consumption.19 The production of smartphones, for example,
looks nothing like last century’s assembly line. Various inputs, from mined cobalt on up to batteries andcamera modules, crisscross the globe, sometimes retracing their steps and too often leaving avoidable social and environmental scars along the way.
Global financial interdependence remains high,even if the pace of integration stalled somewhat following the 2007/2008 financial crisis. 20 Low- andmiddle-­income countries’ debt servicing costs ballooned over the past two years, following a torrent ofinterest rate hikes unleashed by central banks to combat inflation.21
Cross-­border flows of information break records
every year. Digital services exports now account for

Global interdependence is evolving
The Covid-­19 pandemic, climate change, and theglobal surge in populism and conflicts all point to a
hard truth: ignoring or otherwise mismanaging global interdependence hurts people. Rolling them backin any time frame of relevance, whether for the climate or national security or whatever other reason, is
equally foolhardy.
Neither business as usual nor fantasies of deglobalization will do. Instead, we must embrace thecomplexity of global interdependence and better
manage its old and new forms in ways that protect
and expand people’s possibilities, even as geopoliticalFigure O.3 Economic interdependence is stabilizing at very high levels

Sum of global exports and imports
as a share of global GDP (%)
70
60
50
40
30
20
10

Globalization post–Bretton Woods

Hyperglobalization

A new era?

2022

2020

2018

2016

2014

2012

2010

2008

2006

2004

2002

2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

1984

1982

1980

1978

1976

1974

1972

1970

0

Source: Human Development Report Office based on the World Bank’s World Development Indicators database; recreated from Aiyar and others (2023).

Overview — Managing interdependence in a polarized world

15

16

Advocates for deglobalization or any of its lexiconickin­—­reshoring, nearshoring and friendshoring­—­may
have their reasons, but those have little to do withpracticably addressing new evolving and, in somecases, inescapable forms of global and planetary interdependence. Whatever dent might be made in international trade and capital flows would not comeclose to offsetting plane tickets, smartphones, carbon
dioxide and other means of transboundary hyperconnection. For reasons of water and food security,
among others, some countries face major constraints
on their ability to restrict trade and would suffer ifothers chose to do so. No country or region is close
to self-­sufficient, as all rely on imports from other regions for 25 percent or more of essential goods andservices.33 The climate remains largely indifferent tonational borders, and its worsening impacts will continue to also ignore them. The same applies to current and future pandemics.
In other words if we deglobalize­— ­even if partially­—­we cannot deplanetize, not in the Anthropocene.
We must view 21st century global public goods, frompandemic preparedness and peace to climate anddigital governance, as opportunities to grasp rather than challenges to avoid. The answer to mismanaged interdependence is not shying away from them
Figure O.4 Profit shifting to tax havens has skyrocketed
Global corporate tax revenue loss due to profit shifting to
tax havens (% of global corporate tax revenue collected)
10

8

6

4

2

Source: Alstadsæter and others 2023.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

2025

2020

2015

2010

2005

2000

1995

1990

1985

1980

0
1975

more than half of global trade in commercial services.22 Almost the entire global population is now within the range of a mobile broadband network, and5.4 billion people were internet users in 2023, thoughinequities remain stark.23
The number of people living outside their countryof birth has tripled since 1970, from 84 million to almost 280 million in 2020­— ­or nearly 3.6 percent of
the global population.24 International migration is an
exercise of people’s agency, expanding their choices
and human potential.25 It creates social, cultural andeconomic ties between host and sending countries26
and drives cross-border financial flows.27
We should expect familiar forms of interdependence to persist well into the future. Regulation thathelps manage them better will be crucial, unless theobjective is to privatize rewards and socialize risks.28
After all, we sometimes build roads with speed
bumps. Yet, interdependence in the 21st century ismuch more than bean counting based largely on 20th
century metrics­—­that is, how many goods or people
or bits are moving across borders. The qualities of theinterconnections matter, too. Our interdependence isincreasingly planetary and instantaneous.
Many interdependences among economies, people
and planet are emerging and deepening as the Digital Revolution powers ahead and we go deeper into
the Anthropocene­—­the age of humans. Expanding
global trade has helped generate enormous wealth,especially for some, and lift millions out of poverty.29
Regrettably, it has also paralleled the dismantling ofsocial, economic and ecological guardrails that would
otherwise protect and promote human development.
Markets have become more concentrated, encouraging rent seeking. Almost 40 percent of global trade ingoods is concentrated in three or fewer countries­—­even for goods where more suppliers exist.30
Antiglobalization sentiment has grown louder inoverall partisan discourse.31 Populists’ anti-­elite ire
has global dimensions. Fuelling that frustration isa sense that the forces of globalization have benefited some at the top and left everyone else behind.
Multinational companies may have shifted as muchas $1 trillion of profits to tax havens in 2022.32 Global losses in corporate tax revenue have skyrocketedsince the mid-­1990s as a result of profit shifting (figure O.4). Caught up in the antiglobalization maelstrom, international cooperation is being politicized.

by retreating within porous borders; it is to embraceand manage them better, learning and improving
as we go. Rather than be unwound or reversed, globalization can and should be done differently, inways that do not destroy the planet, that do not overconcentrate supply chains and that do not generatecost-­of-living crises that fuel debt crises in low- andmiddle-­income countries. Global interdependence istenacious, deepening and evolving. A shift in mindsets, policies and institutions is essential to manage
them better and to get unstuck.

Providing global public goods will help
A global public goods lens can add much. When fully
provided, global public goods go a long way to better
manage deeply rooted and evolving global interdependence, to safeguard and promote human development and to encourage virtuous cycles of cooperationand trust building. They help us work with complexity rather than ignore it. They challenge corrosive
zero-­sum thinking that pits groups against one another. They spark our imagination to frame and reframe
shared problems into win-­win opportunities. And
they invigorate our sense of duty to one another andto our single, shared planet. All without wishing away
divergent interests or even disagreements.
What is a global public good?34 In a nutshell, a
global public good is anything­—­an object, an action
or inaction, an idea–that, when provided, everyone
around the world can enjoy. Climate change mitigation is a global public good. So is the work of 13th
century poet Rumi. And so is freedom of the seas. A
special subcategory of global public goods is planetary public goods, which correspond to planetaryinterdependence and respond to spillover impacts between countries that cannot be managed or mitigatedat their borders. Another may be that of digital public
infrastructure and what have been called digital public goods, associated with the Digital Revolution.
While global public goods can serve as a rallying cry for redress against injustices or inefficiencies, they are not merely things that are desirable.
In fact, global public goods are less “goods” or concrete things per se and more a choice about how wehumans can enjoy them together. They can be seen
also as a mindset­—­an aspiration—­and can mobilize
cooperation in many forms. As such they are limited

from the bottom by our imagination and collective
will and from the top by the way power is structured
and wielded. They are thus social choices, not just in
how we imagine them but whether we decide to imagine them at all.
Understanding that vaccine development and, say,blowing up an asteroid hurtling towards Earth can beframed as global public goods­—­and, what is more,a specific kind of global public good known as best-­
shot (box O.1)­—­means we do not need to start fromscratch when we respond. Time means lives. It means
we can think across sectors and silos and get better
prepared. It means we can draw from our Covid-­19
pandemic experience, for example, when an asteroid
or a deadly new pathogen or a bout of global financial
instability does come. They will come. But we do nothave to chase yesterday’s crisis.

A global public goods lens helps us disentangle“complex issues, many of which are complex
precisely because their different aspects callfor different ways of organizing ourselves

A global public goods lens helps us disentangle
complex issues, many of which are complex precisely
because their different aspects call for different waysof organizing ourselves. Much of our response, andits shortcomings, to the Covid-­19 pandemic can beunderstood through a global public goods lens, withinsights on how to structure incentives to foster cooperation and how to design supportive financing.
Recognizing that global public goods can be enjoyed by everyone is one thing; the distribution of
their benefits is another. Because countries have different interests and resources, the value of each global public good to each country will be shaped by thosefactors. Some of the challenges with providing global
public goods are driven by this asymmetry in benefits.
A global public goods lens can also offer insights
about reframing challenges. For instance, climatechange mitigation (a summation global public good)
could be advanced by accelerating the technologies and innovations for renewable and clean energy sources (including moonshots such as nuclear
fusion)­—­which reframes the challenge as providing
best-­shot global public goods. Imagine massive carbon sequestration plants, powered by nuclear fusion,in the Arctic tundra or across the Sahara. Framing

Overview — Managing interdependence in a polarized world17

Box O.1 Global public goods 101: What are summation, best-­shot and weakest-­link global public goods?
Three kinds of global public goods stand out: summation, best-­shot, and weakest-­link. Climate change mitigation isa typical example of a summation global public good, where the overall level of mitigation depends on the sum ofcontributions from each individual agent, or country. Institutions must aggregate contributions big and small, work
to resolve free riding and navigate game-­theoretic problems, such as those posed in the classic prisoner’s dilemma(where cooperating producers a better outcome than acting separately in one’s self-­interest).
Now imagine a cataclysmic, but destructible, asteroid hurtling towards Earth. What would be the best course ofaction? The probability of destroying the asteroid depends on whichever country or other agent develops the mostaccurate asteroid-­busting technology­—­in other words, a best-­shot global public good. The benefit to everyone on
the planet is determined by the agent (in this example, a country or pool of countries) that invests the most resources
effectively. Much technology production, such as the race to sequence the human genome, as well as knowledge inthe public domain, can generally be considered best-­shot global public goods.
Stubborn pockets of endemic polio illustrate the third kind of global public good: weakest-­link. While two of thethree wild polio viruses have been eradicated (type 2 in 2015 and type 3 in 2019),1 polio eradication efforts have notsucceeded yet­—­and have missed several target dates­—­because the third strain of the virus (wild polio type 1) persists
in only a few small areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and vaccine-­derived type 2 also continues to circulate.2
Disease eradication, as with smallpox, is a global public good. Yet, as with polio, the entire world remains at risk
if the pathogen circulates anywhere. The global benefit is then tied to the circumstances of the weakest agent. The
implications for focusing pooled resources are clear. Disease surveillance is also generally considered a weakest-­link
global public good.3
Notes
1. https://www.who.int/news-­room/feature-­stories/detail/two-­out-of-­three-wild-­poliovirus-strains-­eradicated. 2. Barrett 2011; Cohen 2023.
3. Post–Covid-­19 pandemic assessments established that countries with more generic public health capacities were better able to control
the disease, highlighting the importance of not only an emergency response but also the buildup of capacities for surveillance and publichealth where they are lacking (Neill and others 2023).

climate change as a technological opportunity to besolved could have a crowding-­in effect, generating
its own positive momentum, instead of the foot dragging of voluntary carbon emissions reductions.
As important as human choice is for establishing,framing and providing global public goods, it is not thewhole story. Technology plays an important role, too.
The advent of broadcast radio and television opened
access to information carried through the airwaves
to anyone with a receiving device. Cable television­—­and later streaming services­— ­created opportunities tofence off programming, excluding nonpayers and leading to the proliferation of subscription services, which
could be classified economically and epithetically as
excludable. The demise of public telephones after mobile phones burst onto the scene offers a similar story:
the technology created opportunities for exclusion thatpolicy choices permitted, if not outright encouraged.
As with technology itself, global public goods often
are not given but created. By us! By our imaginationand social choices. Therein lies a good measure of
their power. They require and therefore activate ourimagination for a different world, a different way of18

doing things, exactly what is needed to navigate in uncertain times. Marrying that creativity with the rightincentives and institutional architectures, whose general features we can already anticipate, will go a long
way to get things moving and build out a 21st century
global architecture to provide global public goods.

Wicked forms of polarization
are getting in the way
Easier said than done. What is getting in the way?
For starters, us.
Group-­based polarization is widespread and increasing around the world.35 It is affecting national
and international politics that will shape how sharedglobal challenges will be addressed in the decades
to come.36 Because polarization often translates into
intolerance and an aversion to compromise and negotiation, it can lead to political gridlock and dysfunction. It does so in part by eroding trust acrosscommunities, impeding efforts to address major societal issues, such as health crises, violent conflict andclimate change. Since many of these issues engender

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

opposing beliefs and intense political competition,
polarization poses a major societal obstacle to addressing shared problems.37
Polarization is not the same as difference or disagreement, even vigorous disagreement. Diversity
in preferences and perspectives enriches collective
decisionmaking and action.38 Indeed, political institutions have been designed to harness rivalry to serve thepublic interest. For instance, the arguments invoked byJames Madison in designing the US Constitution did
not assume away competing interests but rather designed institutions that leveraged those differences tobe both adaptable and to serve the public interest.39
But polarization presents new challenges that are
fraying those institutions.40 All differences in vieware collapsed into questions of a narrow or single
identity. The Brexit referendum gave rise to new social identities­—­Leaver and Remainer­—­which formed
the basis of heightened group-­based polarization between those two groups.41 In the United States andelsewhere, Covid-­19 vaccine status identification became a factional marker separating one camp fromthe other.42
Polarization at the national level has global consequences; it is a drag on international cooperation,
including for the provision of global public goods.
Between 1970 and 2019 there were 84 referendums
concerning international cooperation (such as membership in international organizations), with an increase in more recent decades.43 There have been
campaigns for withdrawing from international institutions.44 The European Union, the World Trade Organization and international justice institutions havebeen described as facing legitimacy challenges.45
For one, highly polarized societies that seesaw between political extremes make international partners
less reliable. There is also a trust problem. Polarization signifies an erosion in trust, and lower trust­— ­orconfidence, more broadly­—­in national institutions
tends to correlate with lower confidence in international organizations such as the United Nations (figure O.5). And polarization tends to feed on zero-­sum
thinking and breed cynicism about compromise andtolerance, all antithetical to global public goods.
Providing global public goods does not require a
kumbaya moment among nations (divine intervention for harmony). But nor does it live on the other endof the spectrum, where prevailing assumptions about

Figure O.5 Lower confidence in national government tends
to correlate with lower confidence in the United Nations
Confidence inthe United Nations
1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Confidence in national government
Note: Confidence in institutions (the national government and the United Na­
tions) implies reporting “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence (other op­
tions: “not very much” or “none at all”).
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7(2017–2022) of the World Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

human behaviour (and that of countries) are limited
to self-­interest and where cooperation is relegated toreciprocity­—­that is, repeat games of the prisoner’s dilemma. Providing global public goods will languish ateither extreme. People and their countries have other,often more dominant motivations that are shaped bysocial preferences and norms, many of which are culturally contingent. For cooperation crowding-­in is justas possible as crowding-­out­—­if not more so­—­not on
everything, but on challenges that are not zero-­sum.
Doing so will require additional financing for global public goods as a complement to, rather than asubstitute for or competitor to, traditional development assistance. The costs of inaction in not providing global public goods pale in comparison with thebenefits.46 Mindsets and narratives matter here, too.
Many motives for support to global cooperation, including global redistribution, go beyond self-­interestand have to do with people’s views on fairness andequity and whether their sense of duty stops at theircountry’s border or expands around the world. When

Overview — Managing interdependence in a polarized world19

provided, global public goods are a win-­win, the opposite of zero-­sum. If we want to provide them, giving more salience to the nature of these challenges
and setting up institutions to facilitate their provision
will be crucial.
Mismanaged global interdependence, particularly when culminating in shocks and crises, stokes polarization in many ways. One, by making people feel
insecure, and two, when sloganeering transforms
insecurity into fear and is exploited for political andpersonal gain. That is why providing global public
goods is so important. By helping us manage global
interdependence, they will dampen a major driver ofpolarization around the world.

By helping us manage global interdependence,“
global public goods will dampen a major
driver of polarization around the world

Polarization can also be eased directly. One way
to do this is by correcting misperceptions about others’ beliefs, misperceptions that are widespread. For
instance, the prevalence of pro-­climate beliefs in the
United States is twice what people think it is.47 The result is a false social reality that hampers collective action on climate change.
Another way to cool things down is by creating
spaces of deliberation to bridge divides. Citizen assemblies are one way to do this. Avenues for structured, repeat personal interaction like these mattera lot. It is far easier to objectify, dismiss and malignbehind the impersonal safety of a flamethrowing social media post or to hurl vitriol through a television
camera than it is when sharing a meal with someone,
even with political foes. This may be why storytellingand vignettes have been shown as effective ways toease polarization.48 They make “othering” harder.

We need to narrow gaps in agency
Our institutions are struggling to keep up with evolving, deepening forms of global interdependence andprovide global public goods. Polarization is a big partof the problem. So are narrow and self-­fulfilling assumptions about human behaviour that limit it to self-­interest, assumptions that have long held sway overinstitutions at all levels. Space for social preferences,
norms, duties and culture have been squeezed out.
20

Populism has become an unhelpful pressure valve.
The result is that institutions are failing to deliver. No
wonder that while the vast majority of people support
democracy as an ideal, more than half now support
leaders that may undermine it in practice.
Agency is a cornerstone of human development.
Albeit difficult to measure directly, agency in pursuitof collective action49 may be eroding (figure O.6),
at least for a sizeable portion of people around theworld.50 For many there is a sinking feeling­— ­evident
in widespread increases in self-­reported measures ofstress, worry and despair­—­that options for exercising
choice in their lives, based on what they have reason
to value, is shrinking. From among a diminishing setof options, they are less sure­—­more insecure­—­that achoice they want to make can be realized.
These are threats to the human psyche­—­to oursense of self and autonomy, to our sense of securely
belonging and commitment to shared intentionality,51 to our ability to decide what we value and how
we can and do act on those values­— ­of no less importance than the threats posed by a super typhoon, adisease outbreak or violence. Conventional metrics
such as GDP or even the Human Development Index
are missing something important that is being voiced
loudly on the streets, at the ballot box and in the increase in support for leaders that may undermine democracy. Agency may be a way of understanding thegaps and, alongside concepts of insecurity, is an area
ripe for innovative measurement. Indeed, across all
regions human security and agency gaps go hand-­inhand (figure O.7).
Now add inequality. There is a steep decline in theshare of people reporting having very low control
over their lives along the income distribution for thebottom 50 percent of the income distribution (figure O.8). That is, agency increases as income grows
for the bottom 50 percent of the distribution. At thevery bottom lack of agency is particularly heightened(agency gaps are three times greater among people in
the lowest income decile than in decile 6 and above).
Moreover, the share of people reporting having very
high control over their lives is low and relatively equal
for the bottom 50 percent of the population but rises
with income for deciles 6 and above. Thus, income
inequalities, which often intersect and are associatedwith other inequalities in human development, shapeagency.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure O.6 Freedom of expression goes hand-­in-hand with agency and has been receding in recent years

Freedom of Expression Index value
0.70

0.60

0.50

0.40

0.30

2022

2020

2018

2016

2014

2012

2010

2008

2006

2004

2002

2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

1984

1982

1978

1980

1976

1974

1972

1970

1968

1966

1964

1962

1960

0.20

Note: Data are population-­weighted global averages.
Source: Human Development Report Office calculations based on data from the Varieties of Democracy project and the World Bank’s World Development Indicators database.

Figure O.7 The higher the perceived human insecurity, the lower the sense of control over one’s own life
Percent of people in each insecurity category
facing acute agency gap
14
Arab States

1210

Sub-Saharan Africa
East Asia and the Pacific
Developed countries
South Asia
Europe and Central Asia
Latin America andthe Caribbean

8
6
4
2

Low

Medium/High

Very high

Perceived human insecurity
Note: Perceived human insecurity is measured as “low,” “medium and high” and “very high,” using microdata and equal weights across countries, andis based on the index described in annex 1.2 of UNDP (2022d). Acute agency gap measures the share of the population reporting feeling no or very
little control over their lives (options 1–3 on a 1–10 scale).
Source: Human Development Report Office based on the latest available data from wave 6 (2010–2014) and wave 7 (2017–2022) of the World Values
Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

Overview — Managing interdependence in a polarized world21

Figure O.8 The perception of agency (control over one’s own life) is shaped by income
No agency gap(in control over own life, percent of people in each income decile)

Acute agency gap

80

18

12
60
6

40

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

0

Income decile (within countries)
Note: Computed using microdata and equal weights across countries.
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7 (2017–2022) of the World Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

Polarization, insecurity, inequality and reductive
narratives all exact human tolls that can be understood through agency, which threads these strands
together as a common denominator and a lodestar
for action.
Agency gaps are not just about formal institutions.
Norms, which interact dynamically with institutions,matter a lot too. At the beginning of the 20th century,
women in most countries were officially prohibitedfrom participating in various societal roles, ranging from owning property and attending universities
to engaging in politics. Women’s agency gaps werestark and widespread. Throughout the 20th century
extensive reforms worldwide recognized the equal
legal, social, economic and political rights of womenand men. Although women in many countries still
face legal restrictions affecting their agency, the progress in institutional reforms has been remarkable.
Agency gaps encoded in formal laws have tended todisappear. The legal right to vote in elections­—­a fundamental form of political agency­—­serves as a visible
example of this evolution.
However, the effective agency of women remains
restricted in many areas. A notable example is women’s access to top political office­—­the pinnacle of22

political agency. Women serve as heads of state orheads of government in only about 10 percent ofcountries, a statistic that has changed little over recent decades.52
The UNDP’s 2023 Gender Social Norms Index,
which treats biases as deviations from global sharedstandards of gender equality, shows that genderequality is being constrained by biased social norms
against women (figure O.9).53 Almost half of people
believe that men make better political leaders than
women.54 And biased norms might be so entrenchedthat we judge the women who occupy high political
offices more harshly. These biases permeate voting
booths, interview panels, board meetings and more­—­all limiting women’s agency.
To help narrow agency gaps, institutions need tobe people-­centred, co-­owned and future-­oriented.
What do these principles mean for existing multi­
lateral institutions?
One proxy for people-­centred is human development, which multilateral institutions recognize, at best,in a limited or partial way. Economic performance still
dominates the agenda. That’s why Beyond GDP, emphasized by UN Secretary-­General António Guterres,is so important.55 Gaps in co-­ownership are manifested

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure O.9 Gender equality in politics is being constrained by biased social norms against women

Share of parliamentary seats
occupied by women (%)
60

50

40

30

20

10

0

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Biases in gender social norms (% of population who agree or strongly agreewith the statement “Men make better political leaders than women do”)
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7 (2017–2022) of the World Values Survey (for biases in social norms) and datafrom the Inter-Parliamentary Union (for the share of parliamentary seats occupied by women in 2021). See also UNDP (2023a).

in the continuation of governance arrangements
through written and unwritten rules that reflect a legacy of the distribution of power in the post–World War II
world. This extends from the international financial institutions to the United Nations, with several proposals
tabled over the years to redress the current lack of representativeness of governance arrangements.56
Co-­ownership implies a fair distribution of theburden of government action, avoiding inequalities
resulting from tax avoidance and evasion. Over the
past decade there has been considerable progress incontrolling tax evasion, mainly through increased information and transparency around the world.57 The
UN General Assembly has started the process for a
Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, to facilitate policy coordination on theseissues.58 Global minimum tax rates, such as the minimum effective corporate income tax, do not haveto be very large to raise substantial amounts if they

are well enforced.59 Enforcement is largely a policy
choice and hinges on international coordination.
Future-­oriented means accounting for the way interdependence is being reshaped in the Anthropocene
and as a result of the Digital Revolution and finding
ways to more systematically, efficiently and equitably
providing global public goods.

Towards an agency-centredvision of development
What is development and how is it best pursued? Acentral question in the postwar era whose answer haschanged over time in response to emerging realities.
Today, the dynamic interactions between the planetarypressures of the Anthropocene on the one hand andgrowing inequalities and insecurity on the other are together a gauntlet thrown to all development narratives.
Even to human development.

Overview — Managing interdependence in a polarized world

23

The first Human Development Report in 1990
proudly proclaimed that “people are the real wealthof a nation.” People still are; they always will be.
What is the point of development if not for people?
Yet, how we talk about and measure people has to go
beyond wellbeing achievements, as measured by the
Human Development Index and other conventional
indicators, to include agency­—­the unique, limitless
capacity for people to form and reform goals, commitments and values; to make reasoned choices that
may or may not advance their own wellbeing; and,ultimately, to lead lives with purpose, which may begreater than their individual selves.
Agency has largely been left off development agendas in any explicit sense. And it shows. Agency gaps
coincide with worrying trends on democratic norms
and p­ ractices, polarization and declines in generalized trust and confidence in governments and international institutions. International cooperation itself
is becoming more politicized. Our institutions are
struggling with an agency gap.
In his landmark Development as Freedom, Amartya
Sen recasts development as the pursuit of “greater freedom [that] enhances the ability of people tohelp themselves and also to influence the world […]The concern here relates to what we may call […] the‘agency aspect.’”60
The 2023/2024 Human Development Report
starts to mould what could be called an emancipatory
vision for development that shines Sen’s notion of development as freedom on the grand challenge of ourtime: people and planet in joint crisis. This take on development centres the expansion of agency at the intersection of human development, human rights andsustainability. Its goal is the expansion of freedoms intheir many forms, including freedom from the tyrannies of single exclusive identities, of zero-­sum beliefs
and of oversimplified models of behaviour that reduce people to number-­crunching narcissists.
Institutions of the 21st century would narrow agency gaps and enlarge, rather than replace, those of the24

20th century welfare state. Freedom blossoms into
fuller meanings, going beyond the necessary andimportant “froms”­—­freedom from fear, from want,from deprivation­—­to the aspirational and important“ofs”­—­freedom of self, thought and action, including
helpful collective action.

States of all political stripes and incomes have“the opportunity and obligation to shape agency-

centred policies and institutions, anchored inhuman development and guided by human rights
States of all political stripes and incomes have theopportunity and obligation to shape agency-centred
policies and institutions, anchored in human development and guided by human rights, the protectionof the planet and institutions that liberate us from
dysfunctional stasis, that better respond to and empower people and that free us all from rigid and divisive zero-­sum narratives about ourselves and eachother. When people feel freer to inhabit multiple,
overlapping identities, when reasoned, issue-­based
dialogue prevails over emotionally charged rhetoricthat exploits group-­based grievances, when people
meet people instead of tweeting at them, then people
are more able and likely to pursue their own goals, aswell as compromise and cooperate on shared objectives that make their own goals more achievable.
This is the virtuous cycle that an agency-centred vision for development, whose building blocks are outlined in this Report, aspires to. Global gridlock begins
to give way to cooperation, including for global public
goods, even when diverse preferences persist­—­andwe should expect them to persist. Indeed, differencesin what people value is a motivating observation behind human development and, as argued in previous
Human Development Reports, diversity in its many
forms is essential to navigating novel and interacting
layers of uncertainty.
We can do better. We have a lot going for us. Let’s
get moving.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

PA R TI

Advancinghumandevelopment
in aninterdependent
world
25

CHAPTER
1

Human development
suffers wheninterdependenceis mismanaged

PA RT I — A DVA N CIN G HU MAN D EVELOP MENT IN AN INTER D EP END ENT WOR LD

27

CHAPTER 1

Human development suffers wheninterdependence is mismanaged
Divergence between the very high and the low humandevelopment index groups of countries, after decadesof convergence, is going up. The path of improvementin the global average human development index has
shifted downwards.
Why? Largely because of mismanaging
interdependence—as reflected in the inadequate
response to the Covid-19 pandemic, in the tentative
progress on mitigation of climate change and in theconflagration of violent conflicts, with implications thatstraddle borders.

28

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

The decline in the global Human Development Index(HDI) value in 2020 and 2021 was unprecedented.
It reflects irrecoverable losses, including millions ofhuman lives. Even though the global HDI value increased in 2022 and is projected to further increase in2023, the recovery is projected to be highly unequal:
Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development (OECD) countries are projected to fully recover or surpass their 2019 values, but 51 percent of
the poorest countries with 328 million people are notprojected to do so.1
This chapter considers this unprecedented decline
on the HDI and the recovery from the perspectiveof failures in managing a shared global challenge­—­anovel virus spilled over borders and along with it the
spread of economic hardship and losses in healthand education outcomes. The cross-­border spillovers
mean that, despite humanity’s having the capabilities
to deal with them, we failed to manage interdependence across countries. Chapter 3 gives an account of
how this mismanagement unfolded, where international cooperation faltered, where it succeeded andthe reasons why.2 This chapter shines a spotlight on
how mismanaged interdependence harms humandevelopment.
The interdependence brought into sharp relief during the Covid-­19 pandemic is sometimes described
as a shock, an adverse event to recover and move on
from, building forward better. Yet, as we move deeper into what the 2021/2022 Human Development
Report described as a novel uncertainty complex,3 patterns of interdependence are being reshaped (chapter2), and mismanaging them can escalate hypercostly
human development crises. The interdependence has
several channels. Some relate to the planetary interdependence of the Anthropocene, the age of humans.4
These include climate change, biodiversity loss, cross-­border implications of pollution and new and re-­emerging zoonotic diseases that might result in future
pandemics. Indeed, July 2023 was the hottest monthon record across all world regions.5 Hot weather andextreme temperatures that endanger human healthhave already been increasing illnesses and death.6
During 2023 record-­breaking wildfires were observedin Canada7 and the US state of Hawaii.8 Torrential rain
and floods inundated Libya, Europe and parts of Asia,
along with more frequent extreme weather events,
such as hurricanes and typhoons.9 At every corner on

Earth, the effects of dangerous planetary change driven by human choices are being felt.
Mismanaged geopolitical tensions, and their
manifestation in violent conflicts, harm humandevelopment­—­both for the countries in­volved in conflicts and often for many others too. Recent conflicts
and geopolitical tensions have surged.10 The impacts
of conflicts spill beyond not only geographical boundaries but also generational boundaries, with the wars
in Gaza, Ukraine and Yemen reversing human development gains made over generations and curtailingprospects for entire cohorts of young people.11

The context of novel uncertainty and“mismanaged interdependence is reflected inhigher global poverty and hunger over the past
few years, taking the world farther off course fromachieving the Sustainable Development Goals
The context of novel uncertainty and mismanaged
interdependence is also reflected in higher global
poverty and hunger over the past few years, taking
the world farther off course from achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).12 The year 2023
marked the midpoint to 2030, the deadline to meetthe goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Progress has stalled or reversed
for 30 percent of the SDG targets and is weak or insufficient for another 50 percent.13 Beyond setbacks
in wellbeing, people are also feeling a sense of lossof agency­—­the inability to live lives guided by theircommitments­—­a step back from advancing Amartya
Sen’s notion of “development as freedom.” 14 People
are often caught up in a context of events that they do
not fully understand, or where they seem to have little or no role in shaping, with the consequences borneout in their daily lives.15 Beyond gaps in wellbeing,
there is also an agency gap, which results in part fromour collective inability to purposefully guide our actions to manage interdependence.

Building forward weaker? An unequal
and incomplete recovery in humandevelopment from the 2020–2021 dip
The 2023 global Human Development Index value
is projected to recover after the unprecedented dropin 2020–2021. We project that the global HDI value

Chapter 1 — Human development suffers when interdependence is mismanaged

29

for 2023 was the highest on record, most likely thehighest ever, surpassing the 2019 value across all theindex components: life expectancy at birth, mean
years of schooling, expected years of schooling andgross national income per capita. But this recovery isunequal and incomplete, and the scars from the decline can become permanent if the pre-­2019 trend of
progress on the HDI remains roughly the same. Already, compared with the pre-­2019 trend, there has
been a forgone loss on the HDI (figure 1.1).
The turnaround from a declining to an increasing trend on the HDI took place in 2022, but someevidence suggests that we may be building forward
weaker for four reasons.
• First, not every human development loss can be recovered. The loss of lives­—­around 15 million16­—­isirreparable, as may be some of the learning that did
not happen and the economic projects that did notmaterialize. This forgone human development loss
is represented by the shaded area in figure 1.1: thegap between the actual global HDI value (including
the projected value for 2023) and the value in acounterfactual where the pre-­2019 trend continues. A loss of this magnitude appears for the firsttime ever.
• Second, the recovery is incomplete. After the decline
in 2020–2021, when most countries saw their HDI
value fall, the recovery to pre-­2 019 values has

been faltering for a large proportion of countries.
For 2023 (with still incomplete data at the country
level), we project that more than a quarter of thecountries that experienced a setback will have an
HDI value below their pre-­2019 value. One region,
the Arab States, is projected to have not recovered
its pre-­2019 average HDI value.
Recovering in 2023 to the 2019 HDI value is a
low bar, which does not account for forgone losses
or potential future losses if the HDI path remains
below the pre-2019 HDI trend. Among the countries that suffered HDI declines in 2020, 2021 orboth, the share of countries worldwide that are
projected to reach or surpass their 2019 HDI value
in 2023 is just over 70 percent, and the share in
most regions (other than Latin America and the
Caribbean and South Asia) is projected to be lower(figure 1.2).
• Third, the recovery has been highly unequal. For 2023
all OECD countries are projected to have reachedor surpassed their pre-­2019 HDI values, in contrast to only 49 percent of the Least Developed
Countries (LDCs) (figure 1.3).17 The disparity inrecovery is also evident across HDI groups: 48 percent of low HDI countries, compared with 92 percent of very high HDI countries. This highlights theconsequences of mismanaging interdependence inexacerbating inequalities in human development.18

Figure 1.1 The global Human Development Index (HDI) value is below its pre-2019 trend

Global HDI value
0.800
2019

Pre-

d

tren

0.750

al

Actu

0.700
2015
0.650

0.600

2017

2019

2021

2023
(projected)

1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023
(projected)

Note: The global HDI value for 2023 is a projection. The pre-2019 trend is based on the evolution of the global HDI value in the previous 20 years.
Source: Human Development Report Office calculations based on data from Barro and Lee (2018), IMF (2023d), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO Institute for
Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division (2023) and World Bank (2023).

30

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure 1.2 The recovery in Human Development Index (HDI) values is incomplete

Share of countries that suffered HDI declines in 2020,2021 or both whose projected 2023 HDI value reachedor surpassed their 2019 value (%)
79

83

World
61

60

Arab States

East Asia andthe Pacific

71
59

57

Europe and Central Latin America andAsia
the Caribbean

South Asia

Sub-Saharan Africa

Note: Recovery means that countries that suffered a decline in HDI value in 2020 or 2021 are projected to reach or surpass their pre-decline HDI
value by 2023.
Source: Human Development Report Office calculations based on data from Barro and Lee (2018), IMF (2023d), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO
Institute for Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division (2023) and World Bank (2023).

Figure 1.3 The recovery in Human Development Index (HDI)
values is projected to be highly unequal
Country recovery by 2023 fromthe HDI setback in 2020 or 2021

51%
did not
recover100%
recovered49%
recovered

Least Developed
Countries

Organisation for Economic
Co-operation andDevelopment

Note: Least Developed Countries have low levels of income and face vulnerabilities that make them “the poorest and weakest segment” of the international
community (https://www.un.org/ohrlls/content/about-least​-developed​​-countries).
Recovery means that countries that suffered a decline in HDI value in 2020 or
2021 are projected to reach or surpass their pre-decline HDI value by 2023.
Source: Human Development Report Office calculations based on data from Barroand Lee (2018), IMF (2023d), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023), United Nations Statistics Division (2023) and World Bank (2023).

As a result of these unequal recovery patterns,
there has been a rebound in between-­country inequality in human development (measured as the
distance between the HDI values of the very high
HDI group and the low HDI group) since 2019, interrupting two decades of convergence (figure 1.4).
• Fourth, some of the losses from the HDI dip could become
permanent. The world has likely shifted to a lower
HDI path, if the future HDI evolution stays below
the pre-­2019 trend. Based on the trend during 1999–
2019, the global HDI value was on track to cross thethreshold defining very high human development (avalue of 0.800) by 2030­— ­coinciding with the deadline to meet the SDGs. Now, the world is projected to
be off track. Indeed, every region is projected to fall
below its pre-­2019 path in 2023 (figure 1.5).
The path dependence of GDP trends on its history of shocks (hysteresis) has been widely studied inrecent years.19 Unlike the assumption that there isa rebound that brings things back to (or even betterthan) what they were before an economic downturn,shocks are often found to leave long-term, potentially permanent scars.20 This in part is because economic recessions affect the supply side of the economy,

Chapter 1 — Human development suffers when interdependence is mismanaged

31

Figure 1.4 Low Human Development Index (HDI) countries have been left behind

Difference in HDI value between
very high and low HDI countries
0.44

0.39

0.42

0.38

2017

2020

2023
(projected)

0.40

0.38

1990

1993

1996

1999

2002

2005

2008

2011

2014

2017

2020 2023(projected)

Note: The difference in HDI values for 2023 is based on projections.
Source: Human Development Report Office calculations based on data from Barro and Lee (2018), IMF (2023d), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO Institute for
Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division (2023) and World Bank (2023).

which is associated with long-­term productive capabilities. Shocks, even if transitory, can affect the economic conditions in employment, 21 investment inresearch and development,22 human capital,23 productivity and long-­term economic growth.24
Before 2019 there was clear evidence that different shocks­—­financial, political and environmental­—­had noticeable and often long-­lasting effects onhuman development, including on the HDI.25 But
these effects did not shift the overall global HDI
trend,26 which persisted despite declines in somecountries in some years.27 For the first time ever the
global HDI trend shifted downwards and is now improving in parallel but below the pre-­2019 trend (giving a glimpse of what a future of recurrent crises andrecoveries in human development would look like28),
with the potential for hysteresis as a novel feature requiring further analysis.29
Hysteresis in human development can manifest
through various channels, extending beyond thestandard components of the HDI. Multiple examplesof recent shocks have both transitory manifestations
and more permanent consequences for people’s lives,
documented in the next section. These include recent
assessments of students’ learning outcomes, which
are at a historic low according to the Programme for
32

International Student Assessment (PISA);30 reportsof long-­lasting mental health problems; and the exceptionally high debt burden of many governments,
limiting their ability to invest in their future and runsocial programmes.
Finally, it is essential to see the trend of unprecedented changes on the HDI in a broader perspective. The shocks of recent years, with their transitoryand permanent effects, took place in a world alreadyunder stress. In 2019 numerous social protests wererecorded globally.31 The sense of dissatisfaction,
which is multicausal, has been the subject of recent
Human Development Reports. The 2019 Human
Development Report warned about emerging widespread inequalities in capabilities becoming more
relevant in the 21st century. The 2020 Human Development Report underscored how the effects of the
Anthropocene are becoming increasingly importantin people’s lives. The 2022 Special Report on Human
Security documented that, even before the Covid-­19
pandemic, 6 in 7 people were feeling insecure, alongside rising trends in conflicts and conflict-­affected
populations. The 2021/2022 Human Development
Report discussed the twin trends of people’s unsettledness and political polarization, already visible in
the previous decade. Even without the 2020–2021

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure 1.5 Each developing region’s projected 2023 Human Development Index value is below its pre-2019 trend
Arab States

East Asia and the Pacific

Human Development Index
value

Human Development Index
value

0.750

Pre-2019 trend

0.800
0.750

0.700

Actual

0.650

0.700
0.650

2021

2023

2021

2023

2021

2023

2019
2019
2019

2017
2017

2015

2013

2011

2009

2007

2005

2017

Europe and Central Asia

2003

2001

2023

2021

2019

2017

2015

2013

2011

2009

2007

2005

2003

2001

1999

1999

0.600

0.600

Latin America and the Caribbean

Human Development Index
value

Human Development Index
value

0.850

0.780

0.800

0.760

0.750

0.740
0.720

0.700

0.700

0.650

2015

2013

2011

2009

2007

2005

2003

2001

1999

2023

2021

2019

2017

2015

2013

2011

2009

2007

2005

2003

2001

1999

0.680

2015

2013

2011

2009

2007

2005

2003

2001

1999

2023

2021

0.400
2019

0.500
2017

0.450

2015

0.550

2013

0.500

2011

0.600

2009

0.550

2007

0.650

2005

0.600

2003

0.700

2001

Sub-Saharan Africa
Human Development Index
value

1999

South Asia
Human Development Index
value

Note: Human Development Index values for 2023 are projections. The pre-2019 trends are based on the evolution of each region’s HDI in the previous 20 years.
Source: Human Development Report Office calculations based on data from Barro and Lee (2018), IMF (2023d), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO Institute for
Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division (2023) and World Bank (2023).

Chapter 1 — Human development suffers when interdependence is mismanaged

33

dip on the HDI, there was no room for complacency. None of these challenges­—­all human-­made andall expressions of our interdependence­—­has disappeared. But they are compounded when we fail tomanage interdependence.

indicated that “the substantial deterioration in mental health seen in the UK during the first lockdown
did not reverse when lockdown lifted, and a sustained worsening was observed across the pandemic
period.”41 Another longitudinal study in Germany focusing on young people revealed that mental healthmarkers significantly worsened during the Covid-­19
pandemic and only partially returned to prepandemic
values afterward.42
Similarly, following extended school closures during the Covid-­19 pandemic, there is emerging evidence of lasting effects on learning.43 The pandemic
eroded the accumulation of human capital at critical
moments of the lifecycle and has particularly affected people under age 25, who will compose 90 percentof the prime-age workforce in 2050.44 Between 2018and 2022 PISA scores made the sharpest declines
ever, with average scores in OECD countries fallingby 15 percentage points in mathematics and 10 percentage points in reading (figure 1.6).45 US national
grade assessments show that two decades of progress
were wiped out by the pandemic.46 It may take 28
years for 8th grade students to return to prepandemic attainment in mathematics and 22 years for 4th

Mismanaging interdependence
imposes costs on human development
The experience with the Covid-­19 pandemic tells astory of how, despite many warnings, the world underinvested in pandemic preparedness and mismanaged its response after the outbreak. The pandemic
led to around 15 million deaths32­—­more than recent
epidemics, including the Asian Flu, Hong Kong Flu,
Swine Flu, SARS, MERS and Ebola, combined.33 The
Covid-­19 pandemic not only reduced life expectancy
at birth in most countries but also impaired the othercomponents of the HDI, interrupting access to education and leaving enduring marks on the economy.
Beyond the direct impacts of the Covid-­19 pandemic, the indirect impacts on health were profound.
As healthcare professionals turned to assist Covid-­19
patients, in-­person visits declined drastically for non-­
Covid-19 patients, including those with acute needs,
such as patients with cardiovascular disease, kidney
disorders, alcohol abuse and mental health conditions.34 Routine and emergency visits fell drasticallywhen the lockdowns started, with potential consequences for long-­term health, including increased
illness and death.35
People suffered further from increased mental
health burdens due to loneliness and domestic abuse,
among others.36 Globally, the Covid-­19 pandemic led
to a 28 percent increase in major depressive disordercases and a 26 percent rise in anxiety disorder cases in
2020.37 This escalation in mental health disorders wasobserved across all demographic groups. However,there was evidence of a more pronounced increase inprevalence among women and younger people.38 Students suffered from higher anxiety, fear and grief due
to prolonged social isolation and disrupted routines
with school closures.39 Particularly affected were children with pre-­existing mental health conditions, suchas depression, as well as those with special needs.40
There is concern that the surge in mental healthdisorders might be long-­lasting. For example, a series of 11 longitudinal studies in the United Kingdom
34

Figure 1.6 Unprecedented declines in learning outcomes,
as measured by PISA test scores
PISA test scores, OECD average
510
Science

500

Mathematics
Reading

490

480

470
2003

2006

2009

2012

2015

2018

2022

 ISA is Programme for International Student Assessment. OECD is OrganisationP
for Economic Co-­operation and Development.
Source: OECD 2023.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

grade students to return to prepandemic attainment
in reading.47 Such learning delays will further cost the
global economy about $1.6 trillion a year by 2040, or
0.9 percent of global GDP.48 Impacts on learning varied extensively across the world, with some regions
further behind than others, particularly where school
closures were longer.49
The Covid-­19 pandemic led the world into the greatest recession at least since World War II.50 Global output fell as much as three times more than it did during
the 2007–2008 global financial crisis and happened
far more abruptly, as economic activities came to asudden halt with the onset of the pandemic.51 Global
unemployment rates have not yet returned to prepandemic levels, and more workers have been pushed tothe informal sector.52 Women, particularly those inservice industries and with less education, were more
likely than men to exit the labour force during the pandemic in many countries.53 For example, unlike otherrecessions in the United States, where men’s employment varied more along the business cycle, women,
particularly those with children, were more penalized
than men in the pandemic recession.54 Part of this was
driven by social expectations of women’s obligation
towards childcare during school closures.55 Among
those able to stay employed (mostly those with higher education and the ability to telecommute), the real
challenge was managing both childcare and work, increasing everyday workload and stress.56
After the sharp contraction in 2020, the global economy is expanding again: average income perperson is projected to be more than 5 percent higher in 2023 than in 2019.57 But the economic costs are
lasting. During the Covid-­19 pandemic governments
implemented sizeable emergency programmes in acontext of declining fiscal revenue due to limited economic activity. Advanced economies used a range offiscal and monetary policies to respond to the healthemergency, along with unprecedented support to retain livelihoods, employment, consumption and people’s homes. Many emerging economies struggled toprovide adequate social safety net support to combat
the pandemic under a tight fiscal space and plunged
into debt distress.58 In both cases this countercyclicalpolicy resulted in substantial accumulation of public debt, already trending up in previous years.59 Now
countries are facing tradeoffs between servicing theirdebt or financing social policies: “3.3 billion people

live in countries that spend more on interest payments
than on education or health,”60 a dynamic that might
result in higher poverty61 and lower human development. Indeed, in 24 of the 51 most debt-­vulnerable
economies identified by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), HDI values are not projected to recover in 2023 from the 2020–2021 dip.62

Mismanaging interdependence as reflected inintensifying conflicts, nearly everywhere

Our world is becoming unhinged. Geopolitical“tensions are rising. Global challenges aremounting. And we seem incapable of coming
together to respond. We confront a hostof existential threats­—­from the climate
crisis to disruptive technologies­—­and we
do so at a time of chaotic transition.”—UN Secretary-­General António Guterres63

Recent outbreaks of violent conflicts in different partsof the world, and their escalation towards longer termand potentially larger scale conflicts, signal a resurgence of threats to global peace and stability that are
spilling over across countries. Large-­scale conflicts
involving major powers are escalating for the firsttime since the end of the Cold War. In 2022, even before the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East andAfrican regions, 1.2 billion people (15 percent of theworld’s population) were affected by conflicts in theirvicinity.64 These dramatic ­—­and dangerous­—­shifts inglobal stability and security have major repercussions
over time and across borders.
The intensification of conflicts, and the involvement of major powers, is momentous not only forcountries involved in direct conflicts but for all. Bothviolence and peacefulness can be contagious.65 Conflicts often change the perception of wars (making
them appear more acceptable), increasing the propensity for violent outbreaks elsewhere.66 There isoverwhelming evidence of cross-­national contagionof major politically disruptive events.67 Conflicts
and their implications often spill over to neighbouring countries, augmenting impacts and risks.68 The
spread of domestic conflicts to regional conflicts, andthe subsequent political and economic implications
across the world, points to the critical need to contain

Chapter 1 — Human development suffers when interdependence is mismanaged

35

conflicts and mitigate overall effects. Conflicts also
increase propensity for militarization.69 Global military spending has been on an upward trend and forthe first time surpassed $2 trillion in 2019.70
The implications for human development are staggering. The year 2022 saw the highest number ofbattle-­related deaths in generations.71 It registered
the highest number of state-­based armed conflicts
since World War II72 and a growing share of one-­sided
conflicts where unarmed civil populations were being
attacked.73 War fatalities are growing at an alarming
rate, including those borne by civilians (figure 1.7).74
Armed conflicts are pushing millions of people into
forced displacement.
Over the past decade the number of countries involved in conflicts outside their own borders has
been rising, demonstrating how geopolitical interdependence plays out. Of the 55 state-­based conflicts in
2022, 22 were internationalized,75 compared with 4 of
37 civil conflicts in 200076­—­a more than fivefold increase. While countries depend on each other to breakout of conflicts and move towards long-­term peaceagreements, it is not evident that foreign involvement
helps achieve such objectives any faster. Instead, theproliferation of actors and conflicting motives­—­alongwith the risks of added military and funding, as wellas perceptions of external support­—­have made conflicts more difficult to resolve.77 External involvement
often leads to deadlier outcomes by prolonging theduration of conflicts and increasing the number ofcasualties.78 Conflicts are also intensified by nonstate
actors, leading to more violent outcomes.79
Interdependence continues to be relevant before,
during and after conflicts, and its mismanagement
amplifies the overall impacts. Emerging from conflicts, persecution and human rights violations, thenumber of people forced to flee their homes reached
108 million, the highest level since World War II andtwo ­and a h­ alf times the number in 2010 (figure 1.8).80
And this does not include the latest displacements­—­
Palestinians in Gaza and the Armenia refugee crisis,among others. One in five children globally lives in oris fleeing conflict.81
Forcibly displaced people (more than half of whom
are internally displaced)­—­particularly those with acuteneeds, including pregnant women, the elderly, thevery young, people with disabilities and people withchronic diseases­— ­often face acute shortages of food,Figure 1.7 Civilian fatalities as a result of conflict are surging after years of declining
Change in civilian fatalities due to conflict (%)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

2015

2017

2016

2018

2019

2021
2022

–10
–20
–30
–40
Source: Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2023.

36

2020

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure 1.8 People forced to flee their homes trending upwards towards record levels
People forced to flee (millions)
120

100

80

60

40

0

1995

1998

2001

2004

2007

2010

2013

2016

2019

2022

Note: People forced to flee include internally displaced people, refugees under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR), Palestinian refugees under UNHCR’s mandate, asylum seekers and other people in need of international protection.
Source: UNHCR 2023c.

clean water, medicine, electricity and basic means forsurvival.82 Millions of people, including children, whohave been forced to flee their homes due to no faultof their own could live a life of dignity if countries (involved or not involved in conflicts) could find mutually agreeable solutions for displaced people.83 Theseissues come at a time of heightened hostility towards
refugees, particularly in high-­income countries, where
the public discourse on refugees has become more polarized.84 Some 80 percent of the world’s refugees are
hosted in mostly low- and middle-­income countries.85
In 2024 the number of people in need of humanitarian aid is expected to reach 300 million.86 Concurrent
increases in funding are not commensurate with the
sharp increases in humanitarian aid needed. Drought
on top of rising conflicts is escalating risks of food insecurity and disease outbreaks in many countries.87

Climate change: Causes and human development
costs of mismanaged interdependence
Greenhouse gas emissions, the leading factor behindclimate change, result from multiple human activities.88 There is a double decoupling between those
responsible for emissions and those affected by theconsequences of climate change. The first decouplingis temporal: the activities producing emissions today
have their main positive impacts on the current generation, while the costs are borne by future generations.
The second decoupling is geographic: the places that
historically have benefited from emissions are likely
to receive a lower burden of the expected costs. For instance, very high HDI countries have higher averagecarbon dioxide emissions but are expected to have asmaller proportion of extreme temperature days by
the end of the 21st century (figure 1.9).
Recognizing the need to manage interdependence
is key as climate change mitigation is pursued. For
instance, as national environmental regulations become more stringent in some places, economic activity in those countries may face incentives to shiftcarbon-­intensive production to locations where regulations are not as stringent. Businesses often takeadvantage of trade to overcome environmental regulations at home. A country committed to reducing
emissions will have 8 percent higher sector carbon
imports from countries that have not committed tocarbon emissions reductions than if it had no commitments, thereby simply changing the sourcing
of consumption of their carbon-­intensive goods.89
Carbon offshoring (relocating carbon-­intensive production to regions with low carbon standards) andleakages offset domestic emissions savings and may

Chapter 1 — Human development suffers when interdependence is mismanaged

37

Figure 1.9 Planetary pressures are decoupled from their geographic and temporal effects
Index of Planetary Pressures value, 2022(based on carbon dioxide emissions andmaterial footprint per capita)

Number of additional extreme temperature days above
the 1986–2005 average by the end of the century
100

0.250
0.200

50
0.150
0.100

0

0.050
–50

0
Low

MediumHigh

Very highHuman Development Index group

Low

MediumHigh

Very highHuman Development Index group

Note: The Index of Planetary Pressures is constructed using the per capita levels of carbon dioxide emissions and material footprint in each country(it is 1 minus the adjustment factor for planetary pressures presented in table 7 in the Sta­tistical Annex). Extreme days by the end of the century arebased on the very high emissions scenario. Each box plots the middle 50 percent of the distribution; the central line is the median. Outside the box
the extreme lines are the approximate minimum and maximum of the distribution. Outliers are not shown.
Source: Human Development Report Office based on Carleton and others (2022) and UNDP (2020b).

even lead to higher worldwide emissions. Environmental policies that ignore the possible impacts on
trade could have unintended consequences.90
The human development costs of mismanaging
interdependence associated with climate change are
expected to be high and growing. Leading up to a
decade of increasingly higher temperatures, 2023 hasbeen the hottest ever­—­at least since 1880, when global temperatures were first recorded.91 At the time ofwriting, the threshold of 2°C above preindustrial levels was passed for the first time in a single day.92
Projections from the UNDP Human Climate Horizons platform show that if we continue on the current
path of intense planetary pressures, climate change
will have devastating­—­and highly unequal­—­impacts
on human development. Even with moderate mitigation, almost 40 million people are expected to die because of higher temperatures from now to the end of
the century. In a scenario of very high emissions, thedeath toll could surpass 190 million people.93 Moreover, the impacts are highly unequal. Climate change
can result in an explosion of inequalities in humandevelopment, with the Arab States, South Asia and38Sub-­Saharan Africa regions expected to see sharp increases in death rates (figure 1.10).94
The effects of climate change are multidimensional.
For example, the global mean sea level has alreadyrisen by 23 centimetres since the late 19th century.
Even under a moderate emissions scenario, sea levels
will continue to rise by 40.7 centimetres by century’send. Sea level rise implies greater risk for permanent
land inundation and extreme flooding. Coastal zones
are among the world’s most densely populated areas
and will be hit disproportionately.95 For some small island developing states, already vulnerable to climatechange impacts because of their geographic locationand their relative lack of resources to invest in adaptation, the share of the population living in 1-in-20 year
floodplains may triple by century’s end.96

Prospects for advancing agency
and wellbeing will be shaped by the
management of interdependence
At the midpoint to 2030, the target date to meet theSDGs, the world is more off track than four years ago97

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure 1.10 Climate change could result in an explosion of inequalities in human development

Change in deaths per 100,000 people
120

Arab States

100

South Asia

80

Sub-Saharan Africa

60
40
20

East Asia and the Pacific
Latin America and the Caribbean0

Europe and Central Asia

–20
–40
Developed–60–80

2020–2039(Next decades)

2040–2059(Mid-century)

2080–2099(End of century)

Note: Very high emissions scenario.
Source: Human Development Report Office based on Carleton and others (2022) and Human Climate Horizons (https://horizons.hdr.undp.org/).

and is regressing on key goals on climate action, biodiversity loss, food security, poverty, inequality andgender inequality.98 Consider hunger.99 The numberof people who are hungry stopped falling in the late
2000s and, after a decade of stagnation, has climbed
back up (figure 1.11).
The Covid-­19 pandemic delivered the largest setbacks to monetary poverty in decades.100 For the firsttime in two decades, poverty trends reversed. Thisis true for the extreme poverty line ($2.15 a day) andfor the low-­income ($3.65 a day) and middle-­income($6.85 a day) poverty lines.101 In 2020, 90 million
more people were in extreme poverty relative to thepre-­Covid-19 projection.102 Household surveys during the pandemic found that 23 percent of respondents stopped working, and 60 percent lost income.103
These setbacks are likely to have permanently shifted
the long-­term trajectory for poverty reduction, setting
the world farther off course from meeting the SDGs
(figure 1.12). Only a third of countries are expected tomeet SDG 1 by 2030.104 The poorest also suffered theseverest setbacks in health and education, includingpremature mortality and lasting losses in learning.105
Global income inequality106 has also worsened overthe past decade, returning to the same level as in the
1950s.107 Between-­country income inequality had
been falling, as low- and middle-income countries
caught up to high-income countries, but the ­Covid-­19
pandemic reversed that for many countries. 108
Within-­country income inequality has been rising inmany countries, exacerbated by the pandemic, as thepoorest households generally lost jobs and income
at higher rates than richer households.109 Inequalityof income and wealth is not inevitable­—­it is a political choice.110 Understanding the drivers of within-­country inequality, against the backdrop of how wemanage interdependence, is at the heart of the policy
discourse on inequality today.
A backlash against gender equality in different
parts of the world has stalled its progress in many
places.111 Women’s civil liberties and political and economic freedoms are being reversed in many contexts;

Chapter 1 — Human development suffers when interdependence is mismanaged

39

Figure 1.11 Trends in reducing global hunger have reversed
Number of people undernourished(millions)

Prevalence of undernourishment(percent)

900
800

18
793.4

16

Number of people undernourished (millions, left axis)

700
600

735.1

12.1

563.9

588.9

12

612.8

500
400

14

10
Prevalence of undernourishment (percent, right axis)

300

7.7

7.9

8.9

9.2

7.9

8
6

200

4

100

2

0

0
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

Note: Data for 2022 are projections.
Source: FAO and others 2023.

Figure 1.12 The Covid-­19 pandemic may have permanently shifted the trajectory for poverty reduction
Share of the world population
living below $2.15 a day (percent)12

11

Realized
Pre-COVID-19 pandemic projection

10.8

Nowcast/forecast

10
9.3
9

8.5

8

8.8
8.4

8.1

7.8

7.5

7

6.5

6
2015

2019

2020 2021

2022

Source: UN 2023c.

40

6.8

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/20242030

on current trends it will take 40 more years for men
and women to be represented equally as leaders innational issues.112 The reversal of various social anddevelopmental indicators coincides with the erosionof several democratic norms and practices,113 spurredin part by dissatisfaction with mismanaged interdependence (chapter 2).114
There is interdependence between countries but
also interlinkages across challenges. For example,
acute pressures from environmental change, exacerbating water stress and food insecurity, can fuel tensions and conflicts, undermining peace and stability
and worsening outcomes for communities. By 2030
up to two-­thirds of the world’s extreme poor could be
living in conflict and fragile settings.115

While there is evidence that interdependence“
can expand agency, there is also evidence that its
mismanagement can pull in the other direction

The human development approach is highly relevant to understand the implications of mismanaged
interdependence for agency (chapter 5). A person
who acts and brings about change is an agent, andagency refers to the ability of people to live lives theyvalue and have reason to value. For example, journalists who consider it their duty to bring truthful, unbiased information to the public and who are able towork without fear of retaliation or concern for theirpersonal security will be better off in a social and political context that guards these individual freedoms
than in a context that inhibits it. In a world moving
towards increased political polarization (chapters 2
and 6),116 and where freedom of speech is on the decline,117 people’s agency is being conditioned in new
ways.
Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom characterizes development as the expansion of people’s freedom
in a variety of ways (comprising both process and opportunity freedoms), with capabilities (related bothto wellbeing and to agency) shaping public policy andwith public policy having the potential to enhancethose capabilities­—­in a potential virtuous cycle.118
How we choose to manage interdependence has abearing on whether such a virtuous cycle takes hold.
While there is evidence that interdependence can
expand agency, there is also evidence that its mismanagement can pull in the other direction. Recent

patterns of mismanaging interdependence have had
detrimental effects on people’s rights, income andwellbeing, affecting their political preferences andchoices (chapter 2). For example, democratic norms
and practices have eroded to levels last seen in 1986,
measured across 202 countries.119
Further, the last 20 years saw a deterioration in
freedom of expression (figure 1.13). Oppression
against journalists, writers, activists and artists are
documented across all world regions and is on therise. Some 85 percent of the global population experienced a decline in press freedom in their country between 2016 and 2020.120 Lack of independent media
is amplifying prejudice and divide, depriving publicdebates of impartial views in a context of heightenedpolarization.
And further still, people’s mental wellbeing has
been worsening. In the last 10 years the number ofpeople expressing stress, sadness, anxiety, anger orworry has been on the rise, reaching its highest levels since the Gallup surveys began.121 Paradoxically,
this coincides with a time of high material wellbeing,
unprecedented progress in technology and higher
human development than ever.
The adverse impacts have been worse for specificcommunities. For example, Indigenous communities face a confluence of changes through mismanaged interdependence. Indigenous peoples faced
many instances of land dispossessions and loss ofnatural resources for centuries for various industrial
and infrastructural developments such as mines anddams.122 For example, 90 percent of the languages
spoken in the world, a large majority of them spoken
by Indigenous peoples, are expected to become extinct in a hundred years.123
Consider people living on islands confronting theexistential threat of rising sea levels.124 A likely future when their way of life and land will no longer
be there creates a sense of helplessness. In Kiribati
and Tuvalu, where the mainland may be underwaterin 50–100 years, there are opportunities to move toneighbouring countries, but many islanders think ofrelocation as the last resort.125 Leaders argue that relocating people is self-­defeating­—­it defies the pointof acknowledging what is happening to the world.
Elders do not want to move because of their connection to their homeland and traditions. A body of work
is documenting eco-­anxiety­—­a generalized sense ofChapter 1 — Human development suffers when interdependence is mismanaged

41

Figure 1.13 Freedom of expression­—­receding in recent years

Freedom of Expression Index value
0.70

0.60

0.50

0.40

0.30

0.20
1960

1980

2000

2022

Note: Data are population-­weighted global averages.
Source: Human Development Report Office calculations based on data from the Varieties of Democracy project and the World Bank’s World Development Indicators database.

loss that the ecological foundations of existence areunder collapse.126 This new strand of work deals with
topics not normally dealt with by the disasters literature.127 It delves into understanding generalized feelings about climate change in the abstract (the thoughtthat humanity is doomed).128 And it presents environmental loss as disappearing landscapes and biodiversity. These feelings relate to existential threats,loss of identity, ways of life and place, and anticipated and perceived future disasters. They create an
overwhelming sense of responsibility to deal withsomething so huge that it feels paralysing­—­a loss ofagency. Young people around the world express distress from the inability to respond to events aroundthem or contribute to change, in what they view ascollective inaction. That makes it difficult for them tofind meaning in other life pursuits, such as investingin their schooling or having a child.129
This sense of loss of agency in the face of climatechange is being studied by sociologists keen to understand whether the heightened crisis and uncertainties could be an opportunity for change and42transformation.130 This is a manifestation of agency
gaps that stand in the way of advancing collective action (chapter 5).
Uncertainty, institutional structures and misaligned incentives impair agency. Higher perceived
human insecurity is associated with lower agency.131
And constrained agency is reflected in the growing
gap between science-­based recommendations for
ensuring sustainable wellbeing for all and actual
actions on the ground. “Constrained agency perpetuates unsustainability, reduces the richness ofvalues and aspirations and creates an illusionary
contradiction between development and sustainability.” 132 These circumstances further diminish people’s role as agents, making collective action evenmore difficult.
Despite the challenges, some sociologists argue
that agency can actively shape Earth systems133 andthat agency can drive large-­scale societal change.134
Consider the study of conceptualizing new ways fortransnational climate governance that is slowly taking shape.135 This work tries to understand how to

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

activate agency beyond national boundaries to moveobjectives of public interest at the planetary scale.136
How to manage interdependence is a choice. Interdependence multiplies the benefits of sharedknowledge and cooperation as reflected in advancesin medicine, climate adaptation, poverty reduction,energy transitions and more. As explored in chapters 3 and 4, the eradication of smallpox, the Montreal Protocol, interventions for AIDS137 and fiscal

responses during the Covid-­19 pandemic138 exemplify momentous achievements against what otherwise
would have been an even more massive downturn inhuman development. The rest of part I of the Reportdiscusses how interdependence is being reshaped(chapter 2) and what instruments could be used to
manage interdependence better (chapter 3). Part IIthen explores how to reimagine cooperation to advance human development.

Chapter 1 — Human development suffers when interdependence is mismanaged

43

CHAPTER
2

Globalinterdependence
persists—but isbeing reshaped

PA RT I — A DVA N CIN G HU MAN D EVELOP MENT IN AN INTER D EP END ENT WOR LD

45

CHAPTER 2

Global interdependence persists—
but is being reshaped
People continue to live in globally interdependentsocieties. Despite a slowdown in economic
globalization, interdependence—rather than fraying—isbeing reconfigured by drivers that will persist well into
the future.
The dangerous planetary changes of the
Anthropocene—pandemics, climate change,
biodiversity loss­— transcend borders, all whileadvances in digital technologies shift economic
structures and drive ever higher cross-borderinformation flows.
Going forward, as societies become more linked in
multiple ways, collective action to address globallyshared challenges will be imperative to safeguard
human security and advance human development.

46

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

We live in a hyperconnected world. The supply chain
disruptions and inflation in the aftermath of theCovid-­19 pandemic put in sharp relief global economic interdependence and the attendant vulnerabilities.1 Concerns about the unequal distribution of
the benefits of interdependence across and withincountries­—­and the risks arising from underregulated cross-­border financial and trade flows­— ­are notnew.2 A slowdown of international trade followed therealization of several of those risks during the 2007–2008 global financial crisis,3 and after the C­ ovid-­19
pandemic­—­leading some to proclaim the end of globalization.4 Compounded by resurgent conflicts,
rising geopolitical tensions and deadlocks in somemultilateral institutions,5 the ties that bind us appear
to be under strain and even in retreat.
Yet this chapter argues that interdependence, rather
than fraying, is being reshaped and in some respects isdeepening­—­in part because of drivers that will persist
well into the future. Three main arguments emerge.
First, beyond economic ties, cross-­border flowsof people, information and ideas across countries
remain high6 and make interdependence a defining feature of our time.7 While interdependence cancreate economic and other opportunities for people
and help attenuate the impacts of local and regional
shocks,8 it also implies that new vulnerabilities may
emerge and that shocks can propagate globally.9 Vulnerabilities and propagation of shocks are not an inescapable feature of interdependence; rather theyreflect excessively unregulated approaches to globalization. These approaches have led to, for example,
the concentration of production of some commodities and goods in a few regions or a handful of producers, increasing the risks of global disruptions when
one of them experiences problems in production or
distribution.10 They have also resulted in an unequal
distribution of the costs and benefits of globalization
within countries,11 eroding economic opportunities
for many and fuelling perceptions of insecurity thatcan contribute to political polarization and the support of political positions characterized as populist12­—­potentially reflecting a globalization of discontent.13
Second, the scale and speed of global links are profoundly reshaping interdependence. Humans havebecome geological-­scale drivers of planetary changes, ushering in a proposed new geological epoch­—­the
Anthropocene, the age of humans. With it comes anunprecedented set of planetary challenges, in addition
to globalization shaped by policy choices. The cross-­border impacts of such events as forest fires, zoonotic
disease outbreaks and extreme weather are at least inpart the result of planetary changes driven by human
production and consumption, and those changes cannot be directly managed by curbing flows of goods,
finance and people at the borders. At the same timeadvances in digital technologies and concerted efforts
to decarbonize economies are shifting economic structures and development opportunities. Digital services
and platforms shrink the world by enabling real-­time
collaboration and almost instantaneous global communication. Even though global trade in goods may
have plateaued and global value chains are being reconfigured, cross-­border information flows are still on
the rise, reaching new record highs every year.14

Vulnerabilities and propagation of“shocks are not an inescapable feature ofinterdependence; rather they reflect excessively
unregulated approaches to globalization
Third, the globalization of discontent points toblind spots in managing global interdependence.
Pursuing unregulated globalization or retreating toprotectionism are not the only options­—­and neither
is likely to manage the shared global challenges of
the Anthropocene. We all share this planet.15 Even if
imposing trade barriers or making international migration increasingly difficult would reduce certain
types of interdependences among countries, planetary challenges such as climate change do not stop at
national borders. Neither do the benefits of climatechange mitigation or pandemic preparedness. As wemove deeper into the Anthropocene, our futures areinexorably interlinked. Avoiding the mismanagementof interdependence, and the human development
costs that come with mismanagement, is important(chapter 1), but so is harnessing interdependence inways that advance human development.

The persistence of global ties­—­a hyperconnected world withmultiple global interdependences
More and more people live in communities that arepart of globally interdependent societies,16 their

Chapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped

47

lives closely intertwined with cultures, economies
and ecosystems across the globe. The process ofglobalization­—­marked by intensified cross-­borderflows of information, people, finance, goods andservices­—­has deep roots and a long history of technological and political drivers.17
Technological advances have reduced the transportation and communication costs of manycross-­border flows,18 while deliberate policy choices have driven a deepening of interdependence
across societies and economies. Financial and tradeliberalization, instrumental in driving economic globalization since the 1970s, accelerated global economic integration to the point of being characterized
as hyperglobalization.19 Most countries integrated
into global value chains and opened their markets
to foreign trade and financial flows, yielding some
control over these flows for the promise of economic
growth and poverty reduction.20 This period brought
massive increases in standards of living for large
numbers of people,21 but the gains from trade andeconomic integration were not evenly distributed. It
also brought increases in within-­country inequality
in many high- income countries,22 often manifested

in the emergence of or increase in large subnational
inequalities,23 with declines in job opportunities concentrated in some areas and economic sectors.24 For
some low- and middle-­income countries hyperglobalization was sometimes characterized by unequalterms of trade and the implementation of policies
that may have inhibited productivity growth and development progress.25
In the past dozen or so years, amid growing concerns over supply chain disruptions and resurgent
violent conflicts, the emphasis on efficiency in the
prelude to hyperglobalization is being rebalancedwith concerns over stability and resilience. That
rebalancing has occurred, in part, through the imposition of trade barriers at national borders. For instance, trade restrictions surged from fewer than 500
a year in 2010 to nearly 3,000 in 2022.26 Efforts toreshore, nearshore and friendshore production27 alsosuggest a partial retreat from hyperglobalization.28
Despite the now slower pace of global economic
integration, or even its stagnation in some respects,
the world remains hyperconnected, with economies highly interdependent­—­b y some accounts
at historically unprecedented levels (figure 2.1).29

Figure 2.1. Hyperglobalization is down, but interdependence remains unprecedentedly highSum of global exports and imports
as a share of global GDP (%)
70
60
50
40
30
20
10

Globalization post–Bretton Woods

Hyperglobalization

A new era?

2022

2020

2018

2016

2014

2012

2010

2008

2006

2004

2002

2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

1984

1982

1980

1978

1976

1974

1972

1970

0

Source: Human Development Report Office based on the World Bank’s World Development Indicators database; recreated from Aiyar and others (2023).

48

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

International trade has been rising over the long run,in spite of substantial global disruptions.30 Financial
integration today is almost four times higher than in
the mid-­1990s.31 No region of the world can claim
self-­sufficiency, as they all rely on imports from otherregions of 25 percent or more of at least one major
type of goods and services.32 Global value chains support everything from food to medicines, and eventhe digital services and the hardware on which theyrun.33 Goods today travel twice as far as in 1965 andcross more borders before reaching their final destination.34 This makes for intricate global economic

relationships with multiple interdependences acrossthe production of goods and services (box 2.1).
Every day, millions of people cross national borders
in temporary or permanent moves between countries. Since 1970 the estimated number of people
living outside their country of birth has tripled from84 million to almost 280 million, though as a shareof the world population the increase has been moremodest (from 2.9 percent in 1990 to 3.6 percent in2020).35 The largest share of international migrants
goes to Europe (30.9 percent), closely followed by
Asia (30.5 percent).36

Box 2.1 A smartphone’s global journey­—­a tale of cross-­border economic, social and environmental impacts
Smartphones have quickly become a ubiquitous feature of everyday life for a large share of the global population.
Since the launch of the iPhone and Android phones in 2007, global sales have skyrocketed. There were 6.4 billion
smartphone mobile network subscriptions worldwide in 2022,1 and 1.15 billion new devices were expected to be
sold in 20232­—­one for every seven people on the planet. Smartphones are more than just devices to connect to thedigital world. They are products of a complex and interconnected global system that transcends borders and involves
multiple actors and processes. The journey of a smartphone from conception to use reveals how flows of materials,
information, value and waste across the world shape our lives.
Before reaching consumers, smartphones cross multiple borders, sometimes the same border more than once.
Components of smartphones, including memory chips, processors, batteries and camera modules, are produced by
specialized firms in places such as in China, Japan and the Republic of Korea.3 Each component requires inputs fromother economies along the global value chain. For example, a battery requires cobalt, often extracted in low-­income
countries where the mining industry has been associated with serious human rights violations, including child labour,and severe environmental degradation.4 Cobalt is exported from countries with mines for processing in countries
such as China, before being sent to countries such as Japan or the Republic of Korea to be combined with othermaterials to create battery cells.5 Battery cells may then be sent back to China or shipped to, for example, Malaysia
for assembly in battery packs, together with other components such as circuit boards.6
The value added by these intermediate activities is low relative to the final retail price of smartphones, leaving lowand middle-­income countries with a smaller share of the profits from a globally produced device. Most of the profit iscaptured by the firms that design, market and sell smartphones, mainly based in high-­income countries.7 These firms
also own most of the intellectual property rights and patents related to smartphones.8
Smartphones have transformed the lives of billions of people around the world, enabling them to communicate
across borders, acquire information almost instantaneously, access financial services and participate in the digital
economy. However, there are still large inequalities in smartphone access globally.9 Furthermore, despite its many
positive effects, excessive use of smartphones has also been associated with negative mental health impacts, especially among young people.10
The journey of the smartphone does not stop once it reaches consumers. Smartphones have a short lifespan, withbuilt-­in obsolescence and heavy marketing of newer models hastening their replacement. Electronic waste (e-­waste),including smartphones, is growing rapidly. Globally, each person produces about 6 kilograms of e-­waste each year.
Yet the gradients are steep: the average person in parts of Africa produces less than 2 kilograms of e-­waste eachyear, while the average person in Norway produces 28.5 kilograms.11 Only about 17 percent of e-­waste is recycled,
despite the potential to recover and repurpose critical minerals.12 A large share of e-­waste ends up in landfills in lowand middle-­income countries, releasing toxic materials and creating health hazards.13
Notes
1. Statista 2023. 2. Kharpal 2023. 3. Gentile and others 2021; Sturgeon and Kawakami 2010. 4. Amnesty International 2023. 5. Carton, Mongardini and Li 2018; Gulley 2023; Richter 2023. 6. Farooqui 2023. 7. WIPO 2017. 8. Sturgeon and Kawakami 2010. 9. Rowntree 2019. 10. Abi-­
Jaoude, Naylor and Pignatiello 2020. 11. Parajuly and others 2019. 12. Forti 2020. 13. Parajuly and others 2019.

Chapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped49

People move across borders for various reasons,
including seeking work, advancing their educationor pursuing humanitarian protection. Mobility is a
key feature of human development, as it enables
people to expand their choices, exercise their agency and contribute to their wellbeing and that of theirfamilies, as well as that of both their host and origin
communities.37 Consider the economic significanceof remittances from migrants, which for low- andmiddle-­income countries have long surpassed official
development assistance and in 2022 were reaching
the same levels as foreign direct investment­—­but aremuch less volatile (figure 2.2). In addition to economic ties,38 international migration also creates socialand cultural ties between host and origin countries.39
While concerns about the economic and social
implications of international migration have increased in many high-­income countries, along with
anti-­immigration narratives, a large body of researchshows that international immigration provides net
benefits in advanced economies, especially whenpolicies are in place to help international migrants establish themselves in the local labour market.40
Perhaps the most telling example of hyperconnections (explored in coming sections) is the rapid
increase in digital technology capacity and adoption, linking vast geographic distances­— ­almost inreal time. Global bandwidth capacity, up dramatically since 1990, has enabled massive growth incross-­border flows of information41 and boosted international commerce among countries42 throughglobal value chains.43 Despite regionally concentrated inequalities, the roll-­out of digital connectivity
has been broad: 95 percent of the global population is
now within the range of a mobile broadband network,and 5.4 billion people were internet users in 2023.44

New risks of economic concentration and dislocation
In a hyperconnected world, where tightly coupled interactions allow for cross-­b order flows ofFigure 2.2 Remittances to low- and middle-­income countries are approaching the level of foreign direct investment
US dollars (billions)
Foreign direct investment, net inflows

800
700
600
500
400

Personal remittances, received
300
200
100

Net official development assistance received

2022

2021

2020

2018

2019

2017

2015

2016

2013

2014

2012

2011

2010

2008

2009

2007

2005

2006

2003

2004

2002

2001

2000

1998

1999

1997

1995

1996

1993

1994

1992

1991

1990

0

Source: Human Development Report Office based on the World Bank’s World Development Indicators database, accessed 10 November 2023.
Recreated from IOM (2022).

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HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

information, people, finance, and goods and services,45 some domestic policies and choices can havespillovers that quickly spread regionally and evenglobally. Large economies of scale and scope canconcentrate production in one or a few countries,
leaving other countries vulnerable to decisions madeelsewhere. Most global trade occurs within macroregional blocs dominated by the largest economies,46
whereas many low- and middle-­income countries
heavily dependent on international trade find themselves at the tail-­end of global trade with far less control over factors that influence terms of trade.47 That
is why domestic policies in major economies can affect low- and middle-­income countries. For example,
the US Federal Reserve sets monetary policy under
its legal mandate in the United States, but its decisions have substantial effects48 in emerging market
economies.49 Because transmission runs throughmultiple channels, cross-­b order spillovers can be
hard to contain.50

Market concentration may be a sign of“specialization and economies of scale, which yieldefficiency gains, but it also increases the risks
that disruptions and shocks in one or a few firms
will propagate through deeply integrated global
value chains across many sectors and countries

In many global value chains power is often concentrated in a few transnational corporations whosebusiness strategies can directly affect multiple economies.51 Transnational corporations can boost investment, innovation and economic opportunities,52 but
they can also crowd out domestic firms, especially in
low- and middle-­income countries.53 Market concentration in global value chains enables markups andrent seeking by top firms, which have been linked tothe decline in the global labour share of income54 andto higher consumer prices.55
Market concentration is particularly high in the
global value chains for goods that serve some basic
needs, such as food,56 as well as in the digital technology space. Today, a handful of technology companies
wield significant market power, and their decisions
influence societal and political dynamics. In 2021 themarket capitalization of each of the three largest techcompanies in the world surpassed the GDP of morethan 90 percent of countries­—­including some of theworld’s largest economies.57
Concentration may be a sign of specializationand economies of scale (as well as network externalities), which yield efficiency gains, 58 but it also
increases the risks that disruptions and shocks in
one or a few firms will propagate through deeply
integrated global value chains across many sectors
and countries. 59 Specialization can lead to markets where there are “too few to fail.”60 According
to recent data, almost 40 percent of global trade ingoods is concentrated in three or fewer countries­—­even for goods with more suppliers.61 Concentration
may be particularly high for some critical products
and materials required for digital technologies andthe energy transition.62 Disruptions in global value
chains have become more common and more systemic than in the past,63 driven largely by a mix ofclimate shocks and geopolitical tensions that may
continue into the future.64
The other side of concentration is the economic
dislocation associated with shifts in production that
reduce economic opportunities in sectors or regions
previously engaged in domestic production that has
been replaced by imports. Despite clear warnings
about those risks, the implicit promise that the aggregate gains would be distributed so that the “losers”
of globalization would be compensated often failed
to materialize.65 Indeed, governments were often either unwilling or unable to offset negative side effects
of global economic integration for some segments of
their population, perhaps in part because economic
dislocation was driven not by economic integration
alone but also by other factors such as technologicalchange.66
Regardless of the process that led to economic dislocation, regions or groups that felt left behind andbelieved this to be the result of globalization often
became hostile to trade openness, contributing to increases in support for political positions that can be
described as populist (see below) and political polarization.67 Painted with the broadest possible brush,interdependence that is not well managed not only
harms human development (chapter 1); it also has
broader implications reflected in a discontent with
globalization that feeds into processes of politicalpolarization.

Chapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped51

Mismanaging interdependence feeds
the globalization of discontent
In recent years political movements that advocate
the domestic over the international and question
the need for global cooperation have gained traction
in many countries.68 These movements are characterized by narrative frames that contrast what is
purported to represent the interests of the general
population with what serves an established elite, inwhat has been described as an anti-­elite theory ofsociety.69 Rather than ideology based, these views
centre on people’s “moral” superiority over a corrupt
elite. Some variants include identity-­based organizedviews, such as nativist movements based on the superiority of one race or ethnicity, or movements thatfavour strong leaders without checks and balances.70
Today, the share of countries with governmentsthat fit with this broader definition characterizationof anti-elite movements that question the need for
global cooperation (often designated as populist) isunprecedented. What is more, there is a shift in theirideological affiliation. Left-­wing affiliation was once
dominant (and is still at high levels), but the shareof right-­wing affiliation has increased dramaticallysince the 1990s (figure 2.3).

52

Figure 2.3 Support for anti-elite politics is on the rise
Share of independent countries withgovernments characterized as anti-elite (%)
25
20
15
10
5
0

1900

1920

1940

1960

Left-wing affiliation

1960

1980

2020

Right-wing affiliation

Source: Funke, Schularick and Trebesch 2023.

entails norms and identities that may be perceived
as under threat from globalization, and these perceptions of threat contribute to the support for populism.73 And the two channels can reinforce eachother,74 making it hard to untangle the links.

What drives discontent?

Both welfare and beliefs channels linkmismanaged interdependence and discontent

Despite the surge in support for these political movements, the animosity towards globalization has notnecessarily increased among the general public.71
One way of accounting for this paradox is through aframework that explains the links between mismanaged interdependence and the rise of political movements that can be characterized as populist on the
demand side (people supporting parties and leaders)and on the supply side (emergence of those leadersand parties) of politics.
Both welfare and beliefs-­based channels feed into
the hostility towards globalization to boost support
for populist movements (figure 2.4). Simply put, thewelfare channel shows how economic dislocations
and human development implications of mismanaged interdependence can lead people to rally behind
populist leaders, who may use people’s discontent
and grievances about distributional effects (actual or
perceived) to their advantage.72 The beliefs channel

In globally interdependent socioecological systems,
shocks and disruptions have multiple, sometimes unforeseen, global ripple effects. Human development
suffers when interdependence is mismanaged (chapter 1). On the demand side human development losses
may directly affect people’s policy preferences, opening policy space for populist and nativist narratives if
established mechanisms are unable to manage andmitigate the impacts of global shocks. For example,
natural hazards and financial crises increase support
for authoritarian leadership and extreme politicalmovements, particularly on the far right. Household
debt crises that frequently follow a financial crisis arealso linked to mounting support for far-­right populist
parties.75 Since the 2007–2008 global financial crisis,
the number of countries that have implemented austerity policies has risen substantially,76 potentially further circumscribing their capacities to protect people
from the repercussions of global shocks.77

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure 2.4 Mismanaged interdependence leads to demand for populism through welfare losses and beliefs

Mismanaged interdependence → shocks

Human development losses

Direct impact on beliefs (perceptionsof threat, insecurity), attitudes

Direct impacts on policy
and leader preferences
Individual policy preferences

Changes in beliefs
Indirect impacts on policy
preferences throughchanging beliefs and attitudes

Electoral outcomes:
Support for populism

Party programmes and leadersoffering populist narratives

Source: Human Development Report Office elaboration based on Rodrik (2021).

Still, the increased risk of globalization-­linked (inreality or perception) localized welfare losses cannot
fully explain the rising appeal of populist and nativist
movements. A recent review of survey experiments
finds little support for the hypothesis that economic self-­interest alone drives antiglobalization sentiment.78 In some cases electoral support for politicalcandidates advocating protectionist measures evenincreased despite these measures having negative effects on local employment.79 The findings echo public
opinion data, as well research on the effects of objective globalization risks such as offshoring of jobs.80
Thus, the link between human development losses from global shocks and increased support for populism may also work through changing perceptions,beliefs, identities and attitudes towards globalization.81 Fear and feelings of insecurity, especially thoserelated to losing status, can shift preferences in a populist and nativist direction.82 This beliefs-­based link canbe particularly potent in contexts of long-­term deteriorating economic prospects.83 For example, nationalist
and anti-­immigration narratives take hold more easily
in places experiencing adverse economic change (forexample, increases in the unemployment rate matter
more than the levels of unemployment as such).84
This matters in a globally interdependent world thatis also increasingly worried and distressed.85 Today,

feelings of distress and insecurity are pervasive andpersistent, permeating even the wealthiest countries.
Across the world almost 3 billion people report feelingworried, stressed or sad.86 While subjective wellbeing
has been found to be susceptible to external shocks,87
the Covid-­19 pandemic seems only to have exacerbated a pre-­exiting existing trend: both worry and stresswere reaching record highs even before the pandemic (figure 2.5). These feelings of distress have been on
the rise even as the world has made substantial development progress,88 though the trend of progress wasinterrupted in 2020 and 2021 (chapter 1).
Political leaders and movements can
exploit the links between mismanaged
interdependence and discontent
On the supply side political leaders and movements
can reinforce the links between mismanaged interdependence and rising support for populism, by mobilizing discontent to their advantage.89 While suchtactics are not unique to populist movements, a common narrative of these movements is to pit negativecollective emotions towards revenge against an established elite,90 often portraying leaders as champions and competent protectors of “common people”91
in opposition to a global elite. As such, they may gain

Chapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped

53

Figure 2.5 Even prior to 2020, worry and stress were rising in most countries
a. Change in the percentage of people reporting experiencing stress, 2011–2019 (percentage points)
Increase60

Low HDI
group

Medium HDI
group

High HDI
group

Very high HDI
group

40

20

0

–20

–40

–60

80

Decreaseb. Change in the percentage of people reporting experiencing worry, 2011–2019 (percentage points)
Increase60

Low HDI
group

Medium HDI
group

High HDI
group

Very high HDI
group

40

20

0

–20

–40

–60

–80

Decrease DI is Human Development Index.
H
Note: Values refer to the change in the percentage of people who reported experiencing stress or worry “during a lot of the day yesterday.”
Source: Human Development Report Office, based on Gallup (2023).

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HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

traction by tapping into frustrations among those
who feel left behind by globalization or see globalization as a threat to their identities.
This anti-­elite, antiglobalization sentiment may
be rooted in part in the way that global elites havebeen able to cash in on the benefits of globalization
to race further ahead. In addition to the economic
dislocations, with increased inequalities within countries and pervasive job losses in certain places, hyperglobalization has enabled offshore tax evasion andavoidance by wealthy individuals and companies.
Multinationals may have shifted as much as $1 trillion
of profits to tax havens in 2022,92 resulting in billionsof dollars in lost tax revenue. Global losses of corporate tax revenue have skyrocketed since the mid-­
1990s as a result of profit shifting (figure 2.6). These
patterns are clearly associated with asymmetries between how elites and the general population benefit from hyperglobalization, fuelling discontent that
feeds into populist narratives.
Populist leaders and movements can also workthrough the beliefs channel by using discourse andnarratives to foment polarization and politicize issues such as international cooperation.93 Indeed,
Figure 2.6 Elites have been able to cash in on
hyperglobalization, as profit shifting to tax havens
has skyrocketed

antiglobalization sentiment has become increasingly
salient in partisan discourse.94 As these issues become
more visible through political campaigns and narratives, they can lead to shifts in people’s beliefs and to
sorting along narrow identity lines rather than along
income groups­—­and subsequently to shifts in policy
preferences.95 These shifts can lead to voting patterns
that, in some cases, might go against one’s economic
self-­interest,96 and they may even influence behaviours beyond voting.97 For example, populist campaigning against scientific advice during the Covid-­19
pandemic reduced adherence to social distancing inplaces where populist leaders enjoyed high support.98
Populism is politically disruptive and economically very costly.99 In countries with episodes of governments characterized as populist, whether on the rightor on the left, GDP per capita is 10 percent lower 15
years after the episode started than where such episodes did not take place (figure 2.7). Negative effects
on the economy tend to materialize only three tofive years after the populist episode starts, and they
Figure 2.7 Discontent is costly: Lower GDP trajectories incountries with populist episodes
Cumulative change in real GDP per capita (%)
40

All populists
Trend under nonpopulist baseline

Global corporate tax revenue loss due to profit shifting to
tax havens (% of global corporate tax revenue collected)

95% confidence interval

30

10
20
8
10

6

0

4

0

5

10

15

Years after a populist episode starts

2

Source: Alstadsæter and others 2023.

2025

2020

2015

2010

2005

2000

1995

1990

1985

1980

1975

0

Note: All regressions include country fixed effects and five lags of real GDP
per capita growth, global growth, inflation, banking and sovereign debt crisis
controls and an institutional/democracy quality index given by the first principal component of the Varieties of Democracy indices on judicial independence, election fairness and media freedoms (Coppedge and others 2022), as
well as the Polity IV democracy score (Marshall and Gurr 2020). Data cover 60
countries since 1945 for the core sample of populist episodes.
Source: Funke, Schularick and Trebesch 2023.

Chapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped55

continue to worsen over time100­—­representing a potential permanent loss.

almost 1.2 billion people­—­15 percent of the global
population­—­lived in areas affected by violent conflict(figure 2.8).101 These staggering numbers are part of ahorrific trend of rising violent conflicts that is becoming increasingly internationalized and entrenched,102
affecting more people in more places, including inhigher Human Development Index countries.103 In
addition to devastating local impacts, violent conflicts often have impacts that spill across borders.
The multiple ripple effects range from arms proliferation104 to forced cross-­border displacement, regional
food insecurity105 and rising inflation.106

Discontent polarizes societies, withpotentially dangerous consequences
The populist rhetoric of retrenchment and nativism
polarizes societies by pitting groups against eachother­—­us, the people, against them, the elite. The
inward-­looking, nativist direction of many of these
movements erodes abilities to collectively manage
reshaped global interdependence and tackle issues
that transcend borders. Historically, the populist andradical regimes that came into power after the global
financial crises of the 1920s and 1930s in a context ofdeep political polarization drove countries to a world
war rather than delivering solutions to the sharedchallenges facing them (spotlight 2.1).
Today, the international community grapples witha renewed surge in violent conflicts, with devastating
impacts on human development and human security. In 2022 alone, before the rise in violence and conflict in the African and Middle East regions in 2023,

Global interdependence is being reshaped
and likely to persist well into the future
Even aside from the policy choices shaping
global interdependence­—­
i mport tariffs that
discourage trade, visa restrictions that slow migration­—­interdependence is an inescapable feature of living on a shared planet that is undergoing dangerouschanges, unprecedented in that they are planetary anda result of human choices. They are also reinforced by

Figure 2.8 Violent conflicts affected 15 percent of the global population in 2022

Conflict-affected population as a share of global population (%)
18

16

14

12

10

8

6

1990

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

2018

Source: Human Development Report Office based on Aas Rustad and Østby (2023) and Arasmith, Østby and Aas Rustad (2022).

56

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

2020 2022

the fact that humans are relational beings (spotlight2.2). Going forward, two drivers­— ­dangerous planetary change and the deep transformations of economies, supercharged by digital technologies­— ­areprofoundly reshaping global links, demanding more­—­not less­—­management of interdependence, given thatthe opportunities to manage that type of interdependence by making decisions about at-­the-border restrictions are limited to nonexistent.

The Anthropocene adds a planetarydimension to global interdependence
The Anthropocene is a proposed new epoch in thegeological timescale, characterized by the unprecedented impact of modern human activity on Earthsystems (chapter 3). It provides a useful framing forunderstanding the interdependence among humans,
human societies and our shared planet. It helps further “establish the connections between our economic, social, and cultural spheres and the Earth Systemitself ” 107 and unveils the entanglements of global inequalities and endangering the critical functions ofEarth systems.
Social and ecological systems have always been
deeply connected but rarely at the planetary scale.108
Today, human impacts on the planet are so stark thatthey are altering planetary processes. Humans havealtered the natural cycles of carbon,109 nitrogen,110
phosphorus,111 water112 and other elements, changing
the temperature, precipitation, sea level and atmospheric composition of the planet.113
Countries with higher levels of human development, as measured by the Human Development
Index (HDI), exert higher pressures on our planet(figure 2.9). Countries on the lower end of the HDI,
which put fewer pressures on the planet, are likely to be disproportionately affected by the impactsof planetary pressures.114 These inequalities create
destabilizing dynamics that, along with intensified
polarization, may delay action to mitigate or reduce
planetary pressures. Over time, though, human development progress is associated with lower planetary pressures­—­in 2022 the average planetarypressures required to sustain any given HDI level
were lower than in 1990 (figure 2.10). In fact, in recent years both very high and high HDI countries

Figure 2.9 Inequalities and the Anthropocene­—­higher
Human Development Index countries put higher pressureson the planetIndex of Planetary Pressures value
0.225
0.200
0.150
0.100
0.050
0
Low

MediumHigh

Very highHuman Development Index group
Note: The Index of Planetary Pressures is constructed using the per capita
levels of carbon dioxide emissions and material footprint in each country (it is
1 minus the adjustment factor for planetary pressures presented in table 7 in
the Sta­tistical Annex). Each box plots the middle 50 percent of the distribution;
the central line is the median. Outside each box the extreme lines are the approximate minimum and maximum of the distribution. Outliers are not shown.
Source: Human Development Report Office. See specific sources in table 7 in
the Statistical Annex.

Figure 2.10 Pushing possibility frontiers­—­higher Human
Development Index values at lower planetary pressures
Index of Planetary Pressures value
0.800

0.600
PHDI = 0.550

0.400

PHDI = 0.700

1990
0.200

2022 PHDI = 0.800

0PHDI = 1.000
0.200

0.400

0.600

0.800

1.000

Human Development Index value
 HDI is Planetary pressures–adjusted Human Development Index.
P
Note: The Index of Planetary Pressures is constructed using the per capita levelsof carbon dioxide emissions and material footprint in each country (it is 1 minus theadjustment factor for planetary pressures presented in table 7 in the Sta­tistical
Annex). Cross‑sectional pressure patterns for 1990 and 2022 were calculated using polynomial regression models. Shaded areas are confidence intervals.
Source: Human Development Report Office. See specific sources in table 7 in
the Statistical Annex.

Chapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped57

have continued to improve their HDI values without
increasing planetary pressures, even though HDI progress in high HDI countries led to a sharp increase inplanetary pressures in the first decade of the 21st century (figure 2.11). Still, all countries, but particularly
those with very high and high HDI values, need to domuch more, at greater scales and speed, to ease planetary pressures than what has been the current trend.
In fact, the trend going forward needs to start sloping
downward, so that improvements in HDI values happen along with declining planetary pressures.
Technological development, especially renewable
and low-­carbon energy systems, pushes possibility
frontiers and may enable gains on the HDI without
increases in planetary pressures. However, transition
periods, where fossil fuels and low-­carbon system
coexist, may be particularly volatile, with heightened cross-­b order risks.115 Transitions away fromfossil fuels are very likely to shift the comparative advantages of countries and could drive shifts in tradepatterns and economic power with geopolitical implications.116 Changes to domestic climate policies may
reverberate internationally through both trade andfinancial channels,117 with especially strong effects forlow- and middle-­income countries­— ­effects that may
go beyond balance of payments fluctuations to affectlong-­term debt dynamics.118 Therefore, the types ofclimate policies that countries pursue will not only affect prospects for mitigating climate change but will
also have profound implications for global links anddevelopment prospects. If interdependence is harnessed in a positive way­—­starting with not mismanaging it­—­the outlooks for both people and planet are
more positive.119

Planetary pressures lead to planetary spillovers
When social and environmental change interacts at
a global scale, spillovers from a local socioecological system can turn planetary. To see how, consider
telecoupling, which describes distant interactions
and complex feedback loops between human andecological systems over vast distances and attempts
to account for socioeconomic and environmental spillovers across scale, space and time.120 For

Figure 2.11 Decoupling of planetary pressures and the Human Development Index (HDI)
Index of Planetary Pressures value
0.180
1990

0.160
0.140

Very high HDI
countries

2022

The HDI value of high HDI countries is approaching
the HDI value of very high HDI countries in1990 but with lower planetary pressures

0.120

2022

0.100
0.080

The 2022 HDI value of low HDI countries issimilar to the HDI value of medium HDI countries
in 2003 but with lower planetary pressures

0.060
0.040

Low HDIcountries
0.020
1990
0.000

0.350

1990

Medium HDI
countries

The 2022 HDI value of medium HDI countries
is similar to the HDI value of high HDI countries
in 2002 but with lower planetary pressures

1990
2022

0.450

High HDI
countries

0.550

2022

0.650

0.750

0.850

0.950

Human Development Index (HDI) value
Note: The Index of Planetary Pressures is constructed using the per capita levels of carbon dioxide emissions (production) and material footprint ineach country (it is 1 minus the adjustment factor for planetary pressures presented in table 7 in the Sta­tistical Annex).
Source: Human Development Report Office. See specific sources in tables 2 and 7 in the Statistical Annex.

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HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

example, the land-­use decisions of firms and farmers
in tropical forests affect regional environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and global climate change
not only through increased greenhouse gas emissions associated with deforestation but also throughchanges in precipitation patterns in regions far fromtropical forests (chapter 3). The same land-­use decisions are influenced by global market dynamics, suchas consumer preferences and terms of trade. For example, higher global demand for soybeans can lead
local farmers to switch to them from cattle ranching,121 potentially reducing both deforestation andcarbon dioxide emissions in comparison to a scenario
with continued cattle ranching.122
Another example is fishing around coral reefs,
which can reduce the biomass of fish species thatprovide important ecosystem services123­—­such as
the large herbivorous fish that reduce algae growth.
Without those species, algae growth may increase,bleaching the reefs.124 The erosion of coral reefs reduces global carbon cycling (thus adding to climatechange). It also harms the livelihoods of many people and the natural protection of coastlines fromstorms.125 By contrast, sustainable local fishing practices can improve the biomass of herbivorous fish andbenefit coral cover.126
With an Anthropocene lens, the notion of global interdependence needs to include an understanding of
the Earth System as a whole. Highly complex globallyinterlinked societies shape, and are shaped by, highly
complex and globally interlinked ecological systems.
Yet “spatial assumptions about the world are frequently divorced from discussions of economy and,in turn, from issues of environment and nature.” 127
In a globally interdependent world even countries
less exposed to climate change–related risks can still
be affected by second- and third-­order effects.128 For
example, if a natural hazard disrupts economic activities in one country, there may be spillover impacts
on the country’s main trade partners; if critical infrastructure is hit in one country, it may reconfigure supply chains and reduce the GDP of both downstream
and upstream trading partners129 and can lead to volatility in aggregate stock market indices among trading partners.130
Food production and consumption provide another telling example. Only an estimated 11–28 precentof the global population can access key food crops

within 100 kilometres of their homes, leaving a large
majority of the world population highly dependent onfood imports and global food value chains.131 The production of critical inputs and intermediary products
for agricultural production, such as seeds and fertilizers, is geographically concentrated and controlled bya handful of companies.132 For example, four companies control about two-thirds of global agrochemicalsales, including pesticides and synthetic fertilizers
that enable industrial-­scale agriculture. Three of thesame companies are also among the four companies
that control more than half the world’s commercial
seed sales.133
While trade in food has boosted food supplies globally and has been a resilience strategy in the face of
local climate shocks,134 the domination of multinational food companies in food systems is now associated with reduced diversity in local food production
and lost local food culture traditions,135 as well as rent
seeking by top firms.136 The concentration patterns
in food production have built vulnerabilities in global food systems, which are likely to further increase
if human planetary pressures remain unchecked.
For example, biodiversity loss and climate change
heighten the risk of simultaneous crop failures,137
with potentially global consequences for food security. Global hunger numbers are already on the rise;691–783 million people faced hunger in 2022, a situation exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and highinflation.138

The concentration patterns in food production“
have built vulnerabilities in global food systems,
which are likely to further increase if humanplanetary pressures remain unchecked

When arable land becomes scarce or degraded due
to climate change, farmers may experience reduced
crop yields and diminished livelihood security, potentially driving displacement and migration.139 But
the paths and trajectories of human mobility in response to climate, food and livelihood stressors are
difficult to predict, particularly as local temperature,
rainfall and extreme weather events increasingly deviate from historical patterns. Migration is embedded
in social, economic, political, demographic and environmental processes that can affect both the ability to
move, as well as the risk of immobility.140

Chapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped59

As climate change continues and its impacts intensify, especially in the absence of widespread reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, migration could
become one of the few viable adaptation and resilience strategies available to afflicted communities.
Some projections suggest that under current emissions policy trajectories a third of the world population may be left outside the so-­called human climate
niche­—­that is, the temperature range most conducive
to human life. If countries fully implement all climate change mitigation policy targets, global warming may be limited to about 1.8°C­—­which would stillleave almost 10 percent of the world population outside the so-called human climate niche—that is, thetemperature range most conducive to human life.141

The health, livelihood and labour market impacts ofextreme heat are likely to be substantial, as shown by
the UNDP Human Climate Horizons platform (box2.2).142 Some research predicts that by midcentury,
more than 200 million people are likely to migrateinternally (within-­country) in the face of climate
stress.143

Digital technologies make cross-bordercommunication almost instantaneous­—­and are changing economic structures
Alongside the planetary challenges of the Anthro­po­cene, economies are undergoing profound shifts,

Box 2.2 Human mobility in the face of climate change: The case of Viet Nam
Hannah Pool
The UNDP Human Climate Horizons platform calculates and visualizes how climate change will affect human wellbeing under different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. The platform estimates the projected impacts of climatechange at a highly granular level, illustrating how it might affect places and communities in more than 200 countries
and territories.
Take Viet Nam, which is already grappling with the effects of climate change as droughts, floods and typhoons become more frequent. The average annual temperature is projected to increase from 25.9°C in 1986–2005 to 26.7°C
in 2020–2039 to 27.6°C in 2080. In the high emissions scenario it could reach 29.2°C. The rising temperatures will
particularly affect the working hours of people in both low-­risk and high-­risk occupations. In the moderate emissions
scenario annual working hours per worker could be reduced by 2.3 hours in 2020–39 and by 10.5 hours in 2080–99,
whereas in the high emissions scenario annual working hours per worker in high-­risk jobs in agriculture and construction could fall by 36.7 hours.
With 3,000 kilometres of coastline, Viet Nam is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels.1 Under the high emissions scenario sea-­level rise will affect an additional 1.3 percent of the population between 2020 and 2039 and7.4 percent by the end of the century, compared with a scenario without climate change.2
Migration decisions are complex and multifaceted, and climate change and the environment can be contributing
factors. By 2050, 1.5–3.1 million people in Viet Nam could become climate migrants.3 In Viet Nam’s Thừa Thiên-­Huế
Province people expressed their intention to relocate permanently because of a heightened risk of flooding causedby sea-­level rise.4
When people are forced to move as a result of climate change, they tend to move first within national borders
before moving to neighbouring countries,5 and they tend to move from rural areas to cities. In Viet Nam this will put
additional pressure on urban infrastructure.6 People might also move to neighbouring Cambodia or Thailand, which,as the Human Climate Horizons data project, will also be affected by climate change.
Scenarios like these are important to assessing how climate change will affect human mobility and to driving people
to do everything possible today to avoid the high emissions scenario. But human mobility cannot be deterministically
predicted, even less in the distant future, since a continuum of human agency exists at various levels, which gives
humans the capacity to “find creative, locally appropriate solutions” in a world of diverse social, economic, culturaland place-­based physical systems.7
Notes
1. IPCC 2022. 2. UNDP and Climate Impact Lab 2022. Data from Human Climate Horizons, accessed 30 November 2023. 3. Clement andothers 2021. 4. Duijndam and others 2023. 5. IPCC 2022. 6. Spilker and others 2020. 7. Horton and others 2021, p. 1279.

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powered by rapid technological innovation, especially in digital technologies. These shifts are alreadychanging the nature of global interdependence andwill likely continue to do so well into the future.
Digital technologies link distant places almost instantaneously, affecting international trade, labour
markets, and the production and consumption of information. In 2023 anyone with a computer or smartphone144 could in theory reach more than half the
global population, and the number of internet users
is expected to continue to increase.145 The digitally
powered spread of (mis)information can speed up
contagion dynamics and influence behaviours, withcross-­border implications for, for example financial
instability146 or conflict.147
While governments can put controls on internet
use, blocking access to­— ­or even just monitoring­—­
online information is extremely difficult as the technology constantly evolves and expands.148
Even during the physical lockdowns and borderclosures of the Covid-­19 pandemic, when goods andpeople flows across borders plummeted, cross-­borderinformation flows flows soared.149 Digital platforms
and global flows of data enable larger trade volumes
between countries,150 as well as increased opportunities for small and medium enterprises to participate
in global value chains.151 The rise of digital technologies in the global economy is part of deeper changes in the structure of economies, in which the valueof knowledge and services increases relative to thatof physical goods,152 powered by increasingly low-­
carbon energy systems.153 In 2022 digital service exports reached $3.8 trillion in value and accounted formore than half of global trade in commercial services.154 Modern service exports, which include computer and information services, have increased fivefold
since 2000 and are quickly overtaking both exports
in traditional services such as tourism, as well as
high-­tech manufacturing exports (figure 2.12).
Digital technologies are shaping how
to navigate the Anthropocene
Navigating the Anthropocene will be shaped bychoices associated with the Digital Revolution.155
The increasing use of digital technologies has direct
impacts on our planet, including the environmental
footprints of novel technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain. These require vast amountof computing power and are associated with intensified greenhouse gas emissions.156
The expansion of data availability and the increased
ability to process huge amounts of data have been key
factors in recognizing the Anthropocene, by enabling
more precise measurement, monitoring and modelling of the Earth System, or how digital technologies have enabled communication and disseminationof scientific knowledge about the Anthropocene tothe public at large.157 But the interaction between already polarized societies and digital communication

Figure 2.12 Digital technologies are driving shifts in global economic interdependence, with dramatic increases inmodern service exports since 2000
Index, 2000 = 100

Share of commercial service exports (%)
Modern services

500

60.0

400

52.5

300

Traditional services

200

45.0
Modern services

37.5
High-tech manufacturing

100
2000

Traditional services

2004

2008

2012

2016

2019

30.0
1990

1994

1998

2002

2006

2010

2014

2019

Source: Cornelli, Frost and Mishra 2023.

Chapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped61

in social networks, characterized by algorithms thatpropel division and misinformation, can erode publicdeliberation, propel mistrust in science and put up barriers to collective action for a low-­carbon transition.158
While digitalization has expanded opportunities for many people, there are large and regionallyconcentrated inequalities in digital access. In Africa only 37 percent of the population were internet
users in 2023, compared with a global average of
67 percent.159 Only about a third of the digital gap inAfrica can be explained by lack of infrastructure;160
issues such as prohibitive costs and other barriers

62

may account for the rest. Investment in frontier technologies, such as artificial intelligence, is also associated with higher income inequality.161 If theseasymmetries remain, many people risk losing out on
the expanding economic opportunities that comewith new technologies. Inequalities may also drive
consumption patterns that add to planetary pressures, through spending cascades on so called positional goods, such as ever larger cars.162 These typesof consumption patterns are channelled via aspirations and norms, which may be influenced by bothtraditional and social media.163

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

S POT L IGH T 2 .1

The human toll of mismanaging interdependence:
Insights from national and international history
Patricia Clavin, Oxford University

World War I was a catastrophic period in history withfar-­reaching effects. On average, 5,600 men died forevery day that the war continued, and injured soldiersand civilians had some of the worst injuries ever seen.
In the war zones factories, farms and homes were destroyed to the tune of around $30 billion, roughly halfof US GDP at the time.1 As part of the political falloutof the war, the Austro-­Hungarian, German, Ottoman
and Russian Empires tumbled, and more than 14 million people were displaced.2 In the peace negotiations
that followed, it became clear that while millions ofpeople everywhere aspired to greater self-­rule, theBritish and French Empires expanded the number ofterritories under their governance as a result of theconflict. Other countries, notably Japan and the United States, grew in global prominence.
The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and its subsequent peace treaties suggested that sovereign states
existed on a plane of equality in the international system. But the war and its outcomes made it clear thatthe world’s empires, nation states and colonized people who aspired to statehood had different natural endowments and access to resources that shape humandevelopment. In the international system states also
had different interests and concerns. After 1918 governments, businesses, banks, farmers and people
everywhere struggled to comprehend how much hadchanged as a result of the war. They were hit by a series of economic and social crises and responded bytaking defensive measures that strongly prioritizednational and imperial interests. Many governments
mismanaged the interdependence of markets andpeople. Instead, numerous countries found themselves on a path to a second world war within a generation of the first.
World War II was even more destructive than its
predecessor. Some 60 million people died aroundthe world. Much more property and infrastructure
lay in ruins. And the conflict inflicted unprecedented pollution on the planet, including radiation from a

new type of weapon, the atomic bomb. Yet this time,
the types of social and economic crises that had battered many governments, people and world markets
after 1918 were largely averted. In the following decades the prospects for human development improved
markedly and remained on an upward trajectory
for the rest of the 20th century. This spotlight reveals how the management of human interdependence in these postwar eras produced such different
outcomes.

The search for national sanctuary
in an interdependent world
After 1918 the first crisis that gripped the world was
financial. No one had thought about how they weregoing to fund an unprecedented global war. As aresult, the belligerent governments borrowed orprinted money to pay for it. As the conflict ended,governments were desperate to get back to “normalcy” and removed all the controls on their national
economies in an uncoordinated way. The result was
rapid inflation. The worst cases were in the new republics of Austria, Germany, Hungary and Poland,
which endured hyperinflation. In Germany prices
quadrupled every month for 16 months.
But even some of the world’s strongest economies
had annual inflation of 20–30 percent. They dealt
with this by returning their currencies to the international gold standard­—­a fixed exchange mechanism­—­which brought stability to prices and interest rates.
States did this largely in an uncoordinated way, thinking about what suited their national interests andleaving the job to central banks and financial markets.3 It meant, for example, that the US dollar andthe French franc were significantly undervalued,
which helped their exports. Britain, a major importerof food and exporter of capital and financial services,preferred a strong pound and opted to overvalue theChapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped63

pound sterling. This made life tough for its domestic producers and encouraged many of them to demand protection from overseas traders, a worldwide
trend. It meant that while exchange rates were stable, the market interdependence that the gold standard system was supposed to safeguard had unstablefoundations.
The next global financial crisis hit within a decadeof the first, after October 1929. The consequences of
the uncoordinated processes of financial reconstruction after 1919 became clear following the stock market crash on Wall Street in the United States. Having
been heavily involved in stabilizing the currencies
and economies of Central Europe in the 1920s, US
political and financial leaders decided it had been too
easy for investors­—­at home and abroad­—­to borrowmoney, so the Federal Reserve opted to increase interest rates. This decision pushed a downturn in thestock market into a full-­blown depression as investment abroad was stopped in its tracks. The crisis wastransmitted around the world through the gold standard system. Other central banks defended their currencies by increasing interest rates and demandedthat their governments stop spending. Workers werelaid off in droves, and poverty and hunger rates rose
dramatically in the worst deflationary crisis the world
had yet known.
By 1933 leading economists and international advisors had identified the right solution: they proposedinternationally coordinated measures to reflate theworld economy and stop the rising trade protectionism. But countries had acted to defend their economies in an uncoordinated way after 1929, and despite
four years of suffering, the ability to cooperate wasabsent. There were now gaping domestic and transnational ideological divides between states, conflicting geopolitical interests and national politics moving
in radically divergent directions. The failure of theworld’s major economies­—­Britain, France and theUnited States­—­to work together was especially damaging. And they now faced the emerging threat from
National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan, which was already waging war in Manchuria.
The see-­sawing fortunes of the world’s major
economies from high inflation to a biting deflationary crunch, connected to ongoing­— ­or triggerednew­— ­social and political crises. These were especially pronounced in countries that were defeated or64

established as new nation states due to World War I.
First came the Spanish Flu pandemic, so named because the first case was identified in Spain in 1918.
It killed 50–100 million people, though it remains
unclear where the pandemic began. This and other
health challenges were exacerbated because so many
people were on the move as a result of the war andits after- ­effects.4 The end of the war did not bring an
end to health crises or to violence. The former territories of the Russian Empire were engulfed by civil
war. By the time it ended, the population had fallenfrom 143 million to 134 million. Contemporaries weredeeply worried by the risks posed by typhus and tuberculosis. In 1916 the first major study of the historyof epidemic disease in wartime showed how soldiers
were more likely to die from contagious disease than
through enemy action and that epidemic disease
among soldiers sparked worse epidemics among thecivilian population.5
In 1920, in the former imperial capital city of Vienna, one in four deaths was caused by tuberculosis. Nutrition and living conditions were so bad that
local officials calculated death rates rivalling thoseof the bubonic plague (called the Black Death) centuries earlier, generally recognized as the deadliest
pandemic in human history. At the time new scientific understanding, including the discovery of vitamins and the role of minerals, made it clear thatfood quality was as important as quantity to humanhealth. But many people around the world struggled to get enough to eat, despite the fact that theworld suffered from agricultural overproduction thatcaused commodity prices to slump after 1918. Some60 million peasants in Eastern Europe, for example,
did not produce enough bread locally to get themthrough the year and thus faced a persistent cycle ofrural undercapitalization, underemployment, malnourishment and misery. The sense of crisis amongsmall-­scale farmers and landless peasants in Asia
and Europe was amplified by apparent threats posedby the emergence of industrial-­scale food production on the American and Australian continents andthe collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union
after 1927.
The crisis in rural communities was matched by
the crisis of joblessness in urban ones. Until thelate 19th century impoverished rural workers could
move to cities that were developing fast as a result

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

of industrialization and urbanization or migrate between countries. But new migration controls introduced before World War I and strengthened during
it locked labour markets behind national and imperial frontiers, and cities, too, struggled to absorb
rural poor people.6 The danger of unemployment­—­evident already in the 1920s as the world economy adjusted from the dislocation of the war and themove from heavy industry that characterized the firstwave of industrialization to a new focus on consumer industries­— ­expanded into a full-­blown crisis in the
Great Depression. No country was left untouched,but the spectacle of large-­scale destitution in the
United States­—­the world’s biggest economy, which
had roared in the 1920s­—­shocked informed publics
worldwide.
By the end of 1930s, observers were in no doubtthat the onslaught of these crises, which came inquick succession, radicalized world politics. The
1920s and 1930s were rich in revolutions initiated by
the left and military putsches or states of emergency
on the right. But the record of these radical regimes
demonstrated that these administrations, too, had noeffective answer to the challenges facing human development in a world where interdependence faced
new and rising barriers: currency controls, trade protectionism and strict limits on migration.
The inequality already endemic among different
people and social groups was given a dangerous andimmoral twist in fascist, nationalist and authoritarian regimes. They wanted to improve the standard ofliving for people who they claimed as their own but
saw the resources from which improvement would
come as finite. Adolf Hitler, the German dictator,
saw himself as a Raumpolitiker, a spatial politician,
who demanded that the world be reshaped to match
the quest for Lebensraum, or living space. His Axis alliance with Italy and Japan was gripped by the battle­—­it became World War II­—­for the “right sort” ofmaterial, human and physical.7
Crisis served as an opportunity for radical leadersof the Axis powers to introduce policies intended toraise living standards for their selected people andreduce them markedly for ethnonational and socioeconomic categories they identified as the enemy,both within and beyond their national frontiers. Axis
leaders were determined to break their dependence
on other states and on international norms and tocontrol their own destiny. At the same time, beggar-­thy-neighbour policies, as contemporaries called
them, were not confined to dictatorships. They wereadopted by states everywhere in autarkic and isolationist measures that left the world economy depressed and set back human development.

Mutual help and institutionalized cooperation
addresses interdependence
Historians have long debated the degree to which
modern warfare plays a central role in the emergenceand consolidation of the modern state. Paradoxically,major wars also make political leaders­—­regardless ofwhether their countries are at war­—­acutely consciousof the international context. As when Japan went to
war against China in 1937 and Germany attacked Poland in 1939, the nationalism that characterized politics after 1918 gave way to the internationalism ofwar. It also set up new pathways to international cooperation in managing global interdependence.
In World War II leaders of the Allied powers were
determined to see crisis as opportunity. The dominant impulse was to learn from but break with thepast. This time, policymakers anticipated that there
would be substantial postwar challenges and probably crises. The League of Nations, the forerunnerto the United Nations, helped determine the basis
for cooperative discussions among Britain, China,
France, the Soviet Union and the United States,
among other powers. Its view was that the problems
of interdependence in a world of geopolitical rivalries “did not lend themselves to settlement by formal
conferences.”8 Instead, it suggested, “the primaryobject of international cooperation should be mutual
help … above all, the exchange of knowledge and thefruits of experience.”9
In contrast to World War I, the planning for peacecame early­—­as soon as the United States entered thewar in December 1941. In contrast to World War I,
too, when geopolitical questions around borders anddisarmament took priority, the focus after 1941 wason economic and social issues. The move recognized
the importance of economic and social questions to
the prospects for human development and that theneeds of national economies had to be understoodand managed with those of the world economy. The

Chapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped65

first organization of the new United Nations was announced in 1943 at a meeting in Hot Springs, Virginia. The new UN Food and Agriculture Organization
was part of a new international will to jointly tackle
problems under the general heading of freedom fromwant.10
This was underlined in new and discrete
institutions­—­the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank), the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations Relief andRehabilitation Administration (intended to oversee
postwar reconstruction). A new organization was alsoplanned to address trade protectionism­—­it became
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Although these institutions were new, they built on
pathways to cooperation established by the Leagueof Nations in 1919. At the start its focus was disarmament and peace. But the interwar crises encouraged
new capacities in the organization, notably in relation
to economic, social and health questions­—­for example, the World Health Organization, set up in 1945,
was an extension of the League of Nations HealthCommittee. We often think of the League of Nations
as a failure because it was unable to prevent conflictamong member states. But the organization established key ideas and practices to effect multilateral
cooperation that lived on in new global and regional
institutions.11 It also offered small and middling-­size
powers an enhanced international platform. They
could be heard on terms of nominal equality with bigger powers that conventionally called all the shots.
After 1945 new stress on the need to manage andsupport the economy for social good was matchedby the attitudes of governments that had new policy
tools and information at their disposal, demonstrating a new confidence in the world’s major states thatthey could handle crises nationally and internationally and a recognition of the interdependence of global,
national and local stability. In 1945 the United States
was wealthier and stronger than it had ever been inabsolute and relative terms. In contrast to 1919, whenboth the United States and the Soviet Union wereabsent from the League of Nations, this time, bothcountries committed to supporting new international institutions to promote cooperation. There wasstrong agreement about the need to coordinate efforts on an international and regional basis to avert
economic and social crises that, without cooperation,
would lead to disaster as they had after 1914 and 1937.
Power politics could still get in the way of cooperation. Experts and policymakers were frequently divided over the details of specific measures, and bitter
political disputes among China, the Soviet Union andthe United States in the 1950s and early 1960s limited cooperation on some questions. It also generated rival attempts to address common dilemmas,with capitalism and communist powers competing
to support the modernization aspirations of parts ofAfrica and Asia, for example. The history of mutual
independence in the face of crises during these two
postwar eras reveals that cooperation on specific initiatives was rarely the product of collective will. Rather, as in the 1940s, individual people and groups with
big ideas promoted cooperation in ways that gave
people hope in the world’s darkest hours. The international organizations and practices they developed
recognized that societies and markets were mutually interdependent. The institutionalized world order
created after 1945 was not the product of consensus
or the end of argument. Instead, it reflected agreed
rules and understandings of the terms under whichconflict took place.12

N OT E S
1.

Bogart 1920.

7.

Overy 2021.

2.

Zhvanko and Gatrell 2017.

8.

League of Nations 1939.

3.

Eichengreen 1992.

9.

League of Nations 1939.

4.

Barry 2004.

10.

Staples 2006.

5.

Prinzing 1916.

11.

Clavin 2013.

6.

Lake and Reynolds 2008.; Zieger 1969.

12.

Hurrell 2008.

66

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

S POT L IGH T 2 . 2Managing global interdependence toadvance human development

Humans are relational beings.1 Social, economic andenvironmental relations shape values, opportunities
and choices, implying that human development is afunction not only of what people have or can do but
also of how they relate to others, to the society they
live in and to nature. Throughout the lifecycle people are embedded in social networks where they are
at times dependent on and at times interdependent
with others who influence opportunities, constraints
and wellbeing2 (box S2.2.1). Social contexts and relations also shape preferences and can lead to behaviours and practices that perpetuate social norms,
including harmful ones.3 For example, strong gendernorms and biases against gender equality can influence women’s aspirations and discourage them frompursuing certain types of careers or occupations.4
Social norms can also greatly influence attitudes
and behaviours in relation to nature and the planet(­chapter 4).5
The spillovers between social contexts and humandevelopment outcomes can create vicious or virtuous cycles.6 For example, positive family relations
and supportive parents are key for early childhood
development,7 which can later contribute to stronger education achievements that translate into higher earnings in adulthood.8 Positive family and work
relations also contribute to better mental health andwellbeing and “provide the conditions for the same
positive relations to be perpetuated in an individual’s own parenting and other future relationships.”9
By contrast, human development inequalities anddeprivations can compound over one’s lifecycle andinto future generations.10 Scrutinizing these social externalities in a systematic way may help unveil newmechanisms for harnessing interdependence that
goes beyond correcting for market failures11 (chapter 4). For example, leveraging parental altruistic instincts can extend solidarity and prosocial behaviour
beyond one’s immediate family.12 Even the existence
and influence of social norms on behaviour suggestthat these can be harnessed in ways that enhance
human development and the stewardship of nature.13
Relational wellbeing extends to the group, society and even planetary levels­—­the focus of thischapter. Leveraging humans’ hypersociability14 andability to form bonds with each other has played apivotal role in facilitating cooperation and exchangeeven between strangers, enabling the formation oflarge-­scale societies and complex economic systems.
Insights from evolutionary theory and cultural andsocial psychology shed light on this trajectory (chapter 4).15
This does not imply that cooperation is inevitable,
as countless examples of conflict and power struggles demonstrate. Different societies, facing different constraints and contexts, have developed avariety of mechanisms for cooperation,16 through social norms or codified in formal laws and regulations(chapter 4). The insights do, however, reveal thatdrawing on humans’ relational capacities to cooperate and leveraging a “collective brain” 17 have been
important in fostering progress. Indeed, throughout
human history larger and more interconnected societies have been able to “sustain more complex technologies, languages, institutions and behaviouralrepertoires.” 18
Knowledge and innovation have been powerful, perhaps fundamental, drivers of human development.
Ideas build on each other and are combined in processes that require people to work together.19 Engaging with other people can facilitate the direct sharingof ideas and enable indirect spillovers of knowledge,
particularly when it is concentrated geographically, explaining why cities provide fertile ground for new ventures and technological advances.20 At the same time
global trade and long-­distance connections enablelocal economies to overcome production constraints
and natural endowment limitations, to support theflow of ideas21 and to tap into powerful forces of economies of scale and specialization. These connections

Chapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped67Box S2.2.1 Relational and interdependent wellbeing
By taking relationships as morally significant, relational approaches shape our way of understanding wellbeing andrecognize the need for richer wellbeing tools and methods.1 They do this by taking wellbeing as contingent on
the quality of our relationships with other people and with nature. More than this, relational wellbeing acknowledges the way relationships feature within and across connected communities, including globally connected andintergenerational relationships. In so doing, relational approaches provide a starting point for confronting global,
ecological and intergenerational challenges while also providing community perspectives to generate new solutions.
Relational frameworks extend the capabilities approach by highlighting how an individual’s wellbeing is constituted through the interplay of personal, social and environmental processes.2 Relationships become critical for living
well­—­as means to or constraints on flourishing. Taking individuals as parts of a diverse network of social, cultural,
ecological and intergenerational connections, relationships are understood as not just means to living well but vitalfor our identities too.
The wellbeing of humans, as relational subjects,3 is not merely bound up with others, but informed by our vulnerabilities, social needs and environmental dependency. By recognizing that our wellbeing is intimately bound up withthe health of the natural environment, we can come to understand how climate change affects not only our physicalhealth but also our mental health, social cohesion and cultural identity.4
Such approaches can be found in Indigenous communities worldwide. Relationships often provide a vastly inclusive and multidimensional way of grounding and structuring the conceptual framework and territory for Indigenous
philosophies to take shape and evolve. Indigenous communities enact relationality under stewardship notions, suchas kaitiakitanga in New Zealand,5 sumac kawsay and allin kawsay in South America,6 Aloha and Mālama ‘Āina in
Hawaiʻi7 and Mabu liyan (and other notions that incorporate caring for country for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders) in Australia.8 For many Indigenous communities these relationships are so profound that their loss may present
existential threats to their way of life (chapter 1). In Jonathan Lear’s Radical Hope, Crow Tribe Chief Plenty Coups
describes a sense of loss, identity and purpose felt across Indigenous groups in the face of disappearing landscapesand biodiversity: “When the buffalo went away, the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift themup again. After this nothing happened.”9Relationality is found in various feminist approaches across and between communities and disciplines,10 in healthand ecological system thinking11 and in local communities themselves too. By emphasizing the interconnectedness
and interdependence of human beings across borders and boundaries, these approaches provide different perspectives and innovations. They also foster a sense of global solidarity and help us cope with the uncertainty andcomplexity of a changing world by fostering adaptability through learning, social support and relationship building.
Notes
1. This box greatly benefited from the contributions of Krushil Watene. 2. White and Jha 2023. 3. White and Jha 2023. 4. Allen and others 2023;
Grix and Watene 2022. 5. Grix and Watene 2022. 6. Watene and Merino 2018. 7. Ingersoll 2016. 8. Yap and Yu 2019. 9. Lear 2006, p. 3 10. Murdock 2018; Teaiwa 2021; Underhill-­Sem 2011; Yap and Watene 2024; Whyte 2016. 11. Jones 2019; Matheson 2022; Matheson and others 2020.

also foster learning, innovation and knowledge transfers that can enable companies and places to up-­skill
and increase productivity and income.22
Harnessing global cross-­border connections andleaning into cooperative capacities have brought a
lot of prosperity. Global cross-­border flows expanded economic opportunities and productivity growth,with unprecedented increases in living standards formillions of people.23 International migration has contributed to cross-­cultural connections,24 enrichening the world’s art, musical and cultural landscape.25
Knowledge exchanges and international scientific collaborations have driven critical breakthroughs and advances in human health. For example, the discovery
68of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and its
treatments,26 the recent development of Covid-­19
vaccines27 and the mapping of the human genome­—­all relied heavily on cross-­border collaboration.28
To continue harnessing the benefits of interdependence, we need to manage interdependence better andto find ways of doing it without reverting exclusively tobarriers at national borders. Even though they may bejustified in some cases to manage the risks of hyperglobalization, they will not suffice to deal with the ways inwhich global interdependence is being reshaped by humans’ planetary pressures and the digital transformations under way. Furthermore, the inward-­looking andprotectionist actions advocated by many supporting or

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

leading populist positions are also costly29­—­and potentially dangerous (spotlight 2.1). Trade fragmentation
can increase price volatility and heighten uncertainty in global markets.30 Low-­income economies, highly dependent on international commodity trade, may
incur the largest welfare losses with the fragmentationof global markets.31 But even large high-­income economies and regions are susceptible to welfare losses
under different geoeconomic fragmentation scenarios.32 In contrast, place-­based policies that complement, rather than replace, international cooperation
can spur economic development and support firms
and regions in harnessing the benefits of global interdependence.33 This might entail shifting local and regional economic development policy approaches froma logic of up-­scaling of primary goods to manufacturing to service exports, to investing in skills that allow
for moving from low- to high-­value added activities
within global value chains.34

Going forward, the Anthropocene reality of a changing planet, in combination with large-­scale economictransformations and technological innovation, will
reshape and propel new patterns of interdependence.
In this sense our choice is not between global interdependence and complete national self-­reliance. It is between continuing business as usual or taking seriously
the challenge of building systems and institutions thatare resilient and adaptable to an evolving context.
The globalization of discontent calls for shifting
the approach to managing global interdependence.
Reduced global exchange and cooperation in favourof isolated nationalism are unlikely to help us face thechallenges that arise from the current drivers of interdependence. But neither is unregulated globalizationor hoping for a pure technological solution to challenges that span borders.35 In a globally interdependent world we need to identify and pursue our sharedproblems and how to address them (chapter 3).

N OT E S
1.

Diverse knowledge traditions and philosophical schools of thought emphasize the relational aspect of humans. For example, the South African
concept of Ubuntu—“I am because we are”—highlights the importanceof community in defining the individual (Chowdhury and others 2021).
Confucian ethics stresses the importance of fulfilling one’s roles andresponsibilities in relation to others (Shun and Wong 2004). In western
philosophy Aristotle, for example, argued that that humans are politicalanimals whose ability to cooperate through speech and reason is a defining feature (Arnhart 1994) Much later, feminist scholars have stressed
the importance of relational and reproductive work to maintain the conditions of human life, such as caring for infants (see, among others, thework of Nancy Folbre, including Folbre 2008, 2012; Folbre and Bittman
2004; and the work of Julie A. Nelson, including Ferber and Nelson2009).

2.

Settersten 2018.

3.

Hoff and Stiglitz 2016.

4.

Tabassum and Nayak 2021.

5.

UNDP 2020b.

6.

Fleurbaey, Kanbur and Viney 2021.

7.

Jeong and others 2021.

8.

In Gertler and others (2021) a home-based intervention that improved
both nutrition and the quality of mother-child interactions (to foster cognitive, language and psycho-social skills) led to approximately 40 percent
higher earnings at age 31 among the children who had received theinterventions, compared with a control group.

9.

Fleurbaey, Kanbur and Viney 2021, p. 18.

10.

UNDP 2019.

11.

Fleurbaey, Kanbur and Viney 2021.

12.

Fleurbaey, Kanbur and Viney 2021.

13.

UNDP 2020b.

14.

Henrich and Muthukrishna 2021.

15.

Henrich 2023; Henrich and Muthukrishna 2021; Henrich and others 2016;
Tomasello and others 2012.

16.

Henrich and Muthukrishna 2021.

17.

Henrich 2023; Henrich and Muthukrishna 2021.

18.

Henrich 2023, p. 407.

19.

Romer 1994.

20.

Bettencourt and others 2007; Fujita, Krugman and Venables 2001.

21.

The Ricardo and Heckscher–Ohlin models provide the foundations of theinternational effects on income; see, for example, Leamer (1995).

22.

Crescenzi and Harman 2023. See also Stiglitz (2007) and Stiglitz andGreenwald (2014), as well as Grossman and Helpman (1991), Hoekman,
Maskus and Saggi (2005) and Sturgeon (2008).

23.

Bartley Johns and others 2015; Dollar and Kraay 2004; Winters, McCulloch and McKay 2004.

24.

Leblang and Peters 2022.

25.

Martiniello 2022.

26.

National Academy of Medicine 2022; Schwetz and Fauci 2019.

27.

Lee and Haupt 2021; UNESCO 2023.

28.

International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium 2004; Maxson
Jones, Ankeny and Cook-Deegan 2018.

29.

Funke, Schularick and Trebesch 2023.

30.

Alvarez and others 2023.

31.

Bolhuis, Chen and Kett 2023.

32.

Baba and others 2023.

33.

Goldberg 2023.

34.

Crescenzi and Harman 2023.

35.

As seen in chapters 3, 5, and 6, in many cases technologies such as lowcarbon energy sources already exist and could be scaled, but polarizationand distrust can put up barriers to action.

Chapter 2 — Global interdependence persists —but is being reshaped

69

CHAPTER
3

Providing global
public goods
to manageinterdependence

PA RT I — A DVA N CIN G HU MAN D EVELOP MENT IN AN INTER D EP END ENT WOR LD

71

CHAPTER 3

Providing global public goods tomanage interdependence
Mismanaged interdependence imposes costs, or evensetbacks, to human development. But managing it canbe enhanced by framing it as providing global public
goods, such as global peace and climate change
mitigation, as explicit goals.
Applying a global public goods lens to the Covid-19
pandemic yields three key insights about enabling
better responses in the future. First, is for a range ofdifferent types of global public goods, mechanisms
can be designed to address the bottlenecks for each
type. Second, what constitutes global public goods isoften a matter of choice, and providing them can bringcountries together. Third, institutions can be created
to enhance the provision of global public goods.

72

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A global public goods lens helps in better managing
global interdependence. It shifts us out of zero-sum
tribalism that the Report recognizes as a problem andinto a frame of mind that rightly matches shared action to shared problems, without assuming that all
disputes will dissipate or that diverging interests will
not persist. It shifts our thinking from a defensive
fatalism or endless problematizing to recognizing
human agency, thus enriching clear-eyed, practicalconversations about and action on shared futures. In
mobilizing shared action, we not only stand a betterchance of doing better overall; we also stand a better chance of not leaving people behind. The shift inframe also opens our imaginations to lots of other potential ways forward, and we can sift through those
options better and more systematically using what
we know about global public goods and what we havelearned about them—in research and in practice—over many years. We save time, energy and resources
to get to better, more equal outcomes. And then­—­success can breed success.1
A global public goods lens helps in understanding
features and patterns that may be shared across awide range of global challenges, and it can better prepare the world to anticipate new challenges. It doesso by enabling a more systematic approach to identifying and addressing emerging challenges characterized by interdependence, even ones we cannot
anticipate today.

Managing interdependence can be enhanced“by framing it as reflecting the need to provide
global public goods, such as global peace andclimate change mitigation, as an explicit goal

The horrifying human toll of violent conflict, theravages of climate change, the reconfiguring of global trade, a new cycle of debt distress, the lives lostto Covid-19—all make it clear that we live in a highly interdependent world where physical and digitalthings, from viruses to misinformation, quickly spill
across national borders. As we move further into the
Anthropocene, where humans drive planetary change
in unprecedented ways, we will have to respond to
economic, social and environmental challenges thatare planetary in scale. As the previous two chaptersdemonstrate, global interdependence is being reconfigured, and mismanaging it imposes costs, or evensetbacks, to human development. Managing interdependence can be enhanced by framing it as reflecting
the need to provide global public goods, such as global peace and climate change mitigation, as an explicit
goal. This is already being taken up through proposals
to reform multilateral governance2 and multilateraldevelopment banks in order to broaden their mandates to support national contributions to global public goods.3

What are global public goods?
We begin with a concrete example that schoolchildren around the world learn about every year: knowledge of triangles. Determining the length of the sidesof triangles has long been of concern to mathematicians and philosophers, not to mention engineers andbuilders. For instance, if we know the lengths of twosides of a triangle, what can we know about the lengthof the third side? It turns out that for specific kinds oftriangles, quite a lot. The Pythagorean theorem4—aclassic of geometry—gives us a rule to calculate thelength of the third side for right triangles. This rule
helps us understand other basic shapes, such as circles, and underpins much of what we can build in our
minds and in the real world.
The Pythagorean theorem, like much knowledge,
exhibits the distinguishing features of global public
goods. When someone applies the theorem, it does
not detract from anyone else in the world doing thesame. The theorem is used, and has been used, by
many people at the same time in construction, navigation, mapmaking and numerous other activities.5
And it is very hard, if not impossible, to prevent anyone from using the theorem6 because it is not held exclusively by a firm that controls the conditions for its
use. Nor is it circumscribed by the borders of a country with the sovereign power to decide how people
living in other countries can use it.7
These two characteristics—that use by one person does not prevent someone else from using it at
the same time and that it is hard to exclude anyone
from using it—make the Pythagorean theorem a global public good.8 So are all mathematical theorems in
the public domain, and so are other insights about thenatural world and about how economies and societies
function and change. In short, ideas and knowledge
in the public domain are global public goods.9

Chapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence73Other global public goods include identifying
and containing diseases with global reach, mitigating climate change, preventing and containing the
spread of international financial crises, maintaining
international peace and fostering cybersecurity.10
Some global public goods cannot be envisioned now
because we simply lack the knowledge to identify
them—in the same way that science and detection
technologies only recently made it possible to document the depletion of the ozone layer or establish thehuman cause of climate change.

A global public goods lens is useful in“managing challenges or opportunities that spill
across borders. It is also useful in confronting
and redressing dangerous planetary change

Global public goods can also be created; they are
not always simply given. For example, through theMontreal Protocol, the world is providing the global
public good of avoiding depleting the stratosphere’s
ozone layer, which shields all life from the sun’s
harmful ultraviolet radiation. Both technology andsocial choice shape the conditions of production or
consumption that can determine whether someone
can be excluded.11 For example, broadcast television channels have the potential to reach anyone
with a receiving device, whereas cable television(an alternative technology) channels are available
only to those who subscribe to a cable television
service (access was made excludable as a result of
a new technology and social choices on how to deploy it).
There is often some discretion, given the state oftechnology and the inherent characteristics of thegood in question, to determine through social choices what is, or is not, a global public good. And sometechnologies—such as those that sustain our digitally connected world, allowing for the instantaneous sharing of information by practically all 8 billion
people living on Earth today—create conditions ofinterdependence that can call for new global public
goods.12 In the context of the Digital Revolution, thisincludes what have been described as digital public
goods (box 3.1). Thus, providing global public goods,
often rightly framed as a problem to be solved, canalso be purposefully deployed to mobilize action towards addressing shared challenges.13
74

A global public goods lens is useful in managing
challenges or opportunities that spill across borders.
It is also useful in confronting and redressing dangerous planetary change.14

Cross-border challenges and opportunities
as global public goods
The outbreak of a communicable disease that moves
across borders has negative spillovers that can be
managed through the global public good of communicable disease control. Global public goods always
involve international spillovers that reflect uncompensated interdependence among countries (meaning that one country makes decisions without regard
to the impacts that those decisions might have onother countries).15
In recent decades spillovers with global reach havebeen driven by policy choices (how much countries
allow for the flow of people, goods, services, financeand information), by technologies (which determine
the cost, speed and ease of cross-border flows) and by
the way the two interact (see chapter 2). Even thoughpolicies can constrain cross-border flows, technology may make that hard (many people can easily
catch an airplane flight and share information globally over digital networks). But there are some global
public goods for which stopping flows at the border—and managing them in that way—is not feasible: thisincludes what can be considered planetary public
goods.

Planetary public goods: An emerging andenduring class of global public goods
The reality that humans share a single planet with
one another and other forms of life, today and wellinto the future, implies that processes of dangerous
planetary change can be framed through a global
public goods lens.16 Consider managing the global
commons, such as open-seas fisheries (spotlight 3.1).
The global commons are widely accessible resources
but are not global public goods17 because their use bysomeone implies that the resources extracted fromthem are not available at the same time to someone
else, as with fishing on the open seas.18 But restricting

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Box 3.1 Digital public infrastructure and digital public goods
Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge
As this chapter has noted, technologies are among the sources of promise and peril for the world in the years and decades
ahead. On the one hand digital public goods—open-source software, artificial intelligence (AI), standards and content—offer
opportunities for economics and social development, particularly for low-income countries.1 On the other hand the rapid development of generative AI in particular has led to concerns ranging from the proliferation of deep fakes and misinformation to apotential destabilizing geopolitical arms race to advance and deploy AI. With the technology continuing to develop rapidly, thisis the moment when the future path for the world will be decisively shaped by actions taken now.
One of the areas in which the positive potential has begun to emerge clearly is in identity and payments systems, a technology stack that has come to be known as digital public infrastructure. This consists of a system of identification (which can bebiometric), payments structures and data; a digital public infrastructure can be used not only for mobile payments but also fordelivering welfare benefits and other public and private services. The best-known examples are the India Stack, founded on
the identification platform Aadhar,2 and Estonia’s X-road.3 Several other countries have begun to adopt these platforms or todigitize identity and public services using other solutions, and under India’s leadership the Group of 20 (G20) recently affirmed
a commitment to using digital public infrastructure for development.4
The initiatives are not without problems, including concerns about access for marginalized groups and errors or procurement delays.5 Digital public infrastructure should not be seen as a panacea; it is important to avoid techno-hype and to learn
from early failures. Nevertheless, digital technologies do offer new opportunities for development, just as the mobile andbroadband revolutions from the mid-2000s created economic possibilities for people and businesses in low- and high-income
countries alike. While the United Nations Development Programme has emphasized the importance of digital public goods formoving towards the Sustainable Development Goals, the time has come to consider what aspects of digital technology should
become development goals in themselves and to engage in granular debate about appropriate policy environments.6
At the same time there is a need to ensure that future developments in AI, and in the supporting infrastructure of data centres,
undersea cables, chips and data, do not lead to a zero-sum arms race. In the current global environment generative AI andadvanced chip manufacture are too often seen only through a national security lens, an essential perspective but only part of
the global picture. There have been many international codes of AI principles in recent years—for example, by the G20 and theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)—but too little substantive, detailed debate about effective global
governance given the characteristics and affordances of the technology and the existing structures of market and political power.7
Notes
1. For definitions and examples of applications to advance development, see https://www.un.org/techenvoy/content/digital-public-goods (accessed 17
February 2024). 2. https://indiastack.org/ (accessed 17 February 2024). 3. https://e-estonia.com/solutions/interoperability-services/x-road/ (accessed
17 February 2024). 4. G20 2023b. 5. Howson and Partridge 2022. 6. UNDP 2023c. 7. On the G20, see https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/economy/g20​_summit​/osaka19​/pdf​/documents/en/annex_08.pdf; on the OECD, see: https://www.oecd.org/science/forty-two-countries-adopt-new-oecd​-principles​-on​-artificial-intelligence.htm (both accessed 17 February 2024).

the depletion of the global commons—for example,
avoiding depleting the ozone layer—can be framed asa global public good.19 Some negative environmental
externalities such as cross-border air pollution cannot be stopped at borders. Migratory birds fly acrosscountries and sometimes continents, interweaving nature from different territorial demarcations.20
These examples of interdependence justify thelong-standing international management of environmental challenges, as reflected in the growing number of multilateral environmental agreements, whichhave accelerated since the 1980s.21
Knowledge and awareness of some of these global
environmental externalities are increasing—enabledin part by technologies for monitoring biophysicalflows and in part by scientific advances in understanding their interactions. For example, recent advances in hydrology have determined that water
cycles depend on what happens not only with surface
water (including rivers and lakes, with well-known
transboundary challenges) or groundwater (including
aquifers) but also with terrestrial moisture recycling(moisture that enters the atmosphere via evaporation or plant transpiration and travels with the windacross countries and even continents, eventually falling as rain).22 Terrestrial moisture recycling accounts
for 40 percent of annual precipitation on land—andas much as 75 percent in some places.23 So these are

Chapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence

75very important global processes in determining local
rainfall patterns, which can be crucial for supporting
agriculture or predicting floods and droughts. As an
example of the global interdependence associatedwith moisture recycling, consider how tropical forests
contribute substantially to land evaporation globally.24 Deforestation in one region can reduce rainfall
in regions far away, with particularly serious implications for rainfed agriculture.25

A planetary public goods lens, as part of a“broader global public goods lens, provides ananalytical framework that brings structure toa wide range of challenges and opportunities
associated with global interdependence and canbe leveraged to mobilize action at multiple levels
Patterns of disruption of planetary biophysical processes, including on global terrestrial moisture recycling, are reaching an unprecedented speed andscale.26 This suggests that we are living in an entirely new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.27 There
are, of course, better known manifestations of these
disruptions­—­including, most prominently, the depletion of the ozone layer, climate change and threats
to the integrity of ecosystems and biodiversity, allof which have been analysed through a global public goods lens.28 At-the-border policies can do little ornothing to manage or restrict the spillovers associated with these disruptions, given that they emanatefrom the reality of all humans living on a shared planet. Planetary public goods are thus a special category of global public goods, and the reality of the
Anthropocene will persist well into the future.29 So
providing planetary public goods is not only of crucial
importance today but also a challenge that will persist
for future generations.30 That includes considering
the biosphere (the thin layer of life that surrounds theplanet and in which we and our development are embedded) a planetary public good. The provision of thisspecific planetary public good could be assessed by theextent to which the biosphere’s global integrity is preserved. The biosphere and its global integrity mediate
large-scale responses in the Earth system that could affect its suitability for complex human societies.31
A planetary public goods lens, as part of a broader global public goods lens, provides an analyticalframework that brings structure to a wide range of76

challenges and opportunities associated with global
interdependence and can be leveraged to mobilize
action at multiple levels.32 Doing so requires adding
more structure to what is required to provide global
public goods beyond simply defining them.

What does it take to provide global
public goods? They are not created equal
Recall the Pythagorean theorem. How did this global
public good come about? Although attributed to Pythagoras, it was known hundreds, even thousands,of years before Pythagoras to people living in Babylon, Egypt and the Indian subcontinent.33 Once it became known, as with ideas more generally,34 it took
the form of a global public good. This simple example shows that global public goods are ubiquitous andplentiful, shaping how economic activity as well as
political and social life is organized.35 It also showsthat, despite being available for everyone, global public goods do not benefit everyone equally.36 For ideas,37 such as the Pythagorean theorem, emanating
once in one country would be enough for the global public good to be provided.38 Many global public
goods are of this type, but there are other types ofglobal public goods for which the level of provision isdetermined by the aggregation of country contributions in other ways.39

How country contributions aggregate to determine
the level of provision of global public goods
Global public goods can be classified as different
types, including by how the aggregation of individual country contributions affects the level of provision.
There are many different methods of aggregation.40
Three key types of global public goods are considered here, distinguished by their aggregation method: best-shot, summation and weakest-link (table
3.1). Different global challenges fit within each ofthese three types, so by bringing a framework thatfinds commonalities across issues that seem widely
disparate, a global public goods lens can tailor management of these issues without reinventing thewheel every time. Learning from successful efforts
in managing global challenges in one area can inspire
responses in other areas that share similar features,

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Table 3.1 Recommendations for how to improve theprovision of different types of global public goods
Aggregation

Provision prognosis

Recommendations

Best-shot(for example,
scientificbreakthrough)Likely to be provided
if incentives are strong
enough for the best
shooter to contribute

Rich or dominant
country fosters
provision, but
multilateral institutions
can pool actions orcoordinate among
multiple potential best
shooters

Summation(for example,
climate change
mitigation)

Tendency forunderprovision due
to free or easy riding
because contributions
are perfectly
substitutable

Grants and loans
are needed to foster
fairness, and multilateral
institutions are needed
to monitor and trackcontributions

Weakest link(for example,
disease control)More likely to be provided
if interests and capacities
are similar; if there is aneed to shore up poor
countries, free riding
concerns may emerge if
support is to be pooled
across high countries; riskof a “spoiler” blocking
provision

Capacity building isessential to enhance
the contributions of
those least able tocontribute; income
redistribution makes
provision more likely

Source: Human Development Report Office based on Buchholz and Sandler(2021).

in terms of how the aggregation of country contributions determines the level of provision of global public goods.
Best-shot global public goods. When the contribution of the country that contributes the most determines the level of provision, we are in presence ofa best-shot global public good. Potentially only one
country is enough to fully provide a best-shot global public good. Consider an Earth-destroying asteroid. It needs to be diverted or destroyed only once
to protect everyone on the planet.41 Though a seemingly far-fetched scenario, one country, the UnitedStates, is investing in the global public good of protecting the planet from this threat—and successfully diverted the orbit of an asteroid, in a test of thecapabilities that might be required.42 The test wasdone unilaterally, and if the world were to ever confront an incoming asteroid, presumably the country
would act alone in providing the global public goodof diverting it.43 In a scenario where multiple countries have the interest and ability to contribute, thecountry that contributes the most single-handedly
determines the level of provision of a best-shot global public good.44

Summation global public goods. Even if one country
were to unilaterally stop emitting greenhouse gases,
the atmospheric concentration of those gases would
still be determined by what all the others emit.45
Thus, stabilizing the concentration of greenhousegases (critical for climate stability) is a summation
global public good. Each ton of greenhouse gas emissions is perfectly substitutable by the emissions fromany other country—that is, from the atmosphere’s
perspective it does not matter where emissions
reductions come from.46 Unlike best-shot global public goods, the sum of the contributions fromcountries—often, as in stabilizing the concentrationof greenhouse gases, from most if not all countries—
determines the level of provision of summation global public goods.
Weakest-link global public goods. Many more types ofglobal public goods associated with different ways ofaggregating country contributions could be explored,
but a third one merits special attention: when thelevel of provision is determined by the country least
able to contribute. This is the case for communicable disease control: even if all countries but one areable to control the spread of the disease, the world
as a whole is left vulnerable to the threat, because a
disease outbreak can occur in the country with theleast ability to control the disease.47 This type of aggregation corresponds to a weakest-link global public good, since the country that contributes the least
determines the level of provision of the global public
good for the world as a whole. Other examples include the surveillance of a financial crisis that could
spread across countries.48
When the country that contributes themost determines the level of provision:
Best-shot global public goods
For best-shot global public goods, if at least one country sees that provision is in its interest and can contribute what is required (making it the best shooter),it will likely (but not inevitably) provide the global
public good when it has the resources to do so.49 Before the creation of multilateral financial institutions
after World War II, the provision of international liquidity of last resort was a best-shot global public
good: it took only one country to be able and willing.50

Chapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence77

If several countries are pursuing the provision of
the same best-shot global public good, coordinating
efforts to enable the best shooter or pooling efforts toseek complementarities (through multilateral organizations, for instance) enhances efficiency and often
the prospect of success.51
Best-shot global public goods are a double-edged
sword. They are likely to be provided when resources
are aligned with the interests of the best shooter, butthey leave the world vulnerable to a situation where
the best shooter is able but unwilling to contribute.
Thus, countries may be motivated to pool resources52 for multilateral approaches that make the world
less vulnerable to a misalignment between the ability
and the willingness to contribute to a best-shot global
public good. Even then, higher income countries withmore resources and capacities are essential in providing best-shot global public goods, given the need forconcentrated action.

Best-shot global public goods are a double“
edged sword. They are likely to be provided

when resources are aligned with the interestsof the best shooter, but they leave the world
vulnerable to a situation where the best
shooter is able but unwilling to contribute
It is possible to think of other ways of solving themisalignment of ability and willingness to provide
best-shot global public goods. For example, a country
with enough resources to provide a best-shot global public good might be compelled to contribute as ademonstration of leadership or by being responsive toan appeal to conform with international norms. And
agents other than states—for instance, civil society
organizations and philanthropic foundations—canplay a key role in shaping those norms, both acrossand within countries, so that countries with resources
do provide best-shot global public goods.53
When every country’s contribution adds cumulatively:
Providing summation global public goods
Countries pursuing exclusively their self-interest
typically face incentives to contribute little, or not
at all, to summation global public goods, because of
the possibility that some countries may free ride (notcontribute) or easy ride (contribute few resources).54
78

Thus, countries will tend not to contribute enoughto reach what would be collectively desirable forthe world.55 Since countries vary in both interests
and resources, these differences further exacerbate the challenge of providing summation global
public goods.
Diverse interests must be reconciled, and agreement reached on how much countries will voluntarily
contribute. Fairness becomes paramount in shaping
agreement.56 Addressing fairness may require international transfers or resources from countries thathave larger endowments or that have contributed
most to the problems, as with greenhouse gases in theatmosphere, determined by current and past emissions.57 Many negative impacts of climate change will
happen faster and with greater intensity in the regionsthat have contributed the least to climate change.58
And international transfers may be motivated not by
altruism but by a desire to redress injustices, which
may be required to enhance the prospects of widespread contributions to a summation global public
good.59 Global public goods often require new andadditional resources, and it is crucial that these are
not siphoned off from flows provided with a different
motivation, such as official development assistance.60
When it all boils down to the country that contributes
the least: Providing weakest-link global public goods
In contrast to summation global public goods, the incentives look very different for weakest-link global
public goods. If all countries share similar interests
and resources, there is no incentive for any country not to contribute.61 Of course, countries’ endowments and interests differ, so when interests areshared, prospects for providing weakest-link global
public goods improve as resource inequality declines
across countries,62 providing a strong rationale forinternational transfers of resources or capacities63
from those that have them to those that do not.64 But
which better-endowed countries make the transfers(box 3.2)? Richer countries may find themselves facing free-riding concerns—and thus incentives to notcontribute to these transfers. And perhaps counterintuitively, the higher the number of rich countries, thelarger these free-riding concerns may be.65
As with best-shot global public goods, weakestlink global public goods are also somewhat of a

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Box 3.2 What drives countries to contribute to global public goods?
Assumptions about human behaviour and their implications for how countries act in the international context shape
perspectives on prospects for the provision of global public goods, as well as proposed measures that could be put
in place to enhance their provision when those prospects are dim.1 For example, some have argued that a hegemonic
country was needed to provide the global public good of an international lender of last resort during global economic
crises prior to the establishment of the Bretton Woods institutions.2
Given that countries generally act independently to preserve their autonomy (particularly with respect to security
concerns),3 it is reasonable to assume that prospects for providing global public goods will have to be explored in acontext where the global community remains a system of politically autonomous states with diverse interests, preferences, resources and power, and thus heterogeneous willingness and ability to contribute to global public goods. It isalso reasonable to assume that countries try to anticipate and strategically react to other countries’ actions.4
To take a first pass at considering prospects for providing global public goods and ways to improve them whenneeded, one can start from the assumption that countries will consider contributing to global public goods basedon the extent to which that contribution advances either their interests or preferences, constrained by the resources
available to them.5 This narrow premise is relaxed later in the Report.
Notes
1. As argued for the behaviour of states more broadly in Kirshner (2022). 2. This is the argument put forward by Kindleberger (1986, p. 11), who
was sceptical of relying on rules during those periods: “Let me conclude by emphasizing once again my concern that politicians, economists,and political scientists may come to believe that the system should be run at all times by rules, including regimes, not people. Rules aredesirable on trend. In crisis the need is for decision.” For arguments in the same vein, see Keohane (1984) and Axelrod and Keohane (1985).
3. Kirshner 2022. 4. This is what is assumed in most of the literature (Buchholz and Sandler 2021), including in Barrett (2003a), which is arare case where economic analysis and international relations theory are marshalled to explore the provision of global public goods. 5. This
is what Ruggie (1998) described (critically) as a neo-utilitarian premise.

double-edged sword. Imagine a country that decides not, or is unable, to contribute to a weakest-link
global public good (not curbing the spread of invasive species, not eliminating transnational terrorism
or criminal networks or not stopping nuclear arms
from proliferating). Then, the whole world is at risk.
A country that decides not to contribute to a weakestlink global public good can act as a spoiler, impeding
provision for everyone.66

Applying a global public goods
lens to the response to Covid-19
Control of the transmission of the virus that causes
Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) can be viewed through theprism of a weakest-link global public good: control
cannot be achieved until it occurs in every country.67
So the country with the least ability to control the virus’s transmission determines the level of provisionof this global public good for everyone else. The prognosis for providing weakest-link global public goods
is favourable when countries have similar interests
and resources, but the situation becomes more muddled in a world beset by disparities in both. Applying a global public goods lens early in the pandemic

highlighted those challenges and potential remedies,including the crucial importance of transferring resources and capacity to countries less able to control
virus transmission.68
Multiple global public goods are at play in addressing a pandemic. Several are not weakest-link global public goods, leading to some of the challenges inprovision that can be expected with other types ofglobal public goods.69 Since Covid-19 was caused bya novel virus, these challenges were exacerbated byscientific uncertainty, as well as policy ambiguity andinconsistency.70 The pandemic response involved
providing weakest-link global public goods (controlling virus transmission), summation global public goods (pooling resources to shore up weak links)
and best-shot global public goods (the science behinddeveloping the vaccines, sequencing the genome ofthe virus). Multiple challenges at multiple scales withdifferent agents made for a longer pandemic, withhighly unequal access to the vaccines and the lasting
human development effects documented in chapter 1that burdened low- and middle-income countries inparticular.71 Explaining the challenges of providing
different types of global public goods may enable better responses in the future.

Chapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence

79Thus, the underprovision of global public goods,
very costly globally, can also drive inequalities (spotlight 3.2). The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic
should not have come as a surprise, given that the
failure to control the transmission of some global
communicable diseases results in the loss of lives,
the inability of people to lead healthy lives and huge
global economic costs.72 In contrast, the returns tocommunicable disease control are very high, particularly for the weakest-link global public good of diseaseeradication. For the eradication of smallpox (certified
in 1979),73 the benefit-cost ratio was estimated to be
more than 100 to 1,74 and the benefits accrue in perpetuity to future generations.75 Not all communicablediseases are eradicable,76 but those that are (such aspolio) continue to inspire efforts by the international
community, precisely because the net benefits are sohigh.77 Still, the weakest-link nature of disease eradication can be cruel. Although two of the three wild
polio viruses have been eradicated (type 2 in 2015 andtype 3 in 2019),78 polio eradication efforts have not yet
succeeded—and have missed several target dates—
because the third strain (wild polio type 1) persists inonly a few small areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan
and vaccine-derived type 2 continues to circulate.79

The underprovision of global public goods,“
very costly globally, can also drive inequalities
Three key insights emerge from the ensuing analysis. First is the need to consider a range of different
types of global public goods with different aggregations and to design mechanisms that increase thechances of addressing the bottlenecks for each typeof global public goods.80 Second is that what constitutes a global public good is often a matter of choice,and the need for the provision of global public goods
can be harnessed to bring countries together. Third isthat institutions can be designed and created to enhance the provision of global public goods.

Too little disease surveillance
A key global public good for communicable disease control is disease surveillance, which itself canbe considered a weakest-link global public good.81
Underprovision may result from countries lacking the80

capacity to undertake surveillance. As of late March
2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that 30 percent of countries lacked a Covid-19 national preparedness and response plan, and only half
had national infection prevention and control programmes, as well as water, sanitation and hygiene
standards for health care providers.82
But countries may face incentives that work against
full disclosure of disease outbreaks to the international community, which can be exacerbated for a novel
pathogen for which pharmaceutical solutions are not
yet adequate.83 Such incentives include fear of punitive actions by others in the form of trade and travel
restrictions.84 These unilateral measures were taken
during the Covid-19 pandemic. For instance, South
Africa reported to the world the new Omicron variant
in November 2021, only to have several high-income
countries ban flights from South Africa.85 So, inequality in both resources and capacities—and in preferences to disclose outbreaks—worked against providing
the global public good of Covid-19 surveillance. And
measures that might have enhanced provision­—­contributing resources and capacities to countries inneed and coordinating responses to the disclosure of
new variants in a predictable way—were often lacking.

Lack of equitable access to vaccines
To deliver equitable access to future pandemic vaccines in 100 days86 requires efficiently providing
best-shot global public goods associated with scienceand technology and shoring up potential weak links
in surveillance and vaccine production capacity.87
That potentially includes creating vaccine manufacturing hubs, such as the Partnership for African Vaccine Manufacturing under the auspices of the African
Union’s African Centres for Disease Control andPrevention,88 and establishing a global treaty on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response under
the World Health Assembly.89
A global public goods account about how the inequity in access to Covid-19 vaccines unfolded can help
prepare better in the future (spotlight 6.3). For example, the complex prognosis for providing weakest-link
global public goods helps in understanding what happened. To shore up countries with little surveillance
capacity and access to vaccines, the goal of achieving

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

global disease control90 was invoked (“No one is safe,
until everyone is safe” is the headline on the homepage of the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access, or
COVAX, initiative91). This argument could have provided incentives for high-income countries to financially support potential weakest links, but then thesecountries confronted the free-riding challenge about
who should contribute and how much.92 Thus, although each country had an incentive to contributeto advance its self-interest, the need to pool resources turned the challenge into one with the characteristics of a summation global public good—because eachcountry could free ride on the contribution of others.93
There was a manifest lack of coordination in implementing predictable responses to reports of disease
outbreaks or new variants—not for lack of effort by
the WHO on several fronts, from guidance on travelto support for disease surveillance. Much of this guidance was ignored.94 Ethical and moral arguments,
some proposed with exceptional precision, failed toinfluence country behaviour.95 The implications ofthese actions by high-income countries still run deepin the perception that many middle- and low-income
countries felt left behind and treated unfairly.96

The science enabling the Covid-19 response:
Best-shot global public goods were provided
Development of the Covid-19 vaccines was possible
only because key best-shot global public goods could
be provided. The most direct best-shot global public
good was provided by the scientists who sequenced
and published the genomic makeup of the SARSCoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19.97 The other bestshot global public goods were the scientific findings
published in journals over at least two decades that,among other things, demonstrated how the spike protein in coronaviruses was a prime target for at least
some types of vaccines—including the first to be licensed for Covid-19.98 Public funding for science underpinned these best-shot global public goods, with
the US National Institutes of Health alone allocating$17.2 billion to vaccine technologies between 2000
and 2019.99 But both ex ante and ex post coordination
challenges impeded the provision of Covid-19 vaccines as a global public good,100 despite advocacy to
do so.101 Some countries even actively attempted to

attract efforts in other countries to develop a vaccine
for their own camp.102

Development of the Covid-19 vaccines“
was possible only because key best-shot
global public goods could be provided

The development of Covid-19 vaccines was a remarkable achievement—as the prognosis for providing best-shot global public goods should have led
one to expect. The capacities were concentrated inhigh-income countries, home to almost two-thirds of
the Covid-19 developers as of April 2020, one monthafter the declaration of the pandemic on 11 March
2020,103 most based in North America and Europe.104
The capacities were aligned with interests, as well
as a large mobilization of public financing and widespread agreement on the need to prioritize vaccine
efforts.105 Clinical development and approval of vaccines typically takes 5–10 years, with only 10 percent
of vaccine candidates receiving approval.106 But as aresult of the massive public resources mobilized,107
the first emergency use authorization for a Covid-19
vaccine by a stringent regulatory authority (the US
Food and Drug Administration, FDA) was issued on
11 December 2020, less than a year after the pandemic was declared (figure 3.1).108
Much of the public finance took the form of advanced purchase agreements by high-income countries that far exceeded those countries’ needs.109 For
instance, the United States provided $29.2 billion in
public funds to purchase vaccines (from the start ofthe pandemic up to March 2022), $2.2 billion to support clinical trials and $108 million to support manufacturing and basic and translational science.110 This“advanced market commitment” has long been advocated as a potentially powerful incentive for vaccine
and drug discovery and for technological innovation
more broadly.111 This appears to have been the key
driver for private sector engagement in Covid-19 vaccine development, given the substantial de-risking
produced by the advanced purchase agreements.112

Institutions to facilitate global public goods
The response to Covid-19 involved pursuing bestshot global public goods (understanding the science

Chapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence

81Figure 3.1 Authorization for Covid-19 vaccines was unprecedently fast
0
Generic
vaccine

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Phase 1910

11 years

8.8 years until licensure

Phase 2Phase 3

LicensureTotal

10.3 yearsWHO
prequalification

Covid-19(AZ/U-OX)

Phases 1–3
Emergency Use Authorization
1st authorization: Australia, January 2021; EMA (conditional), January 2021; FDA, na

Covid-19(Novavax)

Phases 1–3
Emergency Use Authorization

Covid-19 trials were not conducted as sequential
steps as with historical trials, and the Covid-19 trial
phases were combined to generate relevant data for
Emergency Use Authorization and licensure> 1.6 years> 1.4 years

1st authorization: Canada, February 2022; EMA (conditional), December 2021; FDA, na
Covid-19(PfizerBioNTech)

Phases 1–3
Emergency Use Authorization
1st authorization: Switzerland, December 2020; EMA (conditional), December 2020;
FDA, August 2021

1.3 years

 MA is European Medicines Agency. FDA is US Food and Drug Administration. na is not applicable. WHO is World Health Organization.
E
Source: Wellcome Trust 2022.

behind vaccines, sequencing the genome of the
SARS-CoV-2 virus), summation global public goods(pooling resources to shore up weak links) andweakest-link global public goods (controlling the
spread of the virus). Multiple challenges at multiple
scales with different agents made for a longer pandemic with highly unequal access to vaccines andwith lasting economic effects that burdened low- andmiddle-income countries in particular. Understanding the challenges of providing different types ofglobal public goods with different aggregations mightenable better responses in the future.
In fact, a global public goods lens opens the possibility of enhancing the provision of global public
goods through institutions that reshape incentives,
provide information and transfer resources.113 Manydifferent types of institutions—and even agents suchas civil society organizations and processes suchas social movements—can play these roles, at multiple scales,114 but four types of international institutions have a bearing on the provision of global
public goods:115
82• Multilateral organizations.116 By pooling resourcesfrom countries, creating economies of scope andreducing transaction costs, these organizations
efficiently support the provision of multiple global
public goods. They include the United Nations andits specialized agencies, funds and programmes(including the nternational Labor Organization,
the United Nations Environment Programme andthe WHO), as well as international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank (which
are formally UN specialized agencies with autonomous governance). Multilateral organizations
can directly fund global public goods (the IMF
providing liquidity during a balance of paymentcrisis) or coordinate actions among countries (theWHO during health emergencies, the International
Criminal Police Organization—better known as
INTERPOL—in the case of transnational crime).
• International treaties.117 Often negotiated under
the auspices of multilateral organizations, international treaties bring multiple services that support global public good provision: disseminating

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

scientific information (to reduce uncertainty during negotiations), convening negotiating parties,
and monitoring and fostering compliance after
treaties are ratified. Such treaties frequently support global public goods associated with managing
environmental spillovers.118 Examples include theUnited Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change, the Montreal Protocol on Substancesthat Deplete the Ozone Layer and the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species.
Effective treaties often must jointly provide morethan one global public good. For instance, an effective climate treaty might need to provide at least
two global public goods: climate change mitigation
as well as new ideas and technologies that lower
mitigation costs.119 A treaty on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response might also need toprovide several global public goods, as is currently
being considered.120• Clubs. Countries can form clubs when it is possible
to exclude nonparticipants from the benefits ofglobal public goods.121 The incentive structures ofclubs—given the enhanced prognosis for provisionassociated with them: excludability implies that
free riding is not a concern—make them relevant
for enhancing global public good provision.122• International regimes. Global transport and communication regimes provide global public goods

that enable maritime trade and electronic telecommunications, often under the jurisdiction ofmultilateral institutions, such as the International
Maritime Organization or the International Tele­
communication Union.
These institutions are being mobilized to draw lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic and enhance theresponse to future pandemics. The lessons from thepandemic point to the need for very high ambition:
the global resources needed for pandemic preparedness and response over 5–10 years are estimatedto be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.123 But thebenefits would also be extremely high,124 as the lossof lives and livelihoods and the economic toll of thepandemic made clear (chapter 1). The benefits frompandemic vaccines go well beyond health alone.125
The analysis in this chapter emphasizes how institutions that reshape incentives, information and resources can enhance the provision of global public
goods when countries are assumed to be advancing
their interests. As we move into part II of the Report,
chapter 4 explores further insights continuing withthis premise but also presents a wider vista on potential determinants of collective action. That enlarges
the scope for potential interventions to enhance collective action. It also reveals the crucial importanceof looking within countries to the emerging patternsof political polarization.

Chapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence

83SPOT L IG HT 3 .1

The global commons of ocean fisheries
Scott Barrett, Columbia University and London School of Economics

About one-third of the world’s ocean fisheries are
overfished (figure S3.1.1). A major reason for this is
the underlying property rights regime: under international law all countries may exploit these resourceson the high seas.1 As Garrett Hardin says in his classic
article, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” if a resourceis held in common, all potential users have an incentive to exploit it without regard to the effects on theothers. “Freedom in a commons,” he says, “brings
ruin to all.”2
A clear example of ruin is collapse of the formerly
superabundant cod fishery in the northwest Atlantic
Ocean. However, overexploitation short of collapse
also results in big losses. If exploitation were reducedin the short run, stocks would rebuild. Annual net
benefits in the long run could increase from $3 billion
to $86 billion.3

What to do? If overexploitation is caused by the resource being held in common, the obvious remedy
is to change the access rules. In the 1970s the world
took a major step in this direction by establishingan entirely new property right, Exclusive Economic
Zones (EEZs). EEZs extended every coastal state’s
exclusive right to manage fishery resources from 3
miles from shore (the old territorial sea) to 200 miles(at the same time EEZs were established, the territorial sea was extended from 3 miles to 12 miles).
Because most fisheries are found in this zone, the creation of EEZs eased overfishing at a stroke.
Unfortunately, EEZs, by themselves, cannot eliminate overfishing. Some fisheries overlap different
EEZs. Some straddle EEZs and the high seas. Someare highly migratory. Finally, some fisheries are exploited only in the high seas. Another problem is that

Figure S3.1.1 About one-third of the world’s fishery stocks are overfished
Percent

Unsustainable

100

Overfished75

Maximally sustainably fishedSustainable

50

25

Underfished
0

1974

1980

1990

2000

Source: FAO 2022.

84

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

2010

2019

some coastal states lack the capacity to regulate access to fisheries within their EEZs.

Two radical proposals
What more can be done? The Global Oceans Commission (GOC 2014), inspired by research by White
and Costello (2014), has proposed closing the highseas to fishing. Fisheries economist Rögnvaldur Hannesson has proposed extending today’s EEZs to theirmaximum extent, eliminating the high seas entirely.4
These are radical proposals. Will they help?
The first thing to note is that neither proposal isideal. Neither would have any effect on fisheries
found only within existing EEZs, where 96 percent of
the commercial catch is taken.5 Also, neither is suited
to addressing exploitation of the only species caught
exclusively in the high seas, the Antarctic toothfish (also known as the Chilean sea bass). Territorial
claims to Antarctica are disputed, making extensionof such claims contentious. Moreover, and rather obviously, closing these waters to fishing would mean
zero profits, not higher profits.
Though neither proposal could sustain an ideal outcome, either or both might improve the status quo.
Both would likely reduce harvests of highly migratory and straddling fisheries by blocking exploitation
by distant water states (except through access agreements with coastal states). However, neither proposal
would eliminate the common property problem thatexists among coastal states. In addition, both proposals would restrict coastal states’ access to at least
parts of the existing high seas, raising fishing costs. It
is possible, and perhaps even likely, that both proposals would be worse than the status quo.6

claim one in the Mediterranean until 2012. Similarly,
Spain claimed an EEZ in the Atlantic in 1978 and in
the Mediterranean in 2013. Italy claimed an EEZ in
2021. Many claims in the eastern Mediterranean are
motivated by an interest in developing natural gas
resources. Several areas are disputed. Not long ago,states on the Mediterranean refrained from claiming an EEZ out of concern that it would only stimulate others to do so, restricting where the fleets of allstates on this regional sea could fish. The equilibrium
has now been broken. As the breadth of the Mediterranean is less than 400 miles in every direction, thisregional sea is now fully enclosed. The effect of thischange in property rights on fisheries conservation
and rents has yet to be determined.
In 2010 in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean
the eight Parties to the Nauru Agreement blocked
access by purse seiners to high seas areas surrounded by their EEZs by making access to their EEZs contingent on states not fishing in the high seas pockets.8
Because the surrounding EEZs are much larger thanthe high seas pockets and fishing exclusively in thehigh seas pockets is uneconomic, this move proved
an effective deterrent. However, closing high seas
areas only increased fishing in the adjacent EEZs anddid not demonstrably help fisheries conservation.9
Closing these high seas pockets was made possible
by an accident of geography: the leverage enjoyed bymainly small island states having adjacent EEZs. By
contrast, the two radical proposals noted above would
require a change in international law. A question notaddressed by Hannesson or the Global Oceans Commission is how their proposals would come to be accepted in law.

Property rights established in customary law
Regional seas
Versions of the two proposals have already been implemented on a regional scale.
All six coastal states on the Black Sea claim an EEZ,
fully enclosing this small regional sea.7 Similarly, allnine states on the Baltic Sea claim an EEZ, fully enclosing it. Until recently, the Mediterranean Sea wasmainly open. For example, though France claimed
an EEZ in the Atlantic Ocean in 1972, it did not

We are used to grand ideas such as enclosure of theseas and closure of the high seas being achieved byinternational negotiations leading to adoption of a
new treaty. But even though EEZs emerged as theUnited Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea wasbeing negotiated and are codified in that agreement,
this new property right was recognized as applying incustomary law long before the Law of the Sea enteredinto force. The two radical ideas for changing existing property rights arrangements would also need to

Chapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence85be established in customary law. The reason is simple: treaties apply only to the countries that consent
to be bound by them. A country can thus easily avoid
being bound by a new rule established in a treaty bychoosing not to participate in the treaty. By contrast,
customary law applies universally. Though the United States has not ratified the Law of the Sea, it accepts
that EEZs apply in customary law.
However, compared with treaties, customary law isan inscrutable institution. Custom is not negotiatedexplicitly. Nor does it require the explicit consent of
individual countries. A customary law exists if states
behave in accordance with the law—and do so in the
belief that they are legally obligated to.10
Because custom is founded on beliefs, some scholars of international law have questioned whether it exists, let alone whether it has had any effect.11
Does custom really shape behaviour, or is custom
just a name given to behaviours that reflect national
self-interests?
One way to know whether custom exists and has
real effects is to identify situations in which a country
would be better off deviating from a customary rule
yet refrains from doing so (again, because it believes
doing so would violate international law). The Grand
Banks, a famously rich fishing ground off Canada’s
eastern shore, protrudes beyond the country’s 200mile EEZ in two places, the “Nose” and the “Tail” (anearby third area, the Flemish Cap, lies entirely outside the EEZ). If custom merely codified actions thatreflected national self-interest, Canada would haveclaimed an extended EEZ in these areas. We know
this because, Canada and the European Union, especially Spain, previously clashed over fishing in them.
In 2002, after years of overfishing by foreign fleets,a Canadian parliamentary committee investigatedwhether Canada should assert unilateral control overthese areas. Despite its obvious self-interest motive
for doing so, the committee recommended against
the change, reckoning that other countries would oppose it.12 Canada’s adherence to the 200-mile limit
is thus strong evidence of customary law’s sway overstate behaviour.
More broadly, globally, unauthorized fishing is
80 percent lower just inside EEZs than just outside
them.13 This strongly implies both that coastal states
are enforcing their existing EEZs (presumably, because the EEZs are valuable to them) and that they86

could profit by extending their EEZs even further.
But under customary law, a state can legally extend
its EEZ only if others agree with the change, which islikely to cause others to extend their EEZs. Though astate would clearly gain by extending its EEZ unilaterally, it might ultimately lose when others extended
their EEZs as well. Custom has a restraining influence on behaviour.14
So far, countries have shown little interest in asserting either of the radical proposals at the global level.
But they have deviated from the rule of freedom on
the high seas in one special case.
Under the Law of the Sea, “states of origin” of anadromous species—salmon, which spawn in inland
waters—are recognized as having a “primary interest
in and responsibility for such stocks.” States may fish
for salmon but “only in waters landward of the outer
limits of the exclusive economic zones.” Because thisprovision is accepted by consensus and reinforced bystate practice, “the customary international law of
freedom of fishing no longer affords any right to harvest [anadromous species] without the agreement of
the state of origin,” effectively banning directed fishing for salmon in the high seas.15
Salmon are found in both the North Pacific andNorth Atlantic Oceans but are harvested in the highseas only in the North Pacific.16 Because salmon
move through the EEZs of different states of origin
in the North Pacific, the ban transforms what would
have been an open access resource into a resource
owned in common by states of origin only. By limiting
the number of countries with access to the fishery, theban likely lessens overexploitation. It also likely aids
efficiency because efficient management requires targeting “specific species, specific age groups, and individual runs,” which is possible only “at the time thefish approach the state of origin and segregate themselves for the return to their rivers of origin.” 17 Also,
the fish at this point are of maximum size and congregate in large numbers. Finally, to ensure sustainability, inland waters must be protected for spawning. By
giving states of origin special rights to fish for these
species, the high seas ban also gives these states an
incentive to safeguard access by salmon to theirspawning grounds. For salmon, a prohibition on highseas fishing clearly enhances efficiency.
Why was this exception allowed? When the Law of
the Sea was being negotiated, the only states to make

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

proposals for anadromous species were Canada, Ireland, Japan, the Soviet Union and the United States—
all states of origin. Moreover, no states protested
states of origin having a special claim to anadromous
stocks,18 even the states with the most to gain fromhigh seas fishing (Japan in the Pacific Ocean and Denmark, custodian for Greenland and the Faroe Islands,
in the Atlantic Ocean). This situation did not apply tofisheries in general.
Nothing stops countries from enclosing the highseas or from closing them to fishing under customary law. Indeed, theory suggests that states will do sowhen it enhances efficiency.19 States might not haveembraced either radical proposal because they remain unconvinced that it would solve the overfishingproblem.

Cooperative agreements established in treaty law
How to overcome overfishing? To Garret Hardin,
there is only one solution: “mutual coercion, mutuallyagreed upon by the majority of the people affected.”20
This solution, however, presupposes that a democratic institution exists with the power to impose andenforce an outcome. Such institutions exist at the national level—but not at the global level. Moreover, it
is hard to see how such an institution could emerge.
After all, the territorial sea is an extension of a coastal
state’s land-based territory, and an EEZ is an extension of that state’s territorial sea. A more limited proposal would give the exclusive right to fish on the highseas to a single party, a global high seas fisheries organization. However, most high seas fisheries overlap
with EEZs, and there are good reasons for managing
fisheries as coherent units—the logic of regional fisheries management organizations.
Elinor Ostrom agrees with Hardin’s diagnosis of
the reasons for the tragedy of the commons but disagrees strongly with his conclusion of the need for acentralized solution.21 To Ostrom, if users of a common property resource lose from overexploitation,
they have an incentive to cooperate to avoid overexploitation. Indeed, Ostrom provides numerous
examples where cooperation has succeeded, butthey are all at the local level. In a later paper, Ostrom and co-authors recognize that cooperation at
the international level is harder.22 They give several

reasons for this, but one stands out: the rule of “voluntary assent to negotiated treaties.”23 As noted previously, under international law countries are free
to enter into cooperative agreements or not as theyplease. Treaties, including treaties that establish regional fisheries management organizations, must be
self-enforcing.24
The most critical issue for successful treaty designis participation: how to get all countries wishing to
exploit a fishery to join the agreement. The Law of
the Sea tries to do this by requiring that states establish regional fisheries organizations for the purposeof managing a fishery. The UN Fish Stocks Agreement goes further. Article 7 says that “coastal Statesand States fishing on the high seas have a duty tocooperate,” and Article 8 says that these states shallsatisfy “their duty to cooperate by becoming members of [a regional fisheries management organization (RFMO)].” Critically, Article 8 also says, “Onlythose states which are members of such an organization…. Shall have access to the fishery resources
to which those measures apply.” In other words, if acountry wishes to exploit a fishery, it must becomea member of the cooperative enterprise establishedto manage the fishery. The problem here is that thisrequirement applies only to countries that choose
to participate in the Fish Stocks Agreement. The
Global Oceans Commission called for universal ratification of this agreement, but urging participation
does not create an incentive for participation.25 Selective trade measures can help in some instances,
but the freedom to exploit a fishery should ideallybe coupled in customary law with the obligation toparticipate in the organization that manages thefishery.
However, if too little participation is a problem,
so is too much participation. If all the countries exploiting a resource participate in an agreement thatsustains their full cooperation, their success will encourage entry, weakening their incentive to cooperate in the first place. The Fish Stocks Agreement
says that states having a “real interest” in a fishery
may become members of an RFMO, but who gets todecide which states have such an interest? The Lawof the Sea answered this question for salmon but not
for fisheries in general. A second need for customary law is thus to limit access. RFMOs could address
equity concerns by charging a fee for access to highChapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence

87seas areas within their territories (such as the Noseand Tail of the Grand Banks, and the Flemish Cap,
all three of which are situated within the territory of
the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization) anddistributing the revenue to all countries, including
nonparticipating countries, according to an agreed
formula. The high seas were determined to be free ata time when fisheries were believed to be available inlimitless supply.

Conclusion
Overfishing is a persistent and growing problem forwhich there is no simple remedy. Property rights solutions, established in customary law, and regional fishery management organizations, established in treaty
law, both help. But each on its own falls short of sustaining an efficient outcome. Further progress will likely
come from advancing both approaches in combination.

N OT E S
1.

FAO 2022.

14.

Barrett forthcoming.

2.

Hardin 1968, p. 1244.

15.

Burke 1991, p. 118.

3.

World Bank 2017.

16.

Burke 1991.

4.

Hannesson 2011.

17.

Burke 1991, p. 103.

5.

Schiller and others 2018; http://www.seaaroundus.org.

18.

Copes 1977.

6.

Barrett forthcoming.

19.

Barrett forthcoming.

7.

A portion of this is now disputed due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

20.

Hardin 1968, p. 1247.

8.

The members of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement are the Federated
States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua
New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tokelau and Tuvalu.

21.

Ostrom 1990.

22.

Ostrom and others 1999.

23.

Ostrom and others 1999, p. 282.

24.

Barrett 2003a.

25.

The Global Ocean Commission (GOC 2014) lists 30 states that are members of RFMOs and have not ratified the UN Fish Stocks Agreement. Since
2014, when the commission’s report was published, six countries on thelist have ratified the Fish Stocks Agreement, raising the total to 93 participating countries.

9.

Sibert and others 2012.

10.

Bodansky 1995.

11.

Goldsmith and Posner 1999.

12.

Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans 2002.

13.

Englander 2019.

88

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

S POT L IGH T 3 . 2

Assessing the net benefits from global
public goods and their distribution
Ronald U. Mendoza and Jurel Yap, Ateneo Policy Center, School of Government, Ateneo de Manila University

A six-step framework can be used to assess the net
benefits from providing global public goods, as wellas the distribution of those benefits.1 Identifying thesocial, economic and other benefits (or costs) of adequate global public good provision can improve understanding of whether and to what extent different
countries might support stronger international cooperation around certain global public goods.

For example, disease eradication could reduce socialand economic costs too myriad to map in their entirety, but existing health data could be used to estimate
the years of healthy and productive life lost due todisability and early death stemming from a disease.
Reducing a disease burden by some amount could
then be associated with an estimate of the benefits
gained.
Step 3: Assess the global costsof corrective actions

Methodology

Step 1: Characterize current provision
Setting a clear benchmark for adequate provision is
the first step in assessing a global public good. For example, in eradicating a communicable disease, theglobal public good can be deemed adequately provided when the disease is completely eliminated fromnature. Given measures of disease exposure in a population (ranging from 0 percent to 100 percent, forexample), one can then assess the extent to which thisglobal public good has been provided. Other global public goods may require an alternative approach.
For example, for trade facilitation in the context of amultilateral trade regime, bringing all countries thatare below a certain benchmark (say, the median) up
to that benchmark might be a practical target for adequate provision.
Step 2: Establish the global costs (orbenefits) of current provision
Assessing the full range of costs associated with
underprovided global public goods may not always
be possible, particularly if data on certain aspects ofthese costs have not yet been developed. Nevertheless, it is usually possible to estimate at least some of
the largest costs to provide a basis for policy action.

Different global public goods have varying provision technologies. Adequately providing some global
public goods may depend on the success of the leastcapable contributor (often called the weakest link).
Countering international terrorism is an example,
as it depends on the efforts of the country facing themost challenges in controlling its borders. But someglobal public goods such as vaccine development anddiscovery depend on the country or stakeholder withaccess to the right technology and the strongest scientific capabilities (called the best-shot). The cost ofcorrective action can then be estimated based on therequired inputs and the nature of the provision technology for a global public good, as well as the benchmark for adequate provision.2
Step 4: Evaluate the global benefits
from corrective actions
As noted earlier, estimating the costs of underproviding some global public goods offers an intuitive
estimate of the potential benefits (from costs avoided) from adequate provision. But other global public
goods offer completely new benefits that can be enjoyed across borders. For example, the multilateral trade regime could be expanded to allow for newvalue creation and facilitate new sources of global
economic growth. Such institutional developments

Chapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence

89might also have social and economic costs due totheir disruptive side effects (hence the next steps inassessing the net benefits as well as their distribution
across countries and stakeholders).

facilitates compensation to enhance international
cooperation.3

Applications
Step 5: Indicate the likely global net
benefits from enhanced provision
Based on the previous steps, it should be possible tojuxtapose the benefits from adequate provision of a
global public good against the costs. In some cases
adequate provision of a global public good averts
costly outcomes, whereas in others the result is enhanced human welfare and new sources of economic
growth. Both count on the benefits side of adequate
provision of global public goods as described earlier, and in many cases indirect benefits are not yet
factored in. For many global public goods these figures of new benefits or benefits expressed as averted
costs easily outweigh the costs of adequate provision,
hence motivating—at least on the whole—the rationale to cooperate across countries.
Step 6: Describe the cross-country distributionof net benefits from enhanced provision
A final step in the methodology clarifies the interests of each country involved in providing the global
public good. When the net benefits to a country are
high, it will likely support the adequate provision of
the global public good, but it could decide to free ridefrom other countries attempting to provide the global
public good. This is possible if inputs across countries
are interchangeable (such as reductions in carbon
emissions). For some global public goods with noninterchangeable inputs, each country’s inputs are needed for adequate provision, so expected net benefits
should be positive. And when the net benefits are low
or even negative for countries whose cooperation isneeded for adequate provision, this step helps clarify
how international cooperation mechanisms could arrive at fair and stable outcomes—such as by introducing compensation and capacity-building mechanisms
to finance and support participation. These burdens
could be shouldered by the countries that stand to
gain the most and that can pay for adequate global
public good provision. Such a financing mechanism
is not necessarily the same as foreign aid—rather it
90

Applying the methodology to five global public
goods—eradicating smallpox, eradicating polio, adequately providing the multilateral trade regime,
promoting climate stability and promoting fasterrecovery from pandemics—highlights not only the
global nature of net benefits to be derived from theirprovision but also the underlying distribution of net
benefits, which might motivate international cooperation to provide these or other global public goods.
Eradicating smallpox
Smallpox has been completely eradicated, with noreported infections worldwide. The World Health Assembly officially declared the eradication of smallpox
in 1980. Retrospective measurements suggest thatthe global cost associated with eradicating smallpox
was $300 million (in 1967 US dollars). Developing
countries contributed $200 million, industrial countries, $100 million.4 Since 1980 the annual global
benefits have been estimated at $1.42 billion, with
$1.07 billion allocated to developing countries and$350 million to industrial countries.5 Smallpox eradication has resulted in a substantial global net present
value benefit of approximately $80 billion ($1.42 billion a year from 1966 to 2022). Developing countries
have received about 75 percent of these net benefits, industrial countries, about 25 percent. The overall benefit-to-expenditure ratio for global smallpox
eradication stands at 159:1.6
Eradicating polio
As of 2023, polio eradication efforts remain insufficient, with around 99.9 percent progress since theprogramme’s inception in 1988.7 In 2022 the primarypoliovirus strain (WPV1) was identified in only three
countries, Afghanistan, Mozambique and Pakistan,
resulting in 30 cases that year.8 According to the latest estimate from 2021, the direct global cost of eradicating polio from 1988 to 2018 is projected to exceed$34 billion (in 2019 US dollars).9 Assuming successful

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

eradication by 2023, the global net present value benefit is an estimated $61 billion, and the anticipatedglobal net benefit from 1988 to 2029 is an estimated$28 billion. This figure is notably lower than previous estimates due to the delays encountered in eradication efforts. Low-income countries are expected
to receive around $8 billion in benefits and lower
middle-income countries around $21 billion, whileother countries are projected to lose $1–$2 billion incosts.10 Low- and lower middle-income countries
would be the main beneficiaries of polio eradication,
while most of the cost burden (approximately 60 percent) would fall on lower middle-income countries.11
Adequately providing the multilateral trade regime
Technology creation and diffusion have become central in international trade discussions, particularly
given recent trade frictions on the technology front.12
Góes and Bekkers (2022) explore the potential effects
of increased and persistent large-scale geopoliticalconflicts between different trade blocs on economic
growth and technological innovation. Another way toview this type of study is to consider decoupling andeconomic dis-integration scenarios as de facto deliberate underprovision of the multilateral trade regime.
So, the corrective action would be to (at least) avoid
the decoupling and preserve the status quo welfare
levels established in the baseline (no decoupling)
scenario.
Using a multisector multiregion general equilibrium model with dynamic sector-specific diffusion,
their modelling shows that decoupling the global
trading system into two blocs would reduce global
welfare in 2040 by about 5 percent (compared withthe baseline scenario). The largest losses would beoffset by positive technology spillovers from trade
benefitting low-income regions. In scenarios withfull decoupling and retaliatory tariff hikes across two
main trade blocs (Eastern and Western), the welfare
effects are asymmetric. Western bloc countries would
experience losses of 1–8 percent compared with thebaseline scenario, while Eastern bloc countries would
experience losses of 8–12 percent. So, the distribution of net losses from decoupling—tantamount to adeliberate underprovision of the multilateral trade
regime and a regression towards trading blocs—isskewed against low-income countries with lower

productivity, which would likely belong to the Eastern bloc.
Promoting climate stability
Climate stability, which aims to stabilize greenhousegas concentrations in the atmosphere to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system,
remains inadequately addressed. This global public
good requires international cooperation to avert andmitigate the risks of climate change. In one exampleof how benefits significantly outweigh the costs of climate change mitigation, Yang, Meng and Suh (2023)
examined stranded fossil fuel costs and the associated financial losses incurred by fossil fuel industries
and related sectors due to the abandonment or devaluation of their assets. They estimated the cost ofabandoning fossil fuels at $19 trillion, which presents
a considerable economic challenge, primarily for fossil fuel–dependent countries. However, this cost is
outweighed by the substantial benefits from climatechange mitigation efforts, totalling $63 trillion globally by 2050.
The net benefit, calculated at $45 trillion globally, emphasizes the economic and environmental advantages of collective global efforts to lessen global
dependence on fossil fuels and switch to cleaner energy sources. The distribution of the net benefit falls
disproportionately to developing countries, even as
many low-income countries are likely to need assistance managing the transition (see table S3.2.1 for afurther breakdown).
Preparing for pandemics
SARS (first identified in November 2002), MERS
(first identified in June 2012) and COVID-19 (first
identified in December 2019) suggest that countries should indeed prepare in advance for pandemics that are likely to manifest. Recent calculations by
Glennerster, Snyder and Tan (2022) reveal that global losses from pandemics could reach $700 billion ayear, with losses based on mortality, output contractions and human capital losses. They also estimatethat investing about $60 billion upfront to expand
production capacity for vaccines and other supply
chain inputs for pandemic response, with an additional $5 billion a year thereafter, could help ensure

Chapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence91Table S3.2.1 Summary of global public good assessments: Five cases
Estimated costs of corrective action
Global public good

StatusOverall

Disaggregated

Smallpox eradication (figures are in1967 US dollars; see Barrett 2004)

Fully eradicated since 1980

→ $300 million (one-­time cost)→ Industrial countries:$100 million (one-­time cost)→ Developing countries:$200 million (one-­time cost)

Polio eradication (figures are
cumulative from 1988 to 2029 in2019 US dollars; see Thompson and
Kalkowska 2021)

99.9 percent eradicated asof 2023→ $53.5 billion→ Upper middle-­income
countries: $10.6 billion→ Low- and lower middle-­
income countries:$42.9 billion

Multilateral trade regime (figures
are based on a model analysing
dynamic effects from trade, witha focus on technology, and thepotential effects of increased andpersistent large-­scale geopoliticalconflicts between different trade
blocs on economic growth andtechnological innovation; see Góes
and Bekkers 2022).

At risk of underprovision due
to protectionist strategies andtrade wars in recent yearsnana

Climate stability (figures refer tothe results of addressing stranded
fossil fuel costs; Yang, Meng and
Suh 2023)

na→ $19 trillion in stranded asset
costs→ High- and upper middle-­
income countries:$17.7 trillion→ Low- and lower middle-­
income countries: $2 trillion

Pandemic recovery (figures referto the results of investment invaccine production capabilities
and other preparedness measures;
Glennerster, Snyder and Tan 2022)

na→ $60 billion upfront toexpand production capacityfor vaccines, with anadditional $5 billion a year
thereafterna a is not applicable.
nSource: Barrett 2004; Góes and Bekkers 2022; Glennerster, Snyder and Tan 2022; Hertel 2004; Thompson and Kalkowska 2021; Yang, Meng and
Suh 2023.

the capability to vaccinate 70 percent of the population against any new disease within six months.
This could be considered an estimate of the cost ofadequately providing the global public good of disease control and pandemic response. The resulting
global benefit could reach $800 billion (in terms oflosses avoided), making the net present value of global public good provision about $400 billion. While
Glennerster, Snyder and Tan (2022) do not elaborate
fully on the distribution of these global net benefits,

92

they outline how the expected net benefits for some
“pivotal countries” could be high enough that theyfind reason to undertake unilateral investments inpandemic response preparedness. An investment
programme in the United States could generate a netpresent value benefit of $61 billion (implying a gain of$47 billion over the counterfactual programme withlower preparedness investment). Similarly, advanced
investment by Brazil could generate $19 billion (implying a gain of $15 billion).13

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Estimated benefits (or costs) fromglobal public good provision (or underprovision)

Estimated net benefits (or costs) fromglobal public good provision (or underprovision)

Overall

Disaggregated

Overall

Disaggregated→ $1.42 billion in benefits (annual)→ Industrial countries:$350 million (annual)→ Developing countries:$1.07 billion (annual)→ About $80 billion in benefits(cumulative from 1967 to 2022)→ Industrial countries: $20 billion→ Developing countries:$60 billion→ $81.6 billion in benefits→ Upper middle-­income
countries: $8.8 billion→ Low- and lower middle-­income
countries: $72.8 billion→ $28.1 billion in benefits→ Upper middle-­income
countries: –$1.7 billion (cost)→ Low- and lower middle-­income
countries: $29.8 billion→ Decoupling the global trading
system into two blocs would
lead to a 5 percent loss inglobal welfare in 2040 relative
to the baseline scenario→ Western bloc countries:
1–8 percent loss in welfare
relative to the baseline scenario→ Eastern bloc countries:
8–12 percent loss in welfare
relative to the baseline scenario→ 5 percent loss in global welfare
in 2040 relative to the baseline
scenario→ Western bloc countries:
1–8 percent loss in welfare
relative to the baseline scenario→ Eastern bloc countries:
8–12 percent loss in welfare
relative to the baseline scenario→ $63 trillion in benefits fromclimate change mitigation→ High- and upper middle-­income
countries: $19.6 trillion→ Low- and lower middle-­income
countries: $45.5 trillion→ $45 trillion→ High- and upper middle-­income
countries: $1.9 trillion→ Low- and lower middle-­income
countries: $43.5 trillion→ $800 billion in losses a
year due to underprovision(based on mortality, output
contractions and human capital
losses)na→ $400 billion in net present
value benefits to the world→ US investment programme
could generate a net present
value benefit of $61 billion(implying a gain of $47 billion
over the counterfactual
programme)→ Advanced investment by Brazil
could generate a net present
value benefit of $16 billion(implying a gain of $12 billion
over the counterfactual
programme)

N OT E S
1.

As proposed in Conceição and Mendoza (2006).

7.

Lee and others 2023.

2.

For further elaboration on these production technologies for global public
goods, see Kaul and others (2003) and Sandler (1998).

8.

Lee and others 2023.

3.

See Kaul, Grunberg and Stern (1999) and Kaul and others (2003).

9.

Thompson and Kalkowska 2021.

4.

Barrett 2004.

10.

Thompson and Kalkowska 2021.

5.

Barrett 2004.

11.

Thompson and Kalkowska 2021.

6.

Barrett 2013b.

12.

This section draws from Mendoza (2023).

13.

Glennerster, Snyder and Tan 2022; Mendoza 2023.

Chapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence

93SPOT L IG HT 3 . 3

How inequity in access to Covid-19 vaccines unfolded:
An account using a global public goods lensControlling the transmission of the virus that causes
Covid-19 (or achieving herd immunity through vaccines, which at times during the pandemic seemedfeasible)1 is a weakest-link global public good. Until
pharmaceutical interventions (vaccines and treatment) were available, control of the virus’s spread
had to rely on nonpharmaceutical interventions(such as social distancing), which imply fully understanding the mechanisms of transmission, which
took time to establish. Thus, measures emphasized
reducing social interaction (in schools, economic
activities that implied face-to-face contact, travel),which some countries were better able to shoulder
than others.2
Nonpharmaceutical interventions can be effective
in controlling disease spread (and have even beenused as a basis to pursue disease eradication),3 but
they require that countries with fewer capabilities
and resources be supported, which happened to only
a limited extent with Covid-19. For instance, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) adopted a general
allocation of $650 billion in special drawing rights(SDRs) only at the end of August 2021 and distributed
it in proportion to existing country quotas in the IMF,
implying that only $21 billion was allocated to lowincome countries.4 Even though the SDR allocation
represented a larger share of gross domestic product(GDP) for low-income economies than for advanced
economies,5 35 percent of IMF members in emerging markets and 50 percent in low-income countries
considered the allocation insufficient.6 Moreover, because interest rates have increased since the allocation, IMF members with negative SDR positions have
had to shoulder higher financing costs. So, while theconcessional (grant element) of the SDR allocation
was 82 percent in August 2021, it had declined to 34
percent (just below the 35 percent concessionality
threshold) in 2023.7
Once vaccines became available, the WHO andits partners, including philanthropic organizations,94

established an institutional framework to provide
equitable access to vaccines (COVAX), which was initially and for some time underfinanced.8 The availability of vaccines brought about two benefits. First,
as with any vaccine, it provided a pharmaceuticalintervention to control the virus’s spread, contributing to controlling the disease within countries while
reducing transmission risk to other countries. Second, where available and deployed at scale, vaccines
enabled the relaxation of the strict social distancing
measures that had curtailed social and economic life,
but these benefits were concentrated within borders.
Inequities in access to vaccines across countries hampered the provision of the weakest-link global public
good of global disease control, ultimately extending
the duration of the pandemic for all.9 The economic
toll of social distancing measures (not only in schooling but also in access to health and other services)
deepened the asymmetries between countries able torestart their economies and reopen their schools andthose less able to do so because they were deprived of
the ability to deploy vaccines.10
The inequity in access to Covid-19 vaccines is a
moral stain on the international community, contributing to a longer and deadlier pandemic than might
have happened with more equitable access to vaccines.11 More than 2 billion people were vaccinatedwithin 8 months in 141 countries, averting 2.4 million excess deaths. But a counterfactual with equitable distribution of vaccines, with vaccination in eachcountry proportional to its population, would havesaved roughly 670,000 more lives.12
Starting more aggressively with public support for
vaccine development in high-income countries might
have put other countries at a disadvantage: as muchas three-quarters of the delay in vaccine deliveries tolow- and middle-income countries has been attributed to the signing of advanced purchase agreements inthese countries later than in high-income countries.13
In contrast to Covid-19, during the Ebola outbreak in

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

West Africa, most of the incidence and burden of thedisease were in low-income countries, though there
were concerns in high-income countries: there waslittle alignment between resources and country interests and preferences, and more than 70 months
passed between the outbreak in December 2013 andthe FDA approval of a vaccine in October 2019.14
In addition to differences in the timing of advanced purchase agreements, inequities in access to

Covid-19 vaccines were also due to the fact that somekey innovations remained under patent protection.15
The vast majority of vaccine developers (72 percent)were private firms,16 most of which entered purchaseagreements on a commercial basis.17 While firms
played crucial roles in the development and deployment of vaccines, their commercial motivations
might also have hindered faster deployment at scale
in several low- and middle-income countries.

N OT E S
1.

The WHO advocated for vaccine use to move towards herd immunity(WHO 2020). Estimates on the threshold that would deliver herd immunity were hotly debated in the press (McNeil Jr. 2020), but more recent
analysis suggests that herd immunity may not be feasible (Malinzi andothers 2023; Morens, Folkers and Fauci 2022). Defining with precision
what herd immunity means is also crucial, given that the concept is often
interpreted differently (Bullen, Heriot and Jamrozik 2023).

6.

IMF 2023b.

7.

IMF 2023b; Shenai and others 2023.

8.

Still, by January 2022 COVAX had distributed about a billion vaccines toaround 140 countries (Budish and others 2022). And despite an increase
in international development assistance to health in 2020 and 2021 (Micah and others 2023).

2.

UNDP 2020a.

9.

Bollyky and Bown 2020.

3.

This is the case for efforts to eradicate dracunculiasis (Guinea-worm disease), for which no treatment or vaccine exists. The disease spreads by
drinking contaminated water, so efforts to provide safe drinking, alongwith early detection and surveillance, are key to controlling the disease(Biswas and others 2013). These measures have been very effective,
sharply reducing cases (from around 3.5 million a year to only 13 in2022) and nearly eliminating the disease in most of the world (with 199
countries, territories and areas certified by the WHO as free of dracunculiasis transmission; WHO 2023). Humans were thought to be the only
reservoirs of the disease, which provided prospects for eradication using
nonpharmaceutical interventions, but the recent detection of the diseasein animal hosts, including domestic dogs, makes that prospect uncertain(WHO 2023).

10.

There were also other intersecting precarities that shaped the ability ofsome countries and communities to respond, such as in many parts ofAfrica, as analysed in detail in MacGregor and others (2022).

11.

As widely forewarned (see, for instance, Bollyky and Bown 2020). Until
the first vaccines were authorized by a stringent regulatory authority,
there had been 70 million Covid-19 cases and 1.6 million deaths worldwide (Saville and others 2022). As of the end of September 2023, there
had been 762 million cases and 6.8 million deaths (see https://covid19.
who.int/), so in the “vaccine era,” cases were multiplied by 10 and deaths
by 4.

12.

Agrawal, Sood and Whaley 2023.

13.

Agarwal and Reed 2022.

14.

Excler and others 2021.

15.

Pilkington, Keestra and Hill 2022; Wouters and others 2021.

16.

Le and others.

17.

Sachs and others 2022.

4.

5.

IMF 2021a. The IMF encouraged countries with strong external positions to voluntarily channel resources to the countries most in need (IMF
2021b). And the G20 followed with pledges that slightly surpassed thetarget of channelling $100 billion by June 2023 (IMF 2023b).
About 2.39 percent of 2021 GDP, compared with 1.25 percent for advanced economies.

Chapter 3 — Providing global public goods to manage interdependence

95

PA R T
II

Reimagining
cooperation
by expanding
agencyand easingpolarization
97

CHAPTER
4

Examining
how to enhancecollective action

PA RT II — REIMAG IN IN G CO O PERATION BY EXPAND ING AGENCY AND EAS ING P OLAR IZATION

99

CHAPTER 4

Examining how to enhance collective action

Examining how to enhance collective action to manageinterdependence can be explored through different
assumptions about human behaviour’s interactions withinstitutions. Different explanations for behaviour caninform ways of advancing collective action to provide
global public goods.
Insights from recognizing how behaviour andinstitutions are contingent on the changing social
context over time can help address shared challenges.
A broader perspective on choice informed by these
insights also shows how risks associated with domestic
patterns of political polarization may harm collective
action across countries.

100

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

…the making of a treaty is the treaty.
“
It doesn’t matter what the terms are, justthat there are terms. It’s the goodwill thatmatters. When that runs out, the treaty
is broken, whatever the terms say.”—Hilary Mantel1

Examining how to enhance collective action to manage interdependence can be explored through different assumptions about human behaviour and its
interactions with institutions.2 This chapter considers how different explanations for behaviour caninform ways of advancing collective action3 for theprovision of global public goods.4 It explores threeperspectives on behaviour and the interventions toenhance collective action that emanate from theseperspectives.5• Selfish choice. Under a standard selfish choice modelof behaviour, enhancing collective action depends
on interventions that reshape incentives by providing information or resources to align narrowself-interest with improved collective outcomes.
International treaties mobilize interventions that
reshape incentives. For climate change, incentives
can be altered by pricing carbon; applying information from scientific syntheses, such as those produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change; and using resources from funds that support countries in mitigating climate change, such as
the Green Climate Fund.
• Behavioural choice. Human behaviour often deviates from the assumptions of the standard selfish
choice model, deviations that are sometimes
described as behavioural biases. For instance,
providing new information alone does not always
lead people to update their beliefs.6 And providing
financial rewards to change incentives can undermine cooperation that is motivated by a social
norm.7 Even though large swathes of debate in
the social sciences and humanities take issue withthe emphasis of behavioural science, providing
explanations for behaviour and institutions that
explore culture, context and power,8 insights frombehavioural science yield a richer description of
behaviour than the selfish choice model and thus
suggest other ways of intervening that supplement
incentives by also changing what people focus
on and how they feel and think.9 For example,

changing social norms can enhance collective
action by activating a social tipping point, as whenreaching a threshold of enough solar panels flips
the community norm to making solar panels thesocial standard.
• Encultured choice. Explicitly bringing in culture
can explain how people’s beliefs result from experience and exposure to different social contexts,
shaping their perceptions, self-image, aspirations
and meanings.10 This perspective accounts for whysome behavioural biases, thought to be universal
and hard wired under the behavioural choiceperspective, are culturally contingent.11 It also
explains how behaviour is sometimes constrainedby people’s inability to imagine more prosperous
and fulfilling lives, curtailing their aspirations andtheir agency.12 This perspective has implications forcooperation, too, as when people’s affiliation witha group is tied to a salient aspect of their identity—
such as opposing vaccination as a marker of belonging to a group that is sceptical of government
intervention, resulting in the less cooperative behaviour of not being vaccinated.13 Understanding
how these dynamics take hold and change points torecognizing the social context, including patternsof political polarization and mistrust within countries that may stand in the way of enabling collective action at higher scales.

Changes in behaviour and in institutions“
can foster collective action that enhances
the provision of global public goods

Fostering collective action for the provision of national public goods is one of the primary roles of governments, in part through centralized enforcement.14
But since countries are sovereign,15 they have to voluntarily agree to collective action without centralized enforcement.16 So, the lens has to move towards
an exploration of the processes of social choice thatcan enhance the provision of global public goods.17
That implies changes in behaviour (countries shifting from not contributing to contributing to a global
public good) and in institutions (establishing a treaty
or a creating a multilateral organization that enhances the provision of a global public good), along with
the interaction between the two (figure 4.1).18 Behaviour and institutions are interdependent, as argued

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

101

Figure 4.1 Behavioural change and institutional reform influence each other—jointly shaping and being shapedby social choice proceduresInteractions are mutuallydependent and basedon public reasoning
and procedures ofsocial choice

BehaviouralchangeInstitutional
and policychangeSource: UNDP 2022a.

conceptually19 (and demonstrated through models20)
and experimentally.21
Where to start? The three sets of assumptions about
behaviour discussed in this chapter point to three different answers.22 The simplified set of assumptions of
the standard selfish choice model begins by thinking
about the design of institutions to enhance collective
action. By contrast, a behavioural model of choice
opens the possibility of directly changing behaviour
to enhance individual and collective outcomes. Whileinsights from both perspectives are useful, the recognition of how behaviour and institutions interact indifferent social and cultural settings supplements thefirst two sets of assumptions by emphasizing the contingent nature of both behaviour and institutions.

Start with a standard selfish
choice model of behaviour
In a standard selfish choice model of behaviour, adecisionmaker seeks to do as well as possible to fulfil a fixed and stable set of preferences and assumes
that everyone behaves the same way (box 4.1).23 Thisbehavioural model is the foundation for much economic and political science analysis associated withcollective action. And it is implicit in the discussion inchapter 3 of the prospects for providing global public
goods under different aggregations.24 So, when can
1 02collective action without enforcement from above
happen under these assumptions?
It is crucial to distinguish two different situations.
One in which everyone desires the same thing, butsome common standard needs to be set (such as deciding which side of the road to drive on or which language to communicate in).25 The other in which there
are different interests on what is desired and where
the pursuit of those individual interests does notyield what is most desirable collectively, posing social
dilemmas.
What matters in the first situation is that everyone
adopts the same standard. While multiple standards
may exist (driving on the left or on the right), all thatmatters is that everyone chooses the same side of theroad.26 Once a standard emerges, there is a strong
incentive to comply with it—for instance, to comply
with the standard of driving on the right rather thandefecting and driving on the left. The difficult bit issetting the standard to begin with, a challenge of getting everyone in sync. Collective action in this situation needs to overcome a coordination problem.
The key obstacle to overcoming the coordination problem is not diverging interests—interests arealigned. Even though everyone wants the same thing,uncertainty about how others will act can lead to coordination failures that impede collective action.27
Measures to enhance collective action associated

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Box 4.1 A standard selfish choice model of behaviour
Preferences are exogenous and drive each decisionmaker (or agent) to pursue individual self-interest (box figure 1).
The agent’s beliefs, separate and independent from preferences, are based on information collected to help theagent make a specific decision. For instance, given a preference not to get drenched, an agent needs to form a belief
about whether it is going to rain before choosing whether to take an umbrella when going out. The belief is basedon the collection of information, such as by consulting a weather forecast in the evening. And the preference to not
get drenched has no bearing on how the belief is formed (so things such as wishful thinking, where the preference
not to get drenched shapes the belief that it is not going to rain, are not allowed in this model of behaviour). Beliefs
are updated if the information changes—if the weather forecast consulted in the morning is different from the one
consulted the previous evening. Rational cognition is defined by a set of axioms implying, among other things, that
preferences can always be ordered in a consistent way.
Box figure 1 In a standard selfish choice model, behaviour is determined by the exclusive pursuit of self-interest
Individual
determinants• Preferences• Beliefs
Rational cognition
Emerge from
economic/politicalequilibria

Socialdeterminants

Choice sets (prices,“rules of the game”)

Scope of interventions
to change choices-

Correct “market faliures” (externalities, information asymmetries and the like)through regulation/decentralized approaches
Governance-Preferences are stable-

Beliefs are informed by optimal (not too little, not too much) collection and processing of
information, for any given preferences-

Rational cognition: doing as well as (she rationally believes) she can, assuming that everyone
else is doing to the same

Source: Human Development Report Office elaboration based on Elster (2015a, 2020) and Hoff and Stiglitz (2016).

with coordination challenges include those directed
towards ameliorating this uncertainty, through interventions that seek to get everyone on the same page(or side of the road).28

Transforming cooperation challenges into coordination
problems can enhance global collective action
Coordination challenges related to transportationand communication have been successfully overcome at the global level, resulting in collective action
for the adoption of regulatory practices and regimesthat enable air travel, maritime shipping and digital communication.29 The resulting standards yieldvery high benefits and very few constraints (a country is constrained in not opting out of the standard but
would derive no benefits from doing so). And thoughthese standards are sometimes derided as instancesof shallow international cooperation,30 their existence may suggest that global collective action that
results from addressing coordination problems issomething that sovereign countries can readily do.31
But a very different scenario emerges in the second situation, when the pursuit of varied selfish
interests is not aligned with what would be more

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

103

desirable collectively. When what most advances each decisionmaker’s self-interest is not the best
possible collective outcome, this situation creates asocial dilemma between self-interest and collective
action. Chapter 3 showed that this situation plagues
many global public goods. Collective action in thiscase requires cooperation, so that decisionmakers
choose an action that is suboptimal for their selfish
interests but superior for the collective. Recognizing that countries find it relatively easy to coordinate
their actions—even while struggling to voluntarily cooperate and sometimes enforcing agreements to do
so32—opens the possibility of designing institutions(such as multilateral organizations or international
treaties) that shape incentives so that a cooperation
challenge becomes a coordination problem.33

Summation global public goods typically“require cooperation, but institutions can be

designed in a way that reshapes incentives
to turn a social dilemma into a coordination
problem, as with the Montreal Protocol
How can challenges of international cooperation
be reshaped as problems of international coordination? It is possible to learn from multiple successful examples of such reshaping (spotlight 4.1). For
weakest-link global public goods, such as eradicating a global (and eradicable) communicable disease,
we are already close to a coordination problem. This
gives insights into the kind of reshaping that could be
pursued. In disease eradication all countries sharethe same objective, this objective can be definedwith certainty and precision and each country has
an incentive to contribute if it can be sure that othercountries will do their part.34 The key challenge isfor countries to coordinate their actions in a way thatsustains incentives to shore up the weakest links until
the disease is eliminated.
Summation global public goods typically require
cooperation, but institutions (for instance, international treaties) can be designed in a way that reshapes
incentives to turn a social dilemma into a coordination problem, as with the Montreal Protocol.35 Asking
countries to contribute to the summation global public good of avoiding depletion of the ozone layer bylimiting emissions of ozone-thinning chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) is a call for international cooperation.
104

But the treaty did not simply do that. It also banned
trade in CFCs and products containing CFCs between countries that were parties to the treaty andcountries that were not, effectively providing incentives for high-income countries to sign the treaty.
This is because trade interactions between countries
are bilateral and reciprocal, with compliance easier tomonitor and enforce (spotlight 4.1).36
Stipulating a minimum number of ratifying countries for the Montreal Protocol to enter into force
meant that a tipping point was eventually reached,aligning incentives to make (high-income) nonsignatory parties better off by signing the treaty—thus
resolving a coordination problem.37 To provide incentives for low- and middle-income countries to sign
the treaty, a later amendment established a financial mechanism (the Montreal Fund) to compensate
countries for the incremental cost of participation.
These side payments induced virtually universal
participation. Finally, technological alternatives to
CFCs were widely shared and advertised, including by firms that stood to gain from adopting thesealternatives.38

Uncertainty can harm international collective action
Setting thresholds can motivate collective action,
as seen in disease eradication (where the thresholdfor full provision is eliminating the disease in theweakest-link country)39 or in the Montreal Protocol(with the establishment of a minimum number ofcountries for the treaty to come into effect, plus thetrade provisions). The underprovision of some global public goods, such as climate change mitigation or
biodiversity preservation, is often framed as the needto stay within boundaries or limits40 to avoid reachingtipping points in planetary systems that could resultin catastrophic outcomes.41 Presenting thresholds
that, once crossed, can result in catastrophic societal collapse could galvanize collective action.42 But
there are two critical conditions.43 First, the thresholds must be known with little uncertainty. Second,each country must share the burden of not passing
the threshold.44
When there is uncertainty about where the thresholds lie, collective action becomes more difficult. For
disease eradication, to achieve zero cases globally,

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

each country has to achieve zero cases nationally.
But when there is no unambiguous way of determining how much each country should contributeto ensure that the world stays under a threshold forcatastrophe, that calls for some agreement about
how to allocate effort across countries.45 These two
factors imply a very different set of incentives forcountries.46

The standard selfish choice model can provide“
insights about how to enhance the provision of
global public goods. Its behavioural assumptions
emphasize the use of incentives, resources andinformation to make provision more likely

While much effort centres on estimates of damages
from crossing climate thresholds or whether damages are overstated or understated,47 uncertainty about
these damages does not seem to matter as much forcooperation as uncertainty over the thresholds.48
Because even though the decision on whether to cooperate has no influence on the scale of the damages (which depends only on whether the threshold iscrossed), whether countries cooperate does bear onwhether the threshold is surpassed.49
In the case of existential risks, these insights could
inform ways to structure incentives through institutions to enable cooperation associated with providing
global public goods that reduce those risks.50 These
insights also suggest that it is far more important to
reduce threshold uncertainty than damages uncertainty, a challenging task given the underlying ambiguity in many of the thresholds of interest.51
The standard selfish choice model can thus provide insights about how to enhance the provisionof global public goods. Its behavioural assumptions
emphasize the use of incentives (trade provisions
in the Montreal Protocol), resources (the Montreal
Fund) and information (about the damage causedby CFCs and the availability of alternatives) to makeprovision more likely. But these assumptions also
have limits, not only in not accounting for actual
behaviour but also in lacking power to account forsome of the obstacles to collective action that callfor a broader understanding of the drivers of humanbehaviour.52 Behavioural science provides an initial steppingstone towards a broader explanation of
behaviour.

Apply insights from behaviouralscience, but handle with care
Insights from behavioural science reveal how decisions depart from the behaviour predicted by thestandard selfish model of choice (box 4.2).53 These
departures give added insights in understanding
when and why collective action takes place and provide opportunities to design interventions that makethe provision of global public goods more likely.54
At the same time, as the discussion will make clear,despite the enormous interest in designing interventions based on behavioural science, there are severe
limitations as well, that range from the lack of replicability of some findings, questions about their validity
beyond specific experiments and the assumption thatthe policymaker “knows better” than individuals—
among others. That is why it is important to consider
insights from behavioural science but to also handle
them with care.

Beyond selfishness—recognizing social preferences
With social preferences decisionmakers consider
the welfare of others, not just their self-interest, andare prosocial when that evaluation is positive.55 Pureself-interest can motivate cooperation through reciprocity in repeated interactions (giving something
today while expecting to get something in return tomorrow).56 But people often reciprocate more generously when others behave in a friendly way andpunish more harshly those who do not (even if atgreat cost), indicating that social preferences are likely at play.57
People vary in the extent to which they have either selfish or prosocial preferences and in how theyexpress social preferences.58 A recent comprehensive review of social preferences provides some key
insights.59 When, at the turn of the 20th century, researchers concluded based on systematic evidence
from experiments that some people had social preferences, respondents who expressed these preferenceswere described as being “crazy.”60 Yet evidence fromnationally representative samples suggests that inmany countries people holding purely selfish preferences are in the minority (representing 5–20 percentof the population in countries with data).61

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

105Box 4.2 A behavioural choice model of decisionmaking
Preferences, beliefs and cognition interact to shape how people make decisions (box figure 1). Preferences can besocial, meaning that the individual takes account of other people’s welfare. Preferences can be fickle and influencedby (sometimes transitory) emotions. Fear triggered by the belief that there is a threat tends to make people morerisk averse, while anger tends to make them more risk seeking. Beliefs are driven not only by the processing of
information but also by one’s identity (perceptions of belonging to a particular group that holds a particular view) or
preferences (for instance, motivated reasoning, as in wishful thinking, which makes people believe that a goal they
are pursuing is more likely to be achieved). When beliefs are deeply held or linked to a salient aspect of a person’s
identity, they can trigger strong emotional responses (as when challenging deeply held religious or political beliefs
triggers anger, disgust or hate). There are multiple deviations from rational cognition—for example, how a decision isframed affects choices, and how people discount the future is not consistent along different time horizons.
Box figure 1 Social context shapes what people think and do at the moment of choice

Beliefs

Individual determinantsof choiceCognitive biases(universal hardwired)Preferences

Emotions

Can shapeSocial determinantsof choiceScope of interventions
to shape choices

Choice sets (prices, “rules of the game”)
Choice architecture, social norms-

Incentives, regulation, governanceBehavioural science (priming, nudging)-

Preferences can be fickle (emotions “interfere”)-

Beliefs can be motivated (by preferences)-

Cognitive biases and limitations (loss aversion, hyperbolic discounting, representative
heuristics, ...) are hardwired and universal

Note: The text in bold to the right of “Social determinants of choice” and “Scope of interventions to shape choices” denotes the new elements that are added to the selfish choice model of behaviour (which remains relevant).
Source: Human Development Report Office elaboration based on Elster (2015a, 2020) and Hoff and Stiglitz (2016).

Some evidence suggests that holding prosocial
preferences is a direct determinant of wellbeing, witha positive effect similar in size to the effects of parenthood, income and education.62 In addition, there106

are very strong positive links between prosocial preferences and cooperation.63 When social preferencestake the form of aversion to inequality, more heterogeneous collectives (in either resources or benefits

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

derived from public goods) are less likely to achieveand sustain cooperation, which provides a rationale
for reducing inequalities to foster cooperation.64
Do these relationships between individual social
preferences and cooperation scale from the individual to more aggregated levels? Particularly relevant
for the provision of global public goods is whether the
relationships scale up to countries. Some evidence
suggests that they can (box 4.3). With the assumptionof prosocial preferences, the prognosis for summation global public goods can change. For instance, inthe standard selfish choice model a country’s unilateral increase to a summation global public good (say,abatement of greenhouse gases to mitigate climatechange) will not only not incentivize other countries
to contribute but will also likely provoke a reductionin their efforts. But that expected outcome changes
if the other countries behave as if having prosocial
preferences: in that case contributions to summation

global public goods are no longer pure substitutes but
become complements.65

Harnessing social norms
Social norms set shared expectations of behavior,providing structure to people’s beliefs and bearing
on the decision to cooperate (box 4.4).66 In many
circumstances, they can be stronger determinantsof behaviour than the individual pursuit of material
wellbeing.67 For instance, social norms can establish
what may be required to earn a reputation as a cooperator.68 Concerns with social image can also drive
prosocial behaviour: because most people care about
what they believe others will think of them, they tend
to make more prosocial choices in public.69 The effectiveness of social norms in shaping behaviour depends in part on norm enforceability (or beliefs about

Box 4.3 Social preferences can scale up
A complicating factor in addressing whether social preferences scale up is the great variation across people in every
country. The outcome of cooperation at the group level depends on the number and intensity of individuals withprosocial preferences.1 Another challenge is that while cooperation may be strong within groups in society (as forpeople sharing the same political beliefs), it may be difficult to get cooperation between groups. In fact, strong negative reciprocity (punishing, or threating to punish, another group harshly) may trigger retaliatory action (or even preemptive aggression)2 by those who are punished or threatened with punishment.3 And that can result in intergroupconflict.4 Chapter 6 explores in more detail the implications of this type of intergroup dynamics, which are particularly
challenging in polarized societies.
Still, recent advances in measuring differences in preferences at the global level are starting to provide some answers about what scales up to countries. In an experimentally validated survey5 on the social preferences of 80,000
people in 76 countries, cross-country variation in charitable giving is correlated with prosocial preferences, after factors that could also explain charitable giving are controlled for.6 In addition, after the same factors are controlled for,countries with a higher degree of negative reciprocity have suffered more violent conflicts.7 A study of 40 countries
found that people everywhere were more likely to return a wallet with money than what a standard selfish choicemodel would predict,8 with prosocial preferences (in this case, measured by the extent to which concerns for welfare
extend beyond one’s ingroup) playing a role.9 And in another study of 31 countries, prosocial preferences were associated with better environmental performance—a proxy for cooperation to manage environmental externalities—andmaterial interests mattered less than appeals to everyday cooperative behaviour.10
Notes
1. In an experiment Fehr and Fischbacher (2003) show that a minority of altruists can force a majority of selfish individuals to cooperate butthat a few egoists can induce a large number of altruists to defect—and that the context matters in both cases. Hauser and others (2014)
show that mechanisms can be designed to ensure that those with prosocial preferences can restrain defectors in an intergenerational public goods game. And Gächter, Kölle and Quercia (2017) show that it matters whether the challenge is to provide or maintain a public good.
2. Böhm, Rusch and Gürerk 2016. 3. Nikiforakis 2008. 4. For a broader review of the psychological foundations of intergroup conflict, see
Böhm, Rusch and Baron (2020) and De Dreu and others (2022). There is growing evidence of differences between dispositions to defend
or to attack. For instance, consistent with loss aversion, experiments suggest that people invest more resources to protect against losses
than to achieve victory (Chowdhury and Topolyan 2016; De Dreu and Gross 2019). 5. See Falk and others (2023) for details. 6. Falk and others 2018. 7. This variation in preferences appears to be deeply rooted in history and to be path dependent (Becker, Enke and Falk 2020).
8. Whether the interaction was in person or mediated through computers made a difference. Interaction through computers increased cheating threefold compared with in-person interactions (Cohn, Gesche and Maréchal 2022). 9. Cohn and others 2019. 10. Van Doesum and others 2021. The findings were contested (Komatsu, Rappleye and Silova 2022) but appear to hold after scrutiny (Van Doesum and others 2022).

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

107Box 4.4 “It’s not a lie if you believe it”—Beliefs, social norms and collective action
The formation of beliefs and their interaction with preferences and emotions has implications for collective action.1
For beliefs about how others will behave during social interactions, the standard selfish choice approach assumes
that everyone behaves the same way.2 The behavioural approach allows for more nuance and variability in how we
expect others to behave, which can be influenced by factors ranging from the ability of agents to communicate3 toperceptions of trust among agents4 and assumptions about the preferences of others (whether they are conditional
cooperators).5
Mechanisms of controlling and selecting those with whom to cooperate are key to sustaining cooperation,6 with
reputation a key driver of beliefs about whether counterparties are likely to cooperate (or reciprocate in the future).7
These mechanisms can also support cooperation across groups (including countries) in what has been termed “universal cooperation.”8
People differ in how much they are influenced by the decisions and behaviours of others.9 There is substantial
evidence that social comparison is a powerful driver of changes in individual behaviour, including changes aimed ataddressing climate change.10 Shifts in social norms can also drive changes towards more cooperative behaviour11 in
the face of threats.12 In addition, social contagion appears to be a strong mechanism leading to proactive cooperative
behaviour not only when responding to threats but also as evidenced when behaviour by neighbours is replicated,
as in the adoption of solar panels.13 People are more driven to change their behaviour when they observe others
acting than when they simply receive information on the benefits of the cooperative action.14 Policy interventions havethe potential to tip social norms towards more desirable outcomes (including more cooperation).15 And this potential
has been studied across a wide range of challenges, from handling misinformation to advancing public health andfostering collective action for sustainability.16
Notes
1. Isler and others 2021. The quote in the title of the box is a line by the character George Costanza in the television series “Seinfeld,” as usedin Bicchieri, Dimant and Sonderegger (2019). 2. This also includes subjective beliefs, for instance, about whether countries are optimistic
or pessimistic, as explored in Im, İriş and Ko (2022). Fehr and Charness (forthcoming) discuss belief-dependent social preferences (where
beliefs about the intentions of other players matter) using models of reciprocity and guilt aversion (related to theories that include emotions
as part of social preferences). 3. Barbieri 2023; Crawford 2019; Ellingsen, Östling and Wengström 2018. 4. Bose and Camerer 2021; Schilke,
Reimann and Cook 2021. Emotions affect how trust beliefs are formulated, with angry people typically being seen as less trustworthy (Kausel
and Connolly 2014). Some evidence suggests that people who have a preference both for being honest and for being seen as honest are
more likely to be truthful (Abeler, Nosenzo and Raymond 2019). 5. Engelmann and others (2019) show the neural signals when beliefs about
conditional cooperation are violated. 6. Reviewing the experimental literature on infinitely repeated games, Dal Bó and Fréchette (2018) findthat while cooperation can be supported in equilibria, it does not imply that most subjects will cooperate to begin with—cooperation will
emerge only when the structure of the game is robust to strategic uncertainty. 7. Balliet and Van Lange 2013; Gross and De Dreu 2019; Jordan
and Kteily 2023; Rand and Nowak 2013; Roberts and others 2021. 8. Gross and others 2023. 9. Kendal and others 2018; Mesoudi and others
2016. In part because that much social information is “wasted,” in that it is not used in individual decisionmaking (Morin and others 2021),
leading to heterogeneity across the population. 10. In a second-order meta-analysis of 10 meta-analyses of 430 primary studies, Bergquist
and others (2023) found that social comparison was one of the most important mechanisms in driving changes in behaviour, such as towards
sustainable transportation or circular consumption to mitigate climate change. 11. For a review of evidence, mechanisms and potential toinspire interventions to harness social norms, see Frank (2021). See also UNDP (2020b). For the social dimensions of fertility choices andconsumption patterns, see Barrett and others (2020). 12. Szekely and others 2021. 13. Allcott 2011; Barnes, Krishen and Chan 2022; Bollinger
and Gillingham 2012. 14. Kraft-Todd and others 2018. 15. Andreoni, Nikiforakis and Siegenthaler 2021. 16. Nyborg and others 2016. See thereview in Efferson, Vogt and von Flüe (forthcoming).

its enforceability),70 on how strict the norms are71 andon the balance between rewards for compliance withnorms and punishments for deviations from them.72
Emotions play a central role in compliance with social norms, with people complying to avoid shame or
guilt and people motivated to enforce norms out ofanger or disgust for norm violators.73 A social norm ofconditional cooperation—full cooperation as long asothers also fully cooperate and reduced cooperation
as others’ contributions go down—can account for alarge set of regularly documented cooperation-related
108

behaviours.74 In repeated interactions the observed
behaviour of others can inform the decision on whether to cooperate and by how much. But in one-shot
interactions or when the behaviour of others is notobserved, beliefs about how others will behave aredeterminant. This insight is crucial to the discussionin chapter 6 on the potential of misperceptions about
what others believe to hinder collective action.75
Social norms can be harnessed to change collective action at scale76 (see box 4.4) and have distinctive characteristics that aggregate to countries, which

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

accounts for differences in cooperative behaviour.77
One such characteristic is the tightness of social
norms (as measured by the harshness of punishment
of behaviour that deviates from the norm), which appears to vary systematically across countries78 andchange over time.79 When facing a collective threat,80
countries with tighter norms may cooperate better internally because of the cohesive glue of strong social
norms.81 But extreme tightness can make cooperation
across groups or countries more challenging (or caneven trigger conflict).82 Tighter social norms can also
make adaptations to a changing context more difficult, potentially resulting in a mismatch between internal and international cooperative arrangements inthe face of new threats and challenges, with implications for the provision of new global public goods.83

Leadership can propel and sustain social norms“
that are supportive of international cooperation:that can shift norms and trigger reciprocal actions
from other countries that further entrench thenorm of contributing to the global public good
Moreover, global norms often influence countries’
decisions.84 For instance, norms against gender inequality spread globally.85 But as with any social norm,
progress cannot be taken for granted. And it can be
subject to contestation, particularly when polarization fuels backlash against more inclusive norms, as
discussed in chapter 6.86 But leadership can propeland sustain social norms that are supportive of international cooperation, for instance, when a country
takes the lead on providing a summation global public good such as mitigating climate change: that canshift norms and trigger reciprocal actions from othercountries that further entrench the norm of contributing to the global public good.87

Drawing on cognitive biases
Almost 200 cognitive biases have been identified to
explain several puzzles in the social sciences,88 opening windows for new policy interventions and motivating a wide range of organizations89 and initiatives
around the world that seek to enrich public policy
with these insights (figure 4.2 and spotlight 4.2).90
For instance, loss aversion (people caring more abouta loss than an equivalent gain) has been empirically documented in a wide range of studies.91 This insight has explained behaviours where the framing asa loss or gain influences decisions ranging from how
much to work92 to political choices93 to why people
tend to hold on to their beliefs94 and to the design ofstrategies to foster learning.95 More generally, behavioural insights have informed policy96 through newpolicy tools (such as nudges), enabling better predictions about the impact of policies and generating
new implications for how to enhance welfare97 and its
distribution.98
Some interventions informed by recognizing cognitive biases seek to directly change individual behaviour, many of them through nudges, which have
had encouraging results in some domains.99 Despite
advocacy, including to support the response to the
Covid-19 pandemic,100 the uptake of insights derived
from identifying cognitive biases has been mixed(box 4.5).
In fact, insights from behavioural science not only
have to confront challenges associated with the replicability of several studies, but they also face a problem in the lack of an overarching theory that canaccount for the multiplicity of biases that are being
documented (spotlight 4.2).101 The relevance of behavioural science findings may lie less in providing
descriptions of behaviour that is empirically more
realistic, or a catalogue of ills to be addressed bynudges, and more as a guide to help decisionmakers
achieve desired collective outcomes.102 But that requires a framework to interpret how these biases interact with institutions and broader determinants ofhuman behaviour (discussed thus far as if they were
universal and hardwired, an assumption that will be
relaxed in the next section).103

Recognize how culture shapes
behaviour and institutions
Behaviour during the Covid-19 pandemic illustrates
the importance of having a broader understandingof behaviour that goes beyond selfish choice and behavioural insights and extends to an explicit consideration of the role of culture and its change over time(box 4.6).104 There are many approaches to doing
this, from sociologists interested in structuration toanthropologists interested in cultural economy andChapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

109

Figure 4.2 Widespread efforts draw on behavioural insights to inform public policy

Privy Council Office IIU (CAN)
Treasury Board Secretariat (CAN)ESDC (CAN)
British Colombia BIG (CAN)NESC (IE) ESRI (IE)
SEAI (IE) CB (IE)

BEIS (UK)FCDO (UK)
FCA (UK)
DEFRA UK
OFGEM (UK)

HMCTS (UK)
HMRC (UKDoT (UK)
DWP (UK)
BIT (UK)

Finance (BEL)
Flemish govt. (BEL)
SIA (BEL)EC JRCACM (NL)
AFM (NL)MinPW (NL)
MF (NL)BIN (NL)DPC (NL)
BIR (NL)SZW (NL)MinBZK (NL)
MHWS (NL)MoF (NL)

PMO (FI)NTA (NO)KFST (DK)PS Innovation Team (EE)
iNudgeyou (DK)
BEET MoH (SVK)BRISK MIRRI (SVK)

NTA (EL)

DITP (FR)SNCF (FR)
PSL (FR)DEC (FR)OECD

PHAC (CAN)
Novo Scotia (CAN)WorkSafeBC (CAN)
OSC (CAN)
TBS Ontario PS (CAN)
BEAR (CAN)
BEWorks (CAN)UBC DIBS (CAN)SBLAB (DOM)

ENV BEST(JP)METI (JP)YBiT (JP)AMA (PT)
PlanAPP (PT)
IAES (ES)UOD (ES)Cloo (PT)MPC (MY)

Federal Chancellery (DE)RIA Unit (CZ)
GIZ

Mexico City (MX)PolicyLab (MX)KPPC (KWT)

MoH (KSA)DSC (KSA)
HRSD (KSA)
MEP (IL)MOF (IL)
NL (LB)

PMC (NA)
ENAP (BRA)
GTD.GOV (BRA)
Labour (BRA)
NAINOVA (BRA)
Sao Paulo (011) Lab (BRA)
Nudge Rio (BRA)

OEFA (PE)MineduLab (PE)SERNAC (CHI)

Institutions inside government

MSE (SG)MOH (SG)MOM (SG)CPC (UAE)
EUCR (CHE)BMKÖDS (AT)IHS (AT)SI (CHE)
WHO
GGKP
ICRC
IOM

OES (USA) Ideas42 (USA)IRS (USA) BSPA (USA)USAID (USA) Duke (USA)OPRE (USA) Penn (USA)FTC (USA) CSBD (USA)HHS (USA) MIT (USA)DOL (USA) MDRC CABS (USA)SEC (USA) IPA (USA)IDB
World BankUNDP

DNP (COL)
Mayor’s Office of Bogota (COL)
Sectetaría de Transparencia de la Precidencia
de la República (COL)
Instintivo (COL)

Ticaret Bakanlığı (TR)

PM&C BETA (AUS)
ABS (AUS)ACCC (AUS)
DVA (AUS)
Brisbane City (AUS)
Services Australia (AUS)
DCCEEW (AUS)
Health (AUS)
APC (AUS)
ASIC (AUS)
ATO (AUS)
BWA (AUS)

Bappenas (ID)BPJS (ID)

WCG (ZA)Secretariat of Strategic
Affairs of the
Presidency ofArgentina (ARG)

Institutions outside government

DFP (I)CONSOB (I)Rome City (I)UNICEFFAO

NITI Aayog (IN)Uttar Pradesh (IN)
CSBC (IN)Monk Prayogshala (IN)

Treasury (AUS)
VIC BIU (AUS)
NAL (AUS)
FWO (AUS)NSW BIU (AUS)
AFSA (AUS)MoJ Tāhū o te Ture (NZ)
MoH Manatū Hauora (NZ)
HQSC (NZ)
ME (NZ)

Busara (KE)Multinational organizations

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (https://oecd-opsi.org/blog/mapping​-behavioural-insights/).

politics to approaches drawing attention to structural political economy.105 Cultural evolution (spotlight4.3) is one such approach among many that consider
historical, social and relational perspectives that havebeen pursued across many disciplines. It is one wayof accounting for how behaviour and culture interact
in different societies and create packages adapted toaddress cooperative challenges at scale, with distinct
cultural and behavioural traits.106
Insights from recognizing how behaviour and institutions are contingent on the social context and itschange over time can be mobilized to address sharedchallenges, including the provision of such global
110public goods as climate change mitigation. These insights suggest that people can be expected to react
differently to different interventions, as opposed
to assuming that all people behave according to thestandard selfish choice model or that they are all
constrained by universal and hard-wired cognitive
and other biases.107 Another insight is that it is important to understand the interplay between social
norm psychology and social identity to understanddrivers of cooperation.108 To see why and how, consider first the perils of interventions that start fromeither end of the behaviour–institution interaction(see figure 4.1).

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Box 4.5 The promise and peril of nudges in changing behaviour
Nudges attempt to change the choice context to increase the likelihood of people making decisions that contribute to meetinga policy goal without precluding any other choices or relying on economic incentives (for instance, changing default options
on organ donations or retirement savings or framing incentives as losses instead of gains, given loss aversion).1 Nudges not
only seek to improve individual welfare but also tackle collective challenges, including green nudges to change behaviour
towards climate and environmentally friendly choices.2 They have the potential to increase the effectiveness of price-based
interventions to mitigate climate change, such as carbon taxes, including by enhancing the public acceptance of taxes.3 Thus,
insights from behavioural science linked to cognitive biases are now regularly considered in the design and implementation ofenvironmental policy4 and in the provision of global public goods such as climate stability5 and biodiversity conservation.6 The
potential to derive insights from behavioural sciences has been explored for enhancing the provision of global public goods
within international law7 and international relations.8
Once again, the question is the extent to which individual behaviour aggregates into biased aggregate outcomes. For
instance, people may self-select or be sorted into groups with similar degrees of cognitive bias. If this is the case, some groups
might deviate less, in the aggregate, from the selfish choice behaviour than others. Even with this type of sorting, whether
biases matter depends on the decision being considered for accomplishing a certain task. For some tasks a group that gathers
individuals who behave more according to the selfish choice model does not produce biased aggregate outcomes. But forother tasks biases can be amplified in the aggregate even when selfish choice and biased people are sorted into different
groups.9
Understanding how and why this sorting matters for some tasks and not others is an important area for research. It is particularly relevant in the international context, where decisions on behalf of countries negotiating treaties are made by individuals
empowered to represent those countries. In negotiations for climate change, negotiating peers perceive the credibility ofcountry commitments to mitigate climate change to be determined by the quality of institutions in that country—with economic
factors such as economic benefits and costs of those commitments bearing less on credibility.10
Whether decisionmakers are subject to biases is thus particularly important. It has been argued that decisionmakers among
the elite may be less prone to biases and act more in line with the selfish choice model.11 But this does not mean that they
are not influenced at all by biases,12 particularly when their decisions touch on issues salient in people’s lives (such as climatechange or management of a pandemic). Public opinion13—or, at a minimum, elites’ perceptions of public opinion14—matters andis often conditioned by cognitive biases.15
There is an ongoing debate on the extent to which nudges and other behavioural interventions are effective.16 In a study of
73 randomized controlled trials in 67 US cities implemented in collaboration with a national nudge unit, fewer than a third of
the nudges were adopted in policy.17 There are several barriers in translating insights from behavioural science into policy,18
but recent debates on the size of the effects of interventions reported in the literature have further moderated policymakers’
enthusiasm.19 Information gathered from more than 200 studies reporting 440 effect sizes remains inconclusive.20 There isalso a difference between effects reported in small samples and effects realized when interventions are taken to scale. In 126
randomized controlled trials covering 23 million people, the average impact of interventions (that, is, at scale given the numberof people covered) was 1.4 percentage points, compared with 8.7 percentage points in literature that typically relies on small
samples.21
Notes
1. Thaler 2018; Thaler and Sunstein 2003. 2. Carlsson and others 2021. Some green nudges are reportedly very effective. For instance, in China green
nudges increased individuals’ share of food orders with no cutlery (thus reducing plastic waste) more than sixfold (He and others 2023). 3. Gravert andShreedhar 2022. 4. For a general review, see Carlsson and Johansson-Stenman (2012). 5. See Brekke and Johansson-Stenman (2008) for a frameworkand early review. 6. Travers and others 2021. 7. van Aaken 2018. Although attention has also been drawn to some potential limitations. See the introduction to a symposium on this theme in van der Zee, Fikfak and Peat (2021) as well as Yildiz and Yüksel (2022). 8. Davis 2023; Davis and McDermott 2021.
9. Enke, Graeber and Oprea 2023. 10. Victor, Lumkowsky and Dannenberg 2022. 11. Hafner-Burton, Hughes and Victor 2013. There is also evidence
that some elites appear to have weaker social preferences (Fisman and others 2015). 12. As found in Mildenberger and Tingley (2019). 13. Anderson,
Böhmelt and Ward 2017; Oehl, Schaffer and Bernauer 2017. 14. Hertel-Fernandez, Mildenberger and Stokes 2019. 15. Webster and Albertson 2022.
16. See, for instance, Dimant, van Kleef and Shalvi (2020), Guttman-Kenney and others (2023) and Bicchieri and Dimant (2022). 17. DellaVigna, Kim
and Linos 2022. 18. As reviewed in Linos (2023). For a set of proposals on how to address some of the challenges, see Mažar and Soman (2022).
19. And behavioural interventions have been unable to address some major challenges, such as how to reduce economic inequality (Ruggeri and others 2022). 20. The original study by Mertens and others (2022a) reports a Cohen’s d (a standardized measure of the difference between the mean of
the untreated group and the treated group) of 0.43, but after reanalysing the data and correcting for publication bias (that only statistically significant
results are published; more surprising results are more likely to be published) and heterogeneity (whether the findings extend beyond the sample used
for the study), Szaszi and others (2022) find an effect of 0 (in a response, Mertens and others (2022b) agree with the importance of addressing issues
associated with publication bias and heterogeneity). 21. With respect to two nudge units in the United States: DellaVigna and Linos (2022) and Webster
and Albertson (2022).

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action111

Box 4.6 Social context shapes what people do and how they see themselves
Taking account of the interplay between behaviour and culture suggests that human choices need to be understood within thesocial context that shapes not only individual preferences and the architecture of choice but also how people see themselvesand how they see others (box figure 1).1 That is, who they are.2 The entanglement of behaviour and culture opens the possibility of understanding the processes of social choice and the potential scope for interventions—in ways that recognize whenand how they can be mutually reinforcing, as opposed to pinning all hopes on either institutions or behaviour to enhancecollective action. This approach also implies recognizing that some processes of social choice change endogenously, so theinterventions may have unintended consequences. Even if these are not possible to predict with precision, being aware ofthis possibility and understanding the mechanisms for them to emerge can enhance policy design and implementation.3 Thisimplies that criteria for the design of interventions (either behavioural or institutional) should consider efficiency and equity as
well as efficiently evolving institutions to account for both a changing world and the endogenous dynamics of change between
behaviours and institutions.4
Box figure 1 Social context shapes who people are
Culturally embedded

Beliefs

Individual determinantsof choiceCognition shapedby social context
Preferences

Social determinantsof choiceScope of interventions
to shape choices

Emotions

Choice sets (prices, “rules of the game”), social norms,
cognitive biases/limitations, culture-

Incentives, regulation, governanceBehavioural science (priming, nudging, boosting)Social norms
Social identities, worldviews, narratives, frames

Note: The text in bold to the right of “Social determinants of choice” and “Scope of interventions to shape choices” denotes the new elements that areadded to the selfish choice model and to the behavioural choice model (which remains relevant).
Source: Human Development Report Office elaboration based on Hoff and Stiglitz (2016).
Notes
1. Lamont 2023. 2. This is where the discussion arrived, but it is the point of departure for sociology (Lamont 2019). This makes insights from sociology
also relevant, particularly recent developments on understanding culture as a toolkit from which people draw cultural resources to navigate their life
(Swidler 1986). These have been inspired in part by insights from the cognitive and behavioural sciences (DiMaggio 1997; Dimaggio and Markus 2010;
Lamont and others 2017). These insights have already been incorporated into models and accounts of institutional change by economists (Acemoglu
and Robinson 2022, 2023). 3. Hébert-Dufresne and others (2022) present a model of this endogenous process of social choice. 4. Schimmelpfennig
and Muthukrishna 2023.

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Ignoring the interaction between
behaviour and institutions is perilous
The perils of starting with institutions is perhaps
more widely understood. Transplanting institutions109 from the context in which they emerged tosettings with different behavioural, social and economic contexts has been widely documented. Institutions, including legal institutions and mechanisms
to enforce formal law, typically work in shaping behaviour if there is already an equilibrium resulting
from an underlying set of beliefs that sustains cooperation.110 This may very well be the case in an international context, except perhaps outside interactions
where direct reciprocity fosters cooperation; someevidence suggests that the effectiveness of international agreements sometimes does not depend onwhether there is an enforcement mechanism.111
Formal institutions set very important structuralfeatures of contemporary societies, so understanding flaws in those structural features (which canexacerbate inequalities in human development, perpetuate exclusion or impede collective action) andhow to change them is crucial.112 The contributionof the discussion in this section towards this goal is
not to assume politics away or to minimize the importance of formal institutions but rather to probe
how assumptions about behaviour also shape how
those flaws are identified and what to do to correct
them (box 4.7).113
But there also are perils in attempting to startfrom the other end, towards changing behaviour tofoster collective outcomes, without taking into account the institutional and broad cultural context
in which the changes are pursued. As noted, changes in behaviour can be pursued directly (creating
nudges, for instance) or indirectly (making peoplechange choices voluntarily based on their observation of others, particularly when social norms reachtipping points that make individual and social beneficial behaviours ubiquitous).114 These processes
can be mobilized to support the provision of global
public goods.115 Imitative adoption played a crucialrole in the spread of solar panels in Germany aroundthe 2000s, advancing from an initial slow adoption
to a rapid spread that led the country to generate
more solar power per capita than any other country
by 2009.116

Enhancing collective action requires
understanding differences in preferences
and beliefs shaped by social contexts
Interventions can trigger rapid shifts in social norms,117
but identifying when and how tipping occurs requires understanding how preferences and beliefs
are distributed across the population. Both preferences and beliefs can be shaped by cultural and social contexts, and ignoring differences can result inineffective or, worse, misguided interventions (box4.8).118 Often, experimental studies draw on university students or segments of the population that may be
more prosperous than average. There is also variationin the strength of behavioural effects across the population according to education and income (figure 4.3).
Variation also occurs across countries when effects based on one intervention were not observed
when the intervention was implemented in an alternative way119 or when interventions were exploredacross countries. These different outcomes point to
the importance of recognizing how behaviours andinstitutions interact with culture.120 It has long beenrecognized that signature findings of behavioural insights from experiments in high-income countries in
Europe and North America are not generalizable, as
shown by a failure to replicate the results in different
contexts.121 Moreover, over the course of human history and even today, most people have not lived insuch settings,122 implying the need for caution in generalizing claims from results based on samples fromthese settings.123

Both preferences and beliefs can be“shaped by cultural and social contexts, andignoring differences can result in ineffectiveor, worse, misguided interventions
Recent work uncovered substantial cultural differences in preferences and beliefs associated with economic inequality, supporting the notion that culturalprocesses are at play in shaping this diversity acrossand within countries.124 For preferences on how muchinequality people accept or are averse to, much depends on the kinds of inequality that people consider
to be unfair.125 Representative surveys in 60 countries
documented variation across countries in the extent to which people subscribe to one of three views

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

113

Box 4.7 Where are the politics?
One simplified way of identifying where the politics lie is to assume that there are two types of interactions relevant for collective action within countries.1 One pertains to setting up the rules of the game—the conditions under which society is governed.
This can be considered the realm of politics, which determines who holds power to do what and how.2 These rules arecodified in documents, from constitutions to civil and penal codes to jurisprudence (in short, the law). The creation, execution
and enforcement of the law are ensured by formal institutions. Interactions of the other type then unfold within the law—thesocial and economic decisions undertaken by people and other formal institutions (those with legal status, such as firms orcivil society organizations). Each of these realms is the subject of entire disciplines, including political science for the first, andmuch of economics for the second.
The two sets of interactions are mutually constitutive. For instance, rules can enable the accumulation of wealth and resources by certain agents that, in turn, can mobilize those resources to further advance their economic advantage in thedomain of political interactions, through direct capture of political office, lobbying or the use of the media.
Still, as important as the law and rules are, there is a growing appreciation that contracts are notoriously incomplete (and externalities are pervasive), with the irreducible incompleteness of the law and formal institutions particularly relevant in contextsof uncertainty.3 So, economic and social behaviour is also regulated in part by social norms in which the formation of beliefs
and preferences and how they change over time and across people and countries have crucial importance.4
But behavioural assumptions, and the role of beliefs, matter even without assuming the irreducible incompleteness of thelaw. Why do people comply with the law, and how can social order be maintained in diverse societies? The selfish choicemodel suggests that people are motivated to seek individual gains and avoid losses, so these assumptions would suggest theuse of strategies that deter law violators.5 While these strategies matter, so do beliefs about the legitimacy of formal institutions: “Legitimacy is a concept meant to capture the beliefs that bolster willing obedience.”6
Under this perspective people obey the law due in part to a common commitment to obey formal institutions, sustained by
the belief that there is an obligation to obey (value-based legitimacy) that is then reflected in actual compliance (behaviourallegitimacy). Within this framework antecedents to value-based legitimacy include components of how the formal institutions areperceived (motivations of leaders, administrative competence and the performance of formal institutions in delivering on their
public purposes, including the provision of public goods) and views about procedural justice (whether the exercise of authority isperceived as fair). Within views about procedural justice, the perception that government procedures are unfair often motivates
disobedience, evasion and resistance to legal demands, with deterrence motives overwhelmed and ineffective in these cases.7
The role of beliefs also comes to the fore when formal institutions undergo change. Fundamental institutional change often
takes place during critical junctures when there is uncertainty about the shape that future institutions will take. A recent strand ofliterature shows that the dispersion of beliefs about future institutions can help identify these critical junctures. How these beliefs
diffuse and get consolidated around particular views shapes in part the rules of the game that societies end up with.8 Some of theevidence comes from contexts where people can choose to rely on formal state institutions or on nonstate entities (for instance,in dispute resolution) or where there are competing claims to the formal governance institutions, which shows that beliefs (about
which arrangement is more effective or more enduring) not the formal institutions themselves causally determine behaviour.9
In sum, there is growing recognition of the importance of beliefs in shaping the two set of interactions and a recognition
that they are shaped by the dynamic interaction between behaviour and institutions. Political scientist Margaret Levi titled a
recent account of her intellectual journey “The Power of Beliefs.”10 And economist Kaushik Basu titled a deep reflection on
the relationship between law and economics “The Republic of Beliefs” because “The might of the law, even though it may
be backed by handcuffs, jails, and guns, is, in its elemental form, rooted in beliefs carried in the heads of people in society[…], creating enormous edifices of force and power, at times so strong that they seem to transcend all individuals, and create
the illusion of some mysterious diktat enforced from above. In truth, the most important ingredients of a republic, including its
power and might, reside in nothing more than the beliefs and expectations of ordinary people.”11
Notes
1. Inspired by Hurwicz (1996), as described in Powers, van Schaik and Lehmann (2016), who distinguish the political game from the economic game. Above
the political game Ostrom (2009b) posited a constitutional game. To simplify the discussion, the constitutional game is subsumed under the political game.
2. See Powers, Perret and Currie (2023) for a discussion of how playing the political game in societies of increasing size leads to the emergence of politicalinequality. 3. We are grateful to Charles Efferson for emphasizing these points. 4. For discussions of how differences within countries on cooperative versus
conformist preferences relate to differences in political ideology and how these differences may have emerged, see Claessens and others (2020) and
Claessens and others (2023). For an account of the diversity across 99 countries in the (lack of) correlation between cultural and economic conservatism,see Lelkes, Malka and Soto (2019). 5. The framing and discussion in this paragraph draw from Tyler (2023). Deterrence is typically understood to mean punishing violators as a means to enhance compliance, but rewarding a commitment to cooperate could also be effective (Han 2022). 6. Levi, Sacks and Tyler
2009, p. 354. 7. Levi, Sacks and Tyler 2009, p. 360), with numerous examples, including several related to tax avoidance and evasion. For further elaborations related to the need to raise fiscal revenue to provide for public goods, see Levi (1988, 1999). For a debate on the relevance of procedural justice, see,for instance, Hagan and Hans (2017). 8. Reviewed in Callen, Weigel and Yuchtman (2023). 9. Acemoglu and others 2020. 10. Levi 2022. 11. Basu 2018, p. 40.

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Box 4.8 It seemed such a good idea at the time: The dangers of ignoring heterogeneity when pursuing social
tipping
An intervention heralded as very successful in harnessing the potential of social norms to change behaviour was thefirm Opower’s provision of information about how each customer’s energy use compares with that of its neighbour,
along with messaging that signalled that conserving energy was a desirable goal.1 An initial evaluation of 600,000
households that compared the behaviour of households that received the information with that of households that
did not found that this nonprice intervention had a substantial effect in encouraging energy conservation.2 However,when the intervention was scaled to more than 8 million people, the average effect—and its practical importance—
turned out to be much lower than in the initial evaluation.3
This was not a replication failure, since both evaluations were rigorous and stood up to independent analysis.4
But the initial evaluation was based on the communities that were the first to adopt the measure. They were already
inclined to value energy conservation, had large homes and were relatively prosperous, thus they had many opportunities to conserve energy. The effect of the intervention declined substantially when it was expanded to include
people with a broader set of beliefs and much wider range of incomes. Even when studies are carefully conducted,
the choice of convenience samples seems to be particularly problematic in behavioural interventions.5
Notes
1. Featured, for instance, in Chetty (2015). Thus, the intervention relied on both descriptive and injunctive social norms. See Constantino andothers (2022) for a discussion and Bhanot (2021) for the role of injunctive social norms in promoting conservation. 2. Allcott 2011. An initialsmaller expansion beyond the 600,000 also suggested that the effects persisted (Allcott and Rogers 2014). 3. Allcott 2015. 4. As reported in
Bryan, Tipton and Yeager (2021), which inspires the analysis in this paragraph. 5. Sometimes simply because there is not enough contextual
information, as Vivalt (2020) showed in an analysis of 635 studies of impact evaluations of development interventions, posing challenges to
the generalizability of results.

Figure 4.3 Effects of several behavioural phenomena are stronger in more educated and wealthier segments ofthe population
Effect size

Effect size

0.75

0.65

0.70

0.60

0.65
0.55
0.60
0.50

0.55
0.50

0.45
Less
than
high
schoolHighschoolonly

Some Master’s Professional
college degree or doctoral
degree(MD, JD, PhD)

Educational attainment

5

10

15

25

35

50

75

More
than
100

Annual household income ($ thousands)

Note: The figures show the effects from seven classical studies in behaviourial science (conformity with a descriptive social norm, impact of argument
quality on persuasion, base rate underutilization, conjunction fallacy, underappreciation of the law of large numbers, false consensus and ease of
retrieval) according to educational attainment and annual household income in a representative sample of the US population. The vertical axis reports
Cohen’s d effect sizes (the standardized difference between the means of the treatment and control groups; Cohen 1988).
Source: Yeager and others 2019.

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action115

on fairness: egalitarians (find all inequalities unfair),
meritocratic individuals (accept inequalities due todifferences in performance as fair but those due toluck unfair) and libertarians (accept all inequalities asfair). A large share of the population in several highincome countries adhere to the meritocratic view—which is also the foundation for some normative
theories of distribution—holding that people should
not be considered responsible for outcomes beyond
their control (figure 4.4).126
But this view is not well represented in many othercountries. And even among countries with similar
shares of people holding a meritocratic view, there
are large differences in the other two categories. For
instance, although Norway and the United States
have similar shares of meritocratic individuals, theUnited States has a much larger share of libertarians,

and Norway has a much larger share of egalitarians.127
Moreover, there are differences within societies.
In Norway the share of egalitarians is much higher
among 15-year-olds from low socioeconomic households than among those from high socioeconomic
households,128 and while most grade 5 children are
egalitarians, the meritocratic share increases in higher grades and is largest by grade 13.129
So, experience and social context shape people’sviews of fairness, again pointing to cultural processes in shaping preferences over the lifecycle. Separately from preferences, what people believe about thesources of inequality also matters. A meritocratic individual who believes that inequality is driven by luck,
not effort, would find inequality unfair. As with preferences, there is a wide disparity across and withincountries on beliefs about the drivers of inequality.130

Figure 4.4 There are widespread differences in fairness preferences around the world
Fairness type

Egalitarian

Libertarian

Meritocrat

Percent
100

75

50

25

0
CanadaAustria
NorwayItaly
Portugal
Egypt
JordanNetherlands
Switzerland
TurkeyUnited States
GreeceJapan
FranceMoroccoRepublic of Korea
United Kingdom
Russian Federation
Bolivia (Plurinational State of)BrazilColombia
Chile
Iran (Islamic Republic of)Argentina
Hungary
Ethiopia
RwandaVenezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)
MexicoGermany
EcuadorPeru
MalawiEstonia
Zimbabwe
Sri Lanka
Cameroon
UkraineKazakhstan
Czechia
Philippines
IsraelKenya
Spain
ZambiaThailandNigeria
CroatiaSouth Africa
Viet Nam
Tanzania (United Republic of)Cambodia
Algeria
Indonesia
Pakistan
UgandaAfghanistan
Bangladesh
China
India

Note: Egalitarians find all inequalities unfair, meritocratic individuals accept inequalities due to differences in performance as fair but those due to luck as unfair
and libertarians accept all inequalities as fair.
Source: Almas and others 2022.

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Beliefs about the extent to which inequality is unfair
matter more for attitudes towards redistribution than
the actual level of income inequality, so beliefs have a
direct bearing on support for different types of redistribution policy.131
Thus, recognizing that populations can be heterogeneous in preferences and beliefs and how these differences emerge from cultural processes is crucial tothe design of institutions and policies, including, forinstance, on tax compliance (spotlight 6.4).132 In particular, it is essential in assessing what kind of interventions are more likely to trigger social tipping.133

Understanding how enhancing agency andredressing polarization within countries canimprove collective action across countries
A broader perspective on choice informed by these
insights opens new vistas on how to advance cooperation and the provision of global public goods. And it
helps show how risks associated with domestic patterns of political polarization may harm collective action across countries.
Interventions to enhance the provision of global public goods that are informed by the recognition
that people are products of culture include the consideration of perceptions and aspirations when implementing policies or designing institutions. Different
perceptions about how to interpret a noncooperative
choice can result in cultural impediments to cooperation: when the choice is perceived as a mistake, it
can lead to collective action in future interactions, butwhen it is perceived as an insult, it can result in thecollapse of collective action.134 Perceptions also matter when people infer the motives of others to makemoral judgements,135 and on perceptions about how(and in what ways) they are interdependent with others.136 Breakdowns of cooperation in conflict are also
shaped by this type of perception. There is evidence
that the mental representation of payoffs that potential conflicting parties face rather than the actual payoffs determine not only how people think but also how
they behave.137 These perceptions are malleable tosome extent and can be changed in ways that increase
the propensity of players to pursue cooperation.138
Aspirations also matter because people act on what
they believe is possible and desirable, and these beliefs

are in part the result of social processes, shaped bynarratives widely shared across society or withingroups.139 Aspirations, and the institutions and social
norms associated with them, may have emerged asa result of cultural processes that made them suitable for some time in some contexts, but they may nolonger be suitable for new contexts.140 This mismatch
acquires a novel dimension as we face the unprecedented challenges of the Anthropocene, in which it isunclear how processes of cultural variation and selection across societies that shaped in part how adaptive
institutions and norms emerged would work whenconfronting planetary-scale challenges: they haveto be addressed collectively and at a global scale because the relevant group is all of humanity.141
Such a mismatch can be characterized somewhat
as reflecting what Karla Hoff and Allison Demeritt
called an agency gap, which can be fuelled in partfrom a divergence between what societies believe ispossible or probable and what is objectively possible.142 To the extent that an agency gap is the resultof widely shared beliefs, closing the gap will require
more than providing information; it will also require
mobilizing insights about the cultural determinantsof the formation of shared beliefs.143

Interventions to enhance the provision of“
global public goods that are informed by therecognition that people are products of culture
include the consideration of perceptions andaspirations when implementing policies ordesigning institutions
Narrowing the agency gap is constrained by what
is objectively possible but is malleable with respect towhat people aspire to, which is sometimes articulated through narratives that have “political and psychological agency and can reinforce or challenge existing
power relations and trajectories.” 144 This can take theform of what has been called the pursuit of emancipatory transformations,145 which affirms the importanceof enhancing not only people’s welfare but also theirempowerment as agents of change.146
But it is one thing to recognize that perceptions andaspirations matter, and that broad recommendations
such as reframing narratives can help close the agency gap, and quite another to see how to mobilize these
insights. Here is where the concreteness of providing

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action117

global public goods can help, because global public
goods correspond to a very specific way of addressing
shared challenges when countries face interdependence. Global public goods, by their nature, correspond to non-zero-sum interactions and can thus bemobilized to overcome the psychology of zero-sum
beliefs (one party’s gain comes at the expense of
the other party’s losses). To be sure, many interactions across countries are zero sum, but pursuit of
the provision of global public goods has the potential
to open spaces for countries to interact that are notzero-­sum.147 Emphasizing the provision of global public goods can overcome three of the channels shownto elicit zero-sum beliefs (even in situations where
the actual payoffs are not zero-sum): perceptions of
threat, real or imagined resource scarcity and inhibited deliberation.148 Zero-sum beliefs exacerbate conflict,149 discourage cooperation150 and suppress effort
and economic development.151

While diversity of beliefs and preferences“
can be harnessed for creativity and innovation,
patterns of political polarization represent
a major challenge for collective action

The provision of global public goods can mobilize
the human ability of shared intentionality: “an understanding that individuals are solving a problem
together and are committed to supporting each other.” 152 In fact, understanding and sharing intentions
have been argued to have evolved to account not
only for joint actions and shared beliefs but also forthe emergence of coordination on the need for giving
reasons to justify those actions and beliefs.153 Some
evidence suggests that the pursuit of self-reliance(seeking to reduce interdependence) in confronting
shared problems crowds out cooperation and exacerbates inequalities.154 People are also able “to see theworld from another individual’s perspective and, specifically, to understand and formally represent another individual’s knowledge states, beliefs and goals” 155and even their emotional states, which is involvedin empathy.156 This can engender a proclivity for the
pursuit of justice that, along with shared intentionally, can be a powerful driver for cooperation to enhance the provision of global public goods.157
The flip side is that these powerful potential drivers of cooperation often act within groups.158 One
118

manifestation of this “groupy” behaviour is the virtually universal higher levels of parochial (meaning
within countries) cooperation than of universal cooperation.159 While diversity of beliefs and preferences
is not just a fact but something that can be harnessed
for creativity and innovation,160 patterns of politicalpolarization (where no common factual foundation
exists to undertake reasoned discussions and wheregroups alienate and even dehumanize each other)
represent a major challenge for collective action(chapter 6).161 How political polarization plays out domestically can be a central determinant of providing
global public goods such as climate change mitigation and pandemic response.162
Zero-sum beliefs have been associated with politicalpolarization in some countries.163 For instance, alongwith international inequity in vaccine access, domestic
attitudes towards vaccines determined the path of theCovid-19 pandemic, including in high-income countries.164 Even when vaccines were free and plentiful,patterns of trust and political polarization shaped thecourse of the pandemic in many countries.165 In somecountries people’s vaccine status identification is aspolarizing as their other group identifications. Morepolarized attitudes towards vaccine status have been
linked to greater resistance to vaccine uptake.166
Political polarization matters also because the heterogeneity of preferences and beliefs and their cultural underpinning may prevent the mobilization ofsocial norms towards more cooperative outcomes.167
As the discussion above illustrates, and as demonstrated theoretically,168 the distribution of social
preferences (towards caring for the environment oraversion to inequality) can activate tipping, have noeffect or even produce a backlash, depending on theeffects that interventions have in different populationgroups and the reasons people within those groups
adhere to social norms.
When behaviour conforming with a norm interacts
with other motives, such as group identities, social
tipping may not occur at all.169 When belonging to agroup is linked with salient identities, that can exaggerate the “othering” of other groups and blind members to the realization that everyone has multiple
identities with different expressions and relevance at
different times—people can lose sight of our sharedhumanity.170 This is how in these situations behavioural markers that people rely on to signal group

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

affiliations may prevent social norms from tipping.171
For example, if not being vaccinated against Covid19 is a marker of belonging to a group, not only will
behaviour not change when some members of thegroup are vaccinated, their being vaccinated can turnbehaviours against vaccination to signal commitment
and loyalty to the group.172 A crucial aspect to consider, particularly in politically polarized contexts, is
not only people’s private beliefs but also their beliefs
about what others think about certain issues, the perceptions they have about threats and how they believe that others think about them and how they will
behave.173
The next two chapters consider these two challenges (narrowing the agency gap and redressing polarization) in more detail. It may seem that the current
context of turbulence around the world is not conducive to meeting either challenge. Yet, as we movedeeper into the Anthropocene, we may already be
experiencing a major ecological discontinuity174
characterized by a shift from uncontrolled population growth to controlled fertility (figure 4.5).175 The
transition to low fertility is complex and multifaceted and has recently been analysed from the perspective of cultural evolution (to consider factorsthat demographers designate as ideation).176 Determinants of this transition include innovations inmedicine and sanitation, empowerment of women,
advances in education, shifts in social norms about
the size of successful families, increasing attention to
population growth, consciousness of planetary challenges and many other potential factors, all of them
expressions at least in part of cultural factors.177 Recognizing that we are in the new planetary context of

Figure 4.5 The world is undergoing a major transition fromaccelerating to decelerating population growth
World population growth(percent)
Year, t
1962

2

1972

1955
1950

Decelerations2,2= –0.003

1979
1960

1
1687

1940

Accelerations2,2= +0.006

1915
0
1350

1

2

2000

10–12 billion
3

4

5

6

7

8

World population (billions)

9

10

11

12

Equilibration

Note: The graph plots per capita growth of the population as a percentage
against the population level. The gray line connects data points in different
years. The red line fits an ecological model of mutualistic interactions between humans and plants and animals in which the ecological parameter (s2,2)
is positive, signifying very rapid population growth. The blue line fits a model
where the parameter has turned negative, signifying a deceleration in population growth, with a projected equilibrium in population at around 10–12 billion
people some time in the next century.
Source: Lehman and others 2021.

the Anthropocene and in a novel ecological phasesuggests a possibilist agenda: not optimism or pessimism but the possibility of consciously managing theself-inflicted problems that we are confronting on a
global scale.178 The provision of global public goods,
which depends only on us, would be a way of acting
on that possibilist agenda.

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

119

SPOT L IG HT 4 .1

A technology-centred approach to climate change negotiations
Scott Barrett, Columbia University and London School of Economics

The world has been trying to limit climate change formore than 30 years. The first agreement, the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC), was adopted in 1992. Under this framework, parties agree to cooperate to limit concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to a levelthat would avoid “dangerous” climate change. Everycountry is a party to this agreement. All countries
agree that they need to cooperate.
Since then, two other treaties have been adopted.
The Kyoto Protocol of 1998 set binding emissions
limits for Annex I countries1 for 2008–2012, but these
could not be enforced. The United States declined toparticipate. Canada participated initially but took nosteps to meet its emissions limits and later withdrew
in order to avoid a legal obligation to comply. In 2009
countries met in Copenhagen to broaden and deepen
the Kyoto Protocol. More countries were expected to
be bound by emissions limits, and previously negotiated emissions limits were to be tightened. However, countries were unable to agree on how to do this.
Instead, they pivoted. First, they put a number on
the UNFCCC’s goal of avoiding dangerous climatechange, specifying a 2°C target for mean global temperature rise. Second, they asked parties to pledge
contributions towards meeting this common goal.
Ultimately, this approach was codified in the Paris
Agreement of 2015. That treaty strengthened the previous goal: countries are now to hold “the increasein the global average temperature to well below 2°C
above preindustrial levels and [to pursue] efforts tolimit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.” The Paris
Agreement also situated pledges in the context ofnaming and shaming, to encourage greater ambition.
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, all countries participate in
the Paris Agreement. However, also unlike the Kyoto
Protocol, pledge-making and achievement of pledges
are explicitly voluntary.
Where has this approach gotten us? Concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen every year since120

negotiations began. More carbon dioxide has been
emitted since the UNFCCC was adopted than in
the previous 250 years. Carbon dioxide emissions
reached an all-time high in 2022. The world is not on
course to meet the goal countries have said they must
meet.
Why? No phenomenon of this complexity has asingle explanation, but one stands out, and it is surprisingly simple: countries are caught in a prisoner’s
dilemma. All countries recognize that they would all
be better off if they all reduced their emissions, eventually to net zero. But each country fears that doing
this would put its economy at risk. Each might be willing to reduce its emissions substantially if assured
that others will reduce their emissions substantiallyand thus avoid dangerous climate change. However,when contributions cannot be enforced or are voluntary, this assurance eludes every country. The problem is not that every country does nothing; it is thatevery country does too little.2
How to do better? It is instructive to consider somethings that have gone well.

Successes
One success is the 99 percent drop in the price of
solar photovoltaic cells since 1976. Public and private research and development account for 59 percent of the drop, economies of scale for 22 percent
and learning by doing for 7 percent.3 Research anddevelopment were particularly important early in theprocess; economies of scale became important later.
The history of solar research and development can betraced from the first solar cell developed at Bell Labsin the United States in 1954 to further developments
spurred by the Space Race; the US response (beginning with President Richard Nixon’s Project Independence, a programme to make the United States
energy independent by 1980) and Japan’s response

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

(especially its Sunshine Program) to the energy crisesof the 1970s; research in Australia in the 1980s; andthe solar boom in Germany in the 2000s, helped bygenerous feed-in tariffs.4 It took the combined effortsof multiple countries to get to today’s situation, wherecosts are so low that, according to the International
Energy Agency, solar photovoltaics are “becoming
the lowest-cost option for electricity generation inmost of the world.”5
Another success is the decline in the price of lithium-ion batteries. Since commercialization began in
1991, the cost of this form of energy storage has fallen
97 percent. Public and private research and development account for 54 percent of the drop, economies
of scale for 30 percent and learning by doing for 2 percent.6 Most of these activities have been undertakenby the electronics industry (mobile phones, notebook
computers, power tools and so on).7 Advances in thistechnology, combined with policies to promote demand, have propelled a rapid increase in electric vehicle sales, particularly in China, the European Unionand the United States. Globally, lithium-ion battery
demand for electric vehicles increased 65 percent between 2021 and 2022.8 Thanks to this technology, an
increasing number of countries and vehicle manufacturers plan to phase out sales of internal combustion
engines by 2035.
These developments (and others, such as the falling costs of wind turbines and light-emitting diodebulbs) took place outside the UNFCCC process andarguably had little to do with the climate negotiations. Negotiators have asked countries to reduce
their emissions, an approach that falls into the trap of
the prisoner’s dilemma. Had countries focused moreon changing the economics of new technologies,
the outcome might have been different. Rather thanask countries to reduce their use of fossil fuels, why
not focus on making alternative fuel sources cheaper than fossil fuels? Doing this practically guarantees the global spread of new technologies, reducing
emissions everywhere.

Tipping
Solar photovoltaics and battery-powered electric vehicles have spread (so far) without the help of a treaty.
They are examples of cascade effects.9 Once enoughresearch and development have been undertaken toencourage uptake of a technology by one country,
that country’s production lowers costs for all, mainly through economies of scale, encouraging uptake byother countries. Their uptake in turn lowers costs further, encouraging even more countries to adopt thetechnology, and so on. Cascades generate positive
feedback.
In some cases a single country may be unable to
kick-start a cascade, but a critical mass of countries
may be able exert the “big push” required for tipping. Network externalities often drive universal
adoption. An example is ocean shipping of oil. Historically, most oil pollution in the seas resulted fromthe way oil was transported. After completing an oil
delivery, a tanker would take on ballast water for the
return journey. Before picking up its next load, thetanker would release its ballast water, mixed with oil
residue, into the sea. This process, repeated over andover, was a major source of ocean pollution. To limit
this pollution, the 1954 International Convention for
the Prevention of Pollution of the Seas by Oil (OILPOL) required tankers to limit their release of ballast
water to an area at least 50 miles from shore. Being aprisoner’s dilemma, however, OILPOL like the Kyoto
Protocol, was difficult to enforce.
In the 1970s a different approach was tried. The
International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) required that oil tankers separate the tanks that hold oil from the tanks
that hold ballast water, necessitating tanker redesign.
MARPOL’s approach was more costly than OILPOL
but easier to enforce.10 Once enough ports denied
entry to tankers of the old design, more tanker operators met the new standard, and as more tankers
met the new standard, more ports allowed entry only
to tankers that met the new standard to protect theircoastlines. In this situation there was a tipping point
for participation that guaranteed universal adherence.11 Intuitively, the tipping point would need to beat least 50 percent of all shipping, and in practice, thisturned out to be the threshold adopted for entry into
force of the agreement mandating the new technology standard. According to the International Maritime
Organization, “MARPOL has greatly contributed toa significant decrease in pollution from international
shipping and applies to 99% of the world’s merchanttonnage.” 12

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

121

The Kyoto Protocol wisely exempted emissions
from international aviation and shipping, believingthat these sources ought to be controlled through theInternational Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization. These are essentially standards organizations, the appropriate bodies
to negotiate emission reductions in their spheres ofinfluence. By focusing on standards rather than emissions limits (which are, in any event, difficult to assign to individual countries), these organizations canstimulate positive feedback, causing a new standard
to tip.
Suppose that the best alternative to bunker fuelturned out to be green ammonia, a fuel produced by
combining nitrogen extracted from the air with hydrogen extracted from water, both processes poweredby renewable energy. How to proceed? Ammonia
would likely cost several times as much as heavy fueloil. A switch to ammonia would also present technical challenges. It would require new engines, new onboard storage tanks (necessitating new ship designs)
and new port facilities: in short, a new technology–
fuel standard. A switch to ammonia clearly would not
happen one country at a time. Vessel owners would
not want to run their ships on ammonia unless a network of refuelling infrastructure were available, just
as no country would want to build an ammonia fuelnetwork unless assured that lots of ships would run
on ammonia. Lock-in would be a barrier to switching
if only one or a small number of countries switched.
But as more ports switched to ammonia, more shipowners would want their vessels to run on ammonia, and as more ships ran on ammonia, more ports
would want to switch. Tipping of a standard forgreen ammonia would resemble the experience withMARPOL.
Mission Innovation, a coalition of 22 countries
working outside the UNFCCC process, has a plan
to reduce emissions in shipping that obeys the logic
sketched out above. A first goal is to undertake research and development to identify the best alternative to heavy fuel oil. A second goal is to facilitate thespread of this new technology–fuel standard. Again,
suppose that the research and development undertaken in the first stage revealed ammonia to be the“winner.” How to achieve the second goal of ensuring global spread of the new standard? Mission Innovation would aim to establish a fleet of at least 200
122

ships able to run on the new fuel; to build a “global
port infrastructure to support vessels operating on zero-emission fuels so that by 2030, 10 large trade ports
covering at least three continents supply zero-emission fuels”;13 and, finally, to scale up production of
the new fuel so that it supplied at least 5 percent of
the total market. It is unlikely that 200 ships, 10 large
ports and a 5 percent share of the fuel market would
suffice to tip the global market, but at least this initiative sees the logic of needing to change the system.
Changing the system is the essence of a strategy thatseeks to transform the prisoner’s dilemma into a tipping game.14 Once critical mass gets past the tipping
point, such an approach generates positive feedback,leading to a global switch, as we saw with MARPOL.

Trade
The approach pursued by the UNFCCC, focusing on
emissions reductions, generates negative feedback. If
one country (or group of countries) reduces its emissions unilaterally, comparative advantage in greenhouse gas–intensive sectors shifts to other countries,
causing their emissions to increase—a phenomenon
known as trade leakage. Also, if the emissions reductions are achieved by lowering fossil fuel use, global
prices for these fuels will fall, causing other countries
to increase their consumption and, thus, emissions.
This negative feedback intensifies the incentive tofree ride, which is inherent in the prisoner’s dilemma.
Because of these trade-related concerns, domestic climate policies often exclude greenhouse gas–
intensive industries from having to reduce theiremissions—undermining unilateral efforts to reduce
emissions. The European Union is planning to extend its emissions trading arrangements to previously protected industries in order to reduce emissions
further. However, due to concerns about leakage, itis planning to replace the exclusions with industryspecific carbon border adjustment mechanisms—amove that may stimulate conflict. As happened previously when the European Union tried to extend its
emissions trading system to international aviation,other powerful states may retaliate. Also, developing
countries may protest that, by treating domestic production and imports alike in terms of emissions, border tax adjustments violate the principle of common

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

but differentiated responsibilities enshrined in the
UNFCCC. Finally, correcting for leakage will not correct for free riding.
However, linking climate agreements to trade cooperation can help prevent free riding—and, in theprocess, prevent leakage. Trade agreements are easier to enforce than climate agreements. This is because trade is bilateral, whereas emissions reductions
are a global public good. If a country violates a trade
agreement, the countries harmed by the reduction
in trade have a strong—almost built-in—incentive toretaliate. The fear of retaliation motivates countries
to abide by their trade agreements. By contrast, if acountry emits more than allowed by a climate treaty,
other parties to the agreement harm only themselves
by reciprocating—and so will not retaliate. Because
trade agreements are easier to enforce, linking tradecooperation to cooperation in supplying a global public good may overcome free riding incentives.15
The prime example is the Montreal Protocol, which
protects the stratospheric ozone layer. The treatybans trade between parties and nonparties in chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and products containing CFCs
and works as follows. If no other countries participated in the agreement, no country would want to participate because doing so would mean losing all gains
from trade in CFCs in addition to losing out fromfree riding. However, if all other countries participated, any country would want to participate so long as
the gains from trading with the rest of the world exceeded the gains from free riding. Intuitively, every
country would have an incentive to participate provided enough others participated. Trade measuresthus imply the same kind of tipping point as withMARPOL­—­a result that makes sense when considering that denying a vessel access to a port is equivalent
to a trade ban. Thanks partly to the trade measure,the Montreal Protocol has been remarkably effective,
preventing both leakage and free riding.16

In Kigali in 2016, the Montreal Protocol wasamended to control hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a
cousin of CFCs. Since HFCs are a powerful greenhouse gas and do not deplete the ozone layer, theKigali Amendment is a climate treaty negotiatedoutside the UNFCCC process. Further, because Kigali incorporates the same trade measure as theMontreal Protocol, it represents the first climate
treaty to incorporate a trade measure. The Kyoto
Protocol was unable to control HFCs, but the Kigali Amendment will very likely do so, especially after
its trade measure enters into force in 2029. Also, unlike unilateral policies to control for trade leakage,
the Kigali Amendment incorporates a side payment
mechanism to cover the incremental costs of developing countries’ compliance with the treaty’s control
measures. The Kigali Amendment promotes cooperation in the same spirit as the UNFCCC, only by adifferent means.

Way forward
For all its efforts the UNFCCC approach to limiting climate change has so far fallen short of achieving its goals. Fortunately, the Paris Agreement canbe complemented by other agreements aimed at reducing emissions in particular sectors. Indeed, thishas already happened. The Kigali Amendment was
adopted less than a year after the Paris Agreement.
Other developments, including the falling prices ofsolar photovoltaics and lithium-ion batteries and theaspirations of Mission Innovation, hint that moreprogress is possible. The key feature shared by allthese efforts is their focus on interventions (technical standards, research and development, and trademeasures) that can transform systems by achieving
critical mass.17 Surely, many more such possibilities
remain to be discovered.

N OT E S
1.

2.

Annex I countries include the industrialized countries that were membersof the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1992,
plus countries with economies in transition, including the Russian Federation, the Baltic states and several Central and Eastern European states.
See Barrett and Dannenberg (2016) for a laboratory experiment of the Paris Agreement showing that the process of “pledge and review” changes
what players say (meaning their collective target and individual pledges)

but not what they do (meaning their actual contributions to achieving theirpledges and target).
3.

Kavlak, McNerney and Trancik 2018.

4.

Nemet 2019.

5.

https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-pv.

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

123

6.

Ziegler, Song and Trancik 2021.

7.

Dugoua and Dumas 2023.

8.

IEA 2023b.

9.

Dixit 2003; Heal and Kunreuther 2010.

10.

Mitchell 1994.

11.

Barrett 2003a.

1 24

12.

https://www.imo.org/en/ourwork/environment/pages/pollution-prevention​.aspx.

13.

https://explore.mission-innovation.net/mission/zero-emissions-shipping/.

14.

Of the world’s 10 biggest ports by volume, 7 are in China. China’s participation in a strategy to change shipping is essential.

15.

Barrett and Dannenberg 2022.

16.

Barrett 2003a.

17.

Barrett 2016.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

S POT L IGH T 4 . 2

Using insights from behavioural science: Watch out!

Caution in the use of behavioural insights is associated with challenges in replicating some findings.1
Such concerns follow on the crisis of replicability
that affected some psychology research in the 2010s,
when several high-profile findings that garnered
media and policy attention failed to be replicated insubsequent attempts.2 In particular, studies over the
past 20 years based on experiments failed to replicate at higher rates than nonexperimental studies.3
A recent review found that only two-thirds of social science experiments reported in two top journals were replicated, and the average effect size wasabout half of that reported in the original studies.4
One of the signature nudge interventions—making
organ donations the default—failed to replicate andcould even be counterproductive.5 Several efforts
have documented not only failures to replicate but
also potential scientific misconduct.6 Learning fromthese challenges, there is awareness that behaviouralscience will likely evolve to deliver more robust findings, be more cautious on claims based on statisticalinference and address issues of more direct policy
relevance.7
But insights from behavioural science confront another challenge. Given the proliferation of cognitive
biases identified in the literature, even if findings arerobust, it is challenging for interventions to address
them all or to ensure that addressing one bias does notexacerbate some other bias. The cognitive bias codex(figure S4.2.1) may appear as little more than “a trove ofplausible ad hoc modifications to rational choice models.”8 This challenge has motivated efforts to find a setof restricted causal mechanisms that could account fora large set of cognitive biases.9 A better understandingof cognitive processes (and the limits of human cognition)10 has inspired hypotheses about mechanisms that
could account for several cognitive biases.11 These include cognitive uncertainty12 or an understanding of
how people estimate probabilities through the selective
recall of memories.13 But even theories that held together different biases that have received strong empiricalsupport14 sometimes fail to be replicated.15

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

125Figure S4.2.1 The identification of 180 cognitive biases makes it hard to derive insights about how to change behaviour
to enhance collective action
We store memories differently basedon how they were experienced

What should weremember?

to form generalities

We edit and reinforce
some memories after the fact

Im

pl

Su

To avoid mistakes,
we aim to preserve autonomy
and group status and avoid
irreversible decisions

ici

ta

ss
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ing
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g
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Les
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-be
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-she
Rhy
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me-a
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n eff
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B
Inform elief biasatio
Ambig n bias
uity bias
Sp

We favor simple-looking options
and complete information overcomplex, ambiguous options

Availability heuristic
Attentional bias
Illusory truth
effectMere-expo
sure effectContext
effectCue-depende
nt forg
Moodetting-cong

We discard specifics

Tip of the tongue phenomenon
Google effecteffectNext–in–line
ectTesting effsindednes
Absent–m g effectcessin–of–proLevelsteffec
Suffixteffectsitionl–po ing effec
t
Seria
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Part
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io
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ff
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n
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sin
ias
Mi g an ak–
t b asPelin
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aff ity ic
Leg
tiv jud ias
din ga Pre l b es
Fa Ne
ca typpi
ty reoeo steer
St licitpIm

We reduce events and lists
to their key elements

ac

Statusquo
mparison bias
effectDecoy effectReactance
Reverse psychology
System justification

Social co

Backfire effect

To stay focused, we favour theimmediate, relatable thingin front of us

Need toact fast
We project our current mindset andassumptions onto the past and future

Source: “The Cognitive Bias Codex - 180+ biases,” designed by John Manoogian III based on categories and descriptions by Buster Benson, licensed with
CC‑by‑SA‑4.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cognitive_bias_codex_en.svg).
126

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Curse t effecthorSpotlig incentive err
cExtrinsi
al agencyof extern
Illusionc insight
asymmetri
Illusion of

To act, we must be confident we
can make an impact and feel what
we do is important

Ac Illu
to sior
Se -ob n o
lf- se f cos
Ba erv rver ntr
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Op Fore ia
Dunn Eg tim er e ffec s
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t
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Restr cy biasaProje int biasctioPro-inn bia
novation b s
Time-sias
avinPlannin g bias
g fallacy
Pessimism bias
Impact bias
Declinism
Moral luck
Outcome bias
Hindsight bias
Rosy retrospection
Telescoping effectTo get things done, we tend
to complete things we haveinvested time and energy inEndowment effectculty effect
Processing diffitrtainty effec
Pseudocen effect
Dispositio k bias
Zero-ris bias
Unit
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ion
Confabulat
sion
Clustering illu
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Insensitivity to sam
Neglect of probability
Anecdotal fallacy
Illusion of validity
Masked-man fallacy
Recency illusionGambler’s
fallacy
Hot-hand fallacy
Illusorycorrelation
PareidoAnthro lia
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innov
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ation
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g fallacy
Pessimism bias
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Declinism
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ffect

Availability heuristic
Attentional bias
Illusory truth
effectMere-expo
sure effectContext
effectCue-depende
nt forg
Moodetting
-cong
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memo
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athy
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Ne lf-rel supe ffec
ga eva rior tt iv
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ity nceeAn
bia effe ffectCo chosct
Co nse ring
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Fr ocu cti t eff mam sin on ec
in g e bia tgeff ffe sec ctt

Tip of the tongue phenomenon
Google effecteffectNext–in–line
ectTesting effsindednes
Absent–m g effectcessin–of–proLevelsde

Too much
information

Bizarre, funny, visually striking or
anthropomorphic things stick out morethan nonbizarre or unfunny things

We are drawn to details
that confirm our own existing beliefs

We notice flaws in others
more easily than we
notice flaws in ourselves

We tend to find stories andpatterns even when looking
at sparse data

We fill in characteristics fromstereotypes, generalities
and prior histories

We imagine things and people
we are familiar with or fond ofas better

We simplify probabilities and numbers
to make them easier to think about

Not enoughmeaning

We think we know what
other people are thinking

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action127

N OT E S
1.

Ijzerman and others 2020.

2.

An early expression of concern was Simmons, Nelson and Simonsohn(2011). For reviews, see Nelson, Simmons and Simonsohn (2018) andNosek and others (2022).

3.

Youyou, Yang and Uzzi 2023.

4.

Camerer and others 2016;’ Camerer and others 2018; Yarkoni 2022. A
recent review of multiple studies recommending interventions to increasehappiness reveals very little support for several widely recommended
policies (Folk and Dunn 2023).

5.

Etheredge 2021.

6.

Websites include http://datacolada.org/ and http://bps.stanford.edu/.
The challenge has been widely reported in the media (see, for instance,
Schelber 2023).

7.

Hallsworth (2023) proposes a manifesto on how behavioural scienceneeds to evolve to strengthen its empirical foundations and policy relevance. Duckworth and Milkman (2022) propose improvements in the
conduct of meta-studies to enhance the validity of findings. Clark, Connor
and Isch (2023) show that studies that fail to replicate are associated withdeclines in citations, thus the proposal by Zwaan and others (2018) that
replication should become mainstream could enhance the validity androbustness of results. Box-Steffensmeier and others (2022) argue for theimportance of cross-disciplinary learning. van Roekel and others (2023)
propose improvements in the design of nudges so that they preserve

128

autonomy, given that a strand of criticism of nudges is that they are
paternalistic and curb people’s ability to reason when making choices(these criticisms were reviewed in UNDP 2022a). Korbmacher and others(2023) document a series of positive structural, procedural and community changes in which the replicability crisis is turning to a credibility
revolution.
8.

Davis 2023, p. 476.

9.

For instance, Stango and Zinman (2022) reduce 20 biases to 4 behaviouralcommon factors. Goeree and Louis (2021) developed a model to integrate
several findings from behavioural game theory.

10.

Lieder and Griffiths 2020.

11.

As explored, for instance, in behavioural game theory (Camerer, Ho andChong 2015). Dube, MacArthur and Shah (2023) show how cognitive demands on policing can undermine officer decisionmaking. Enke (2020b)
shows how people confronting complex decisions focus on what theysee. Bordalo, Gennaioli and Shleifer (2022) draw the implication of theoutsized influence of salient information on decisionmaking.

12.

Enke and Graeber 2023.

13.

Bordalo and others 2022.

14.

Dean and Ortoleva 2019.

15.

Chapman and others 2023.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

S POT L IGH T 4 . 3

Cultural evolution and development policy
Joseph Henrich, Harvard University, Departments of Human Evolutionary Biology and Psychology,
Harvard’s Kennedy School

All approaches to policy design and economic development require assumptions about human nature,
though these are often implicit, typically smuggled
in without notice.1 By attending closely to human
evolutionary biology, the new interdisciplinary fieldof Cultural Evolution (CE) offers fresh insights into
human behaviour, cultural differences, psychologicalchanges, institutional effectiveness, technological innovation and economic outcomes.2 Because of its historical and comparative approach, CE has exploreda broad range of social phenomena, including religions,3 witchcraft beliefs,4 kinship systems,5 collective rituals6 and gender inequalities,7 and considered
their links to various economic, political, demographic, social and health outcomes.
Drawing on CE research, I shine a spotlight on thenature of human cooperation, the coevolution of institutions and cultural psychologies and the impact ofshocks on people’s psychology. Like economics, CE isbuilt on a large body of formal mathematical models
that act as mental prostheses for thinking about thelearning and decisionmaking processes that underpin behaviour and how these give rise to sociological phenomena such as social norms, institutions,large-scale cooperation and ethnic groups.8 However, unlike economics, CE is founded on evolutionarily plausible and empirically grounded assumptions
about how humans actually learn and adapt rather
than on notions of rational choice rooted in free-floating philosophical assertions.

New evolutionary foundations
Taking an evolutionary perspective, CE theorists
begin by asking a set of deep questions about our species. What kind of animal are we? What is the secretof our species’ success? How are we different fromother animals?

Decades of research point to a set of answers, butthey are not the ones many people assume. Muchof our nature is nurture, but nurture from selected
members of our communities and peers as well as ourfamilies. We are a cultural species that has evolved
genetically to rapidly, efficiently and often unconsciously acquire beliefs, ideas, heuristics, perceptions, motivations and much more from those aroundus.9 Our life histories­— ­gestation, infancy, childhoodand so on­—­have evolved to permit us to adaptively calibrate aspects of our psychology, including ourattention, preferences and perceptions, to the worlds
we confront. Indeed, a growing body of researchshows how, beginning in our first year of life, humans
seem exquisitely well attuned to selectively attending
to and learning from the people most likely to possess
useful or adaptive information, often relying on cuesof competence, skill, success and prestige to target
our learning efforts.10 We also assiduously attend tocertain domains, such as those related to food, sex,
reputation, animals, plants and social groups, andprocess these different domains in distinct ways.11
Over generations these selective learning processes and content filters generate, often without anyone
realizing it, increasingly adaptive cultural packages oftools, know-how, beliefs, motivations and more. We
have depended on the useful products of such cultural processes for so long that we have genetically
evolved to rely on what we acquire from other people­—­culture­— ­over our own experience or instincts.
Many cultural products and practices, including ourinstitutions, may appear “rational” but instead actually emerged through cultural evolution, often
without anyone evaluating the costs and benefits ofalternative options or even understanding how andwhy particular practices, institutions or heuristics
emerged. Of course, our evolved learning abilities­—­
like our instinctual tastes for fat, salt and sugar­— ­canproduce extravagant maladaptations, which include

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

129deeply held commitments and beliefs that deviate
wildly from reality. But that is the cost of being a cultural species.
In applying this approach to understanding humancooperation, researchers have focused on how cultural learning, operating within groups and over time,
gives rise to social norms. Social norms are widely
shared behavioural patterns typically sustained by
reputational effects, punishment, signalling or othermechanisms that can incentivize individually costly behaviours or practices. Norms emerge spontaneously once people can learn both focal behaviours(such as sharing food) and the standards for judging
others (for example, nonsharers are “bad”). Aroundthe world both ethnography and experiments suggestthat the social norms spread by cultural evolution
may explain many widespread patterns of cooperative behaviour, from food sharing among hunter-gatherers to voluntary blood donations in modern
urban centres.12 Because humans have had to navigate social landscapes shaped by social norms foreons, we have genetically evolved a norm psychologythat primes us to readily learn social rules, internalize
these rules as behavioural heuristics or motivational
preferences and react negatively to norm violators.
Norm internalization may be a key aspect of whatmakes us behave fairly and altruistically in normative
contexts.13
Behavioural economists stumbled upon these internalized normative motivations when they began
conducting economic experiments such as theprisoner’s dilemma or ultimatum game. And, ofcourse, anthropologists established decades ago thatgame-related behaviours, driven by particular preferences or heuristics, are culturally transmitted14 andvary predictably across human societies in ways patterned by cultural evolution.15
Rather than assuming institutions as if they descended from on high or were hammered out by rational actors in some Lockean social contract,16 CE
offers a natural way to theorize and understand theorigins of institutions from the ground up. It proposes that informal institutions represent interlocking
sets of social norms. Marriage institutions, for example, are formed by norms that specify such things as
who pays whom to form the union (such as bridepriceor dowry), where the couple lives after marriage (forexample, with the groom’s family) and how many
130

spouses one can have at the same time (polygyny versus monogamy).17 Formal institutions emerge whensome of the norms or rules in a more comprehensive
package are written down. This is part of the reason
that formal institutions cannot be readily replicatedby simply agreeing to follow the written elements of
the institutions­—­many of the key constituents of any
real institution are not written down.

The oldest institution
Crucially, there is much more to human nature thansimply our cultural learning abilities and our norm
psychology. To see this, consider the oldest and mostfundamental of human institutions­—­the family, or
what anthropologists call kinship systems. These
packages of social norms variously harness, extend or
suppress aspects of our innate kin psychology.18 Likeother species, our kin psychology includes instincts
for helping close relatives, avoiding inbreeding (suchas sex with siblings) and sustaining pair-bonds. Cultural evolution exploits these aspects of our evolved
psychology to build various social organizations or
networks, including clans, kindreds, extended families and lineages, using norms that specify acceptable marriage partners (incest taboos), inheritancerules (of resources, leadership positions and identity), communal ownership, postmarital residence andshared culpability for crimes (termed corporate responsibility). By variously strengthening, weakening
or modifying various kin bonds, cultural evolution
can forge either corporate collectives capable of highlevels of cooperation or sprawling social networks
that offer people refuge when disasters strike.19
Historically, after the origins of food production
more than 10,000 years ago, competition amonggroups with varying social norms drove changes in
kin-based institutions that fostered intensive, tightly knit cooperative networks and larger scale cooperation. The shifts to polygynous clans and lineages
during this period, particularly those based on patrilineal lines of descent, were so profound that they
can be seen in the genome in the massive reduction
in Y chromosome diversity after the emergence of agriculture but before the rise of states.20
To illustrate the power of kinship, consider a specific custom, the social norms specifying that adults can

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

have only one spouse at a time­—­normative monogamy. Most societies throughout human history­— ­8 5
percent by some estimates­—­have permitted high-status men to take multiple wives.21 Even in otherwise
highly egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, the mostprestigious hunters, warriors, storytellers and shamans often took three to five wives. To explore whymonogamous marriage emerged and spread in societies where massive wealth differences among men
persist, cultural evolutionists have pointed out thatpolygynous marriage generates societal-level costs:
it tends to create a large pool of low-status men who
have little opportunity or access to the marriage andmating market. Faced with ending up as evolutionary zeroes, unless they can catapult themselves up
a steep status hierarchy, men become more likely
to take risks that result in crime, raiding, violence
and rape.
Monogamous marriage, by contrast, creates a more
equitable distribution of wives and children acrossthe male status hierarchy, effectively draining thepool of low-status bachelors and, instead, enlistingthem in an army of husbands and fathers, giving thema stake in the future. Interestingly, while in monogamous societies both marriage and fatherhood are associated with declines in men’s testosterone levels,
the same is not true of men in polygynous societies.
Indeed, several lines of evidence suggest that, at least
under some conditions, reducing polygynous marriage influences crime, domestic violence and genderinequality. The adoption of monogamous marriage
is a fascinating case because it runs directly contrary
to the interests of elite and powerful men, who usually have a disproportionate influence on laws andpolicy.22
Across traditional kinship practices, including
norms related to polygyny, cousin marriage, inheritance and residence, ample evidence demonstrates
the impact of kin-based institutions on important
outcomes, including economic prosperity, trust, civic
participation, innovation, corruption, child health,gender inequality, education investments and theeffectiveness of democratic institutions. Duman
Bahrami-Rad and colleagues, for example, showthat measures of traditional kinship intensity predict global measures of economic prosperity basedon nighttime satellite luminosity.23 Indeed, focusing only within countries, their analyses show thatcrossing from an ethnic group with high kinship intensity (polygynous clans) into an ethnic group withlow kinship intensity (monogamous nuclear families) corresponds to a substantial rise in luminosity/
prosperity.
Of course, while kin-based institutions are notoriously resilient, policies can and have altered keysocial norms and changed how these institutions
operate.24 For example, using historical data for theUnited States, Ghosh, Hwang and Squires (2023)
show how state laws prohibiting cousin marriage resulted in faster urbanization and more rapid income
growth.25 Similarly, illustrating potential pitfalls, a
study of India shows how legal changes in 2005 thatgave women equal inheritance rights caused a rise inarranged marriages to patrilineal cousins, which inturn resulted in a decline in both gender equality andwomen entering the labour market. In both cases thesocial and economic effects were inadvertent, thoughprobably desirable to policymakers in the former casebut undesirable in the latter.26
The study of kin-based institutions illustrates two
important features of cultural evolution. First, understanding these institutions offers a clear example
of why it is crucial to theorize about human nature­—­without such a framework it is difficult to fathom why
people care so much about close relatives, why testosterone responds to the local mating environment(monogamy or polygyny) and why people internalizesocial norms (where do fairness preferences comefrom?). Concepts such as norms and institutions are
not assumed into existence but instead are understood as arising through clearly defined evolutionary
processes.
Second, cultural evolution shows how institutions
can emerge without conscious social contracts or rational choice but still operate in functional ways, serving the interests of society or particular subgroups.27
Indeed, like the proverbial fish that does not know it
lives in water, most people do not understand how
our institutions work. Normative monogamy offers an
example of an institution that, operating over generations, dramatically influences societal social dynamics
and important outcomes. Yet most people, including
policymakers and legal scholars, do not recognize
why or how it works or even realize that it “does” anything.28 Here, cultural evolution offers a foundational understanding of kin-based institutions that

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action131highlights an array of potential policy levers as well as
potential pitfalls that typically go unrecognized.

Markets, religion and intergroup competition
To understand the evolution of larger scale cooperation above the kin group, cultural evolution offersa multilevel perspective­—­supported by an armouryof formal models29­—­that analyses the impact of intergroup competition and conflict. The approach reveals how intense cooperation among smaller groups
within societies, such as families, villages and ethnic
groups, can undermine cooperation at higher levels such as in kingdoms, states and empires.30 Whensmaller groups within societies command too muchsolidarity and loyalty, it gets harder to motivate people to pay taxes, fight wars, build canals and so on.
This multilevel evolutionary perspective permits
researchers to spot the fault lines where morality
breaks down, cooperation plummets and conflict begins. This approach also underlines the challenges toachieving global-level cooperation.31
Beyond kin-based institutions, the social norms,
beliefs and motivations that drive large-scale cooperation are influenced by many factors, including market institutions, religions and domesticated forms ofintergroup competition. Focusing on markets, several
lines of evidence indicate that greater market integration is associated with greater impersonal prosociality, including greater trust, fairness and cooperation
with anonymous others. The idea, which traces backto the Enlightenment, proposes that by engaging withmarkets, people acquire and internalize norms that
foster reciprocal and mutually beneficial transactions
with strangers.32 For example, using a global databaseof folktales, Enke shows that greater market integration is associated with greater moral universalism
and trust in strangers, as captured by people’s traditional stories.33 Similarly, behavioural experiments inEthiopia show that communities of Bale Oromo thatare located closer to markets are more cooperativewith anonymous others and consequently are better
able to sustainably manage local forests.34
Cultural evolutionists have long argued that intergroup competition, operating over thousands ofyears, has shaped religions and rituals in ways that
expand the sphere of cooperation and exchange,132

fostering the scaling up of human societies. Empirically, cultural evolution has explored the impact ofdifferent religions on family organization (kinshipintensity), aspects of moral psychology, cooperation
among strangers and economic outcomes.35 For example, using both economic experiments and surveys, several studies show how stronger beliefs inpowerful moralizing gods or universal karmic forces
foster greater cooperation and fairness with anonymous others. This finding is particularly striking on
realizing that a belief in such deities is not found in
most human societies and emerged only during thelast few thousand years. Similarly, global variation inpeople’s commitment to world religions is correlatedwith key economic preferences, including generalized trust, altruism towards strangers and reciprocity with anonymous others.36 Such psychologicalpatterns converge with older research linking economic growth to religious beliefs about the afterlife.37
Finally, cultural evolution has also domesticated forms of intergroup competition within societiesthat galvanize higher trust and cooperation among
strangers against the corrosive effects of self-interest,
nepotism and cronyism. Cultural evolutionary theory suggests that competition among groups demands
cooperation, resulting in the spread of motivations
and practices that increase cooperation. Testing thisidea, Francois and colleagues exploited a natural experiment in which changes in banking regulations increased competition among firms, mostly during the1970s and 1980s.38 They show that this policy change
increased competition, which in turn drove trust gradually upward over many years. Supplementing this,the study used panel data for Germany to show thattrust rose when individuals moved to a more competitive sector of the economy and declined when they
moved to a less competitive sector. In the lab the teamconfirmed that increasing intergroup competition increased both people’s willingness to cooperate withstrangers and their inclination to state that “most people can be trusted” on the generalized trust question.

Thinking, feeling and perceiving
Because CE proposes that human brains evolved
genetically in worlds structured by changing institutions, languages and technologies, the field was

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

primed to recognize, study and eventually explain
psychological differences across populations. Psychologists and economists typically assume thathuman minds are like digital computers­—­that the information-processing hardware is all fixed. However,
it is increasingly clear that human brains evolved toontogenetically adapt their information processing
to the challenges that individuals face while growing up and, to a lesser degree, over the course of theirlives. For example, recent work exploring the roleof paddy rice agriculture, irrigation, ploughs, pastoralism, kin-based institutions and urbanization has
sought to explain the variation around the world in
moral psychology, conformity, holistic thinking, ingroup loyalty, normative tightness, nepotism, honour motivations, individualism, personality structure
and impersonal prosociality (trust in strangers).39 It
is not just that different institutions create different
incentives­—­as many economists have assumed­—­itis that people who grow up in different places cometo process information differently. That is, they perceive, reason, feel and think differently.40
Such psychological variation implies that identicalpolicies, laws and institutions will often have different outcomes due to underlying psychological differences. For example, in a field experiment conductedin Ghana, India and the Philippines, researchers randomly assigned workers to be paid using an individual piece rate, where they were paid according to howmuch they alone produced; a group piece rate, where
they were paid according to the average productivityof their small working group; or a daily wage, where
they were paid independent of their productivity.
Strikingly, the most profitable policy depended on
the population. In the most individualistic country inthis trio, India, both the individual and group piece
rates generated roughly a 20 percent increase in average performance, which is about what would befound in the United States using an individual piecerate. In the Philippines the performance-enhancing
effects of paying an individual piece rate were only
about 10 percent (half that of India), but the effectof the group piece rate was not any better than simply paying a daily wage. In Ghana neither piece ratescheme generated any improvement in performanceover the simple daily wage. The performance-enhancing policy depends on the cultural psychologythat people bring into the labour market.

Indeed, using data from 11,702 firms around theworld, analyses show that firms in more individualistic populations are more likely to rely on performancepay. Here, what might look like a failure to adopt themost effective management practices (that is, notusing performance pay) might instead represent anappropriate calibration to the local cultural psychology. Such results, and numerous others, suggest thatmany insights from standard economic models aremost applicable to societies with particular cultural
psychologies.41 CE offers an overarching framework
for thinking about human behaviour, psychology anddecisionmaking that seats individuals within their
historical and cultural contexts, effectively organizing and explaining the potpourri of (mostly) culturally evolved heuristics and biases identified bybehavioural scientists.

Wars, hurricanes, earthquakes,
epidemics and other shocks
Recognizing the central importance of shocks ranging
from volcanic eruptions and plagues to wars and hurricanes, cultural evolutionists have examined how such
events affect people’s psychology and shape cultural change. A growing body of research demonstrates
that shocks can powerfully affect people’s sociality­—­bonding them more closely to their communities while
also tightening their commitments to social norms.
Using a variety of natural experiments, surveys, economic games, psychological measures (from text
analysis) and naturalistic observations, researchers
have shown that shocks strengthen cooperation within
local groups, tighten social norms of all kinds, increase
people’s religious commitments and, perhaps oddly,
shift them away from a universalistic morality. In Sierra Leone, for example, those most affected by the civil
war, which had ended a decade prior, were more cooperative with their local ingroups and more religious but
less inclined to cooperate with distant strangers.42
This is important because climate shocks shapemorality and cooperation in ways that seem poorly suited to achieving the kind of global cooperationnecessary to tackle problems such as climate change.
To foster such large-scale cooperation, cultural evolution suggests there may be ways to scale up some ofthe processes that have galvanized cooperation over

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

133the past 10 millennia. First, intergroup competition,
whether among firms or countries, can be harnessedin more benign ways to increase cooperation.43 Second, our evolved psychology of interdependence andethnic psychologies can be tapped to create a pan-human sense of connection and a global identity that
expands the moral sphere.44 Third, given our powerful inclination to copy the most successful and determined prestigious nations, groups and individuals

can foster greater cooperation by leading with costly
prosocial acts that demonstrate the commitments
they are seeking from others, not by waiting to see ifothers will cooperate.45
To conclude, equipped with a theoretically richconception of human nature, the rapidly growing
field of CE offers many new perspectives and approaches on how to think about and study culturalchange, economic development and social policy.

N OT E S
1.

Wilson 2019.

26.

Bahrami-Rad 2021.

2.

Boyd 2017; Henrich 2016, 2020; Laland 2017.

27.

Henrich 2020; Turchin 2009.

3.

Gervais and others 2016; Watts and others 2015.

28.

4.

Carvalho and others 2023.

Henrich 2020; Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012; Hudson and others
2023.

5.

Enke 2019; Schulz and others 2019.

29.

Boyd and Richerson 1990, 2002, 2011; Turchin 2015.

6.

Xygalatas and others 2013.

30.

Turchin 2013; Wilson and others 2023.

7.

Galor, Özak and Sarid 2018.

31.

8.

Boyd and Richerson 1985; Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981.

Desmet, Ortuño-Ortín and Wacziarg 2017; Handley and Mathew 2020;
White, Muthukrishna and Norenzayan 2021; Wilson and others 2023.

9.

Tomasello 1999.

32.

Hirschman 1982.

10.

Chudek and others 2013.

33.

Enke 2023a.

11.

Henrich 2016.

34.

12.

Boyd and Richerson 2022.

Baldassarri 2020; Enke 2023a; Henrich and others 2005; Henrich andothers 2010; Kosfeld and Rustagi 2015; Rustagi, Engel and Kosfeld 2010;
Voors and others 2012; White, Muthukrishna and Norenzayan 2021.

13.

Henrich and Muthukrishna 2021; House 2018; House and others 2020.

35.

Schulz and others 2019.

14.

Baimel and others 2021; Cason and Mui 1998; Rand 2016; Salali, Juda andHenrich 2015.

36.

15.

Ensminger and Henrich 2014; Falk and others 2018; Henrich 2000; Henrich and others 2005; Lang and others 2019.

Atkinson and Bourrat 2011; Caicedo, Dohmen and Pondorfer 2023; Gervais and others 2016; Lang and others 2019; Purzycki and others 2016;
White and others 2019.

37.

Barro and McCleary 2003.

16.

Acemoglu and Robinson 2012.

38.

Francois, Fujiwara and van Ypersele 2018.

17.

Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012.

39.

18.

McNamara and Henrich 2017.

Atari and others 2017; Buggle 2017; Enke 2019; Falk and others 2018;
Gelfand and others 2011; Lukaszewski and others 2017; Schulz and others
2019; Talhelm 2020.

19.

Henrich 2020.

40.

Apicella, Norenzayan and Henrich 2020; Henrich and others 2022.

20.

Zeng, Aw and Feldman 2018.

41.

Bandiera, Barankay and Rasul 2011; Medvedev and others 2024.

21.

Henrich, Boyd and Richerson 2012.

42.

22.

Chaudhary and others 2015; Henrich 2020; Henrich, Boyd and Richerson
2012; Hudson and others 2023.

Bauer and others 2014; Bauer and others 2016; Gelfand and others 2011;
Henrich and others 2019; Rao and others 2011; Sinding Bentzen 2019;
Winkler 2021.

23.

Akbari, Bahrami-Rad and Kimbrough 2019; Alesina and Giuliano 2013, 2015;
Bahrami-Rad 2021; Bahrami-Rad and others 2022; Lowes 2022; Moscona,
Nunn and Robinson 2017, 2020; Schulz 2022; Schulz and others 2019.

43.

Francois, Fujiwara and van Ypersele 2018; Wilson and others 2023.

44.

Handley and Mathew 2020; Moya 2016; White, Muthukrishna and Norenzayan 2021.

24.

Bau 2021.

45.

25.

Ghosh, Hwang and Squires 2023.

Chudek and others 2012; Henrich 2009; Henrich and Gil-White 2001;
Henrich, Chudek and Boyd 2015; Kraft-Todd and others 2018.

134

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S POT L IGH T 4 . 4

The role of trust and norms in tax compliance in Africa
Odd-Helge Fjeldstad and Ingrid Hoem Sjursen, Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway

The tax system is a key formal institution with aunique role in the social contract between people
and governments, as an essential source of revenue
for governments to fund public services and programmes that benefit the community. It also provides
an important entry point to explore how people engage with institutions across different contexts andthe role of culture, beliefs, norms and perceptions indetermining issues such as compliance with policies.
This spotlight synthesizes findings from recent research on determinants of tax compliance and evasion, with a focus on developing countries.
Mobilizing domestic revenue is crucial for developing countries to achieve the Sustainable Development
Goals. However, tax evasion is a major challenge inmany countries. Research and policymakers havegenerally focused on law-based compliance and therole of formal rules and institutions such as audits
and penalties to reduce tax evasion—often referred
to as enforced compliance.1 More recently, voluntarycompliance2—informal norms and beliefs motivating
taxpayers’ compliance, particularly trust and norms—
have received more attention.3 Voluntary compliance is likely to be particularly important in countries
where enforcement capacity is weak.4 This spotlightstarts with a short theoretical background on how
a deeper understanding of trust and norms can enhance our understanding of voluntary compliance. Itthen examines how these factors vary across different
contexts, taxpayers and tax bases and how these variations affect voluntary compliance. The last section
discusses policy implications.

Deeper knowledge of trust and norms canenhance our understanding of tax compliance
Trust (a person’s belief that another person or institution will act consistently with their expectationsof positive behaviour)5 fosters social and economic

progress.6 Theoretical work emphasizes the importance of trust in the government and in the tax administration, as well as for voluntary tax compliance.
Kirchler, Hoelzl and Wahl (2008) develop a theoretical framework in which trust in tax authorities andthe power of authorities are the main determinants oftax compliance, where trust fosters voluntary compliance and power leads to enforced compliance. When
taxpayers trust the tax administration and perceive it
as benevolent and working beneficially for the common good, taxpayers may feel obliged to adhere todecisions, policies and rules, even in the absence ofpowerful administration and enforcement.7 Prichard
and others (2019) develop a conceptual framework
for tax reform and compliance that highlights four
key drivers of trust: fairness (the tax system is fairly
designed and administered), equity (burdens are equitably distributed and everyone pays their share),reciprocity (tax revenue is used for public goods andservices) and accountability (governments are accountable to taxpayers). While fairness and equity arefeatures of the tax system, reciprocity and accountability relate to broader governance issues. The equity
dimension entails that in addition to trust in the tax
authority, trust in fellow citizens may be an important
determinant of tax compliance.
Both personal and social norms have been argued
to be important determinants of tax compliance (table
S4.4.1).8 Social norms may be important to tax compliance because people care about how they are perceived
by others and the social sanctions and rewards associated with these perceptions9 or because they want tobehave as others do. Importantly, personal and social
norms can be misaligned, and people may not always
act according to their own personal norms.10 Several
studies have identified the phenomenon of pluralistic
ignorance, a situation in which most group members
personally reject a norm but believe that most others
accept it.11 When pluralistic ignorance exists, providing
information about the views of others has been shown

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

135

Table S4.4.1 Types of norms and examples
Social norm

Personal norm or
attitude(Moral norm)
What I believe isthe right thing to do(“a rule of behavior such that individuals prefer to conform to it on the condition that they believe that (a) most people in their reference
network conform to it (empirical expectation), and (b) they ought to conform to it (normative expectation)”; Bicchieri 2016, p. 35)

Descriptive norm
(Empirical expectation)

Injunctive norm
(Normative expectation)

What I believe others do

What I believe most people think I should do

Source: Bicchieri 2016; Cialdini, Kallgren and Reno 1991.

136

to change both tax behaviour12 and behaviour in otherareas.13 Thus, to understand taxpayer behaviour, it isimportant to identify and analyse the personal and social norms associated with tax compliance and to investigate the various factors that influence personal andsocial norms. Differentiating between personal and social norms is a prerequisite for designing efficient policies to enhance desirable outcomes.14 Empirically, alarge literature of field and lab experiments shows that
personal and social norms influence each other andthat both motivate behaviour but that social norms affect behaviour more than personal norms do.15

Prichard and others (2019) is an important driver oftrust. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between voluntary compliance and the perceived social norm for tax compliance, as well as satisfaction
with provision of public services.21 However, there arealso substantial differences in correlates of voluntarycompliance among Kenya, United Republic of Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa.22 While these studies
provide interesting insights into correlates of voluntary compliance, they do not offer causal evidence or
explanations for the mechanisms through which thedeterminants affect voluntary compliance.

Trust and norms can vary across different
contexts and affect tax compliance

The weight of history in shaping
trust and norms today

Tax compliance is challenging to measure because
individuals are typically trying to hide noncompliant
behaviour and attitudes.16 Empirical investigations ofdeterminants of voluntary compliance have commonly used survey questions from large databases, such as
Afrobarometer and the World Values Survey, asking
respondents about their views of whether not paying
tax is wrong and punishable/justifiable or whether the
tax authority has the right to make people pay taxes(figure S4.4.1).17 In all countries the average respondent thinks that not paying taxes on income is at least“wrong, but understandable” and is closer to agreeing
than disagreeing with the statement that the tax authority always has the right to make people pay taxes—
but there is substantial variation across countries.
Studies based on such survey measures show thatwithin countries voluntary compliance is positively
correlated with a stronger feeling of national identity,18 trust in the tax authority19 and perceived fairness
in how the government treats the respondent’s own
ethnic group,20 which according to the framework of

To better understand the causal mechanisms behindvariations in voluntary compliance, one strand of theliterature studies the effect of historical roots and cultural heritage on voluntary tax compliance.23 Cultural
heritage is passed on from one generation to the next
and coupled with the country or ethnic group of origin. And it is well documented that it can affect people’s trust in others—for instance, trust in people fromthe same ethnic group or (dis)trust in people fromother ethnic groups, as well as trust in public institutions.24 For instance, evidence suggests that trust is
an important causal mechanism in the negative relationship between economic development today inparts of Africa and the slave trade: individuals who
belong to ethnic groups that were more exposed toslave trade are less trusting in their relatives, neighbours, others of the same ethnicity and local government.25 Moreover, the individual variation in trustin public institutions and neighbourhood caused bydifferential exposure to the slave trade also explainsvariations in voluntary tax compliance in several

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure S4.4.1 Most people in African countries think that not paying taxes on income is at least “wrong, but
understandable” and are closer to agreeing than to disagreeing that the tax authority always has the right to makepeople pay taxes
Not paying the taxes people oweon their income is...
Mali
Niger
Ghana
Cameroon
Sierra Leone
BurundiLiberia
Eswatini (Kingdom of)
SenegalSouth Africa
Tanzania (United Republic of)GuineaCôte d’Ivoire
Mauritius
Madagascar
Namibia
Tunisia
Malawi
ZambiaBotswana
Gabon
Egypt
Kenya
Benin
Togo
MoroccoLesothoBurkina Faso
Mozambique
Nigeria
Zimbabwe
UgandaAlgeria
Sao Tome and Principe
Sudan
Cabo Verde

The tax authority always has the rightto make people pay taxes...
Sierra Leone
Malawi
Tunisia
Lesotho
Mali
Ghana
Niger
SenegalLiberia
Botswana
Zimbabwe
South Africa
Kenya
Namibia
UgandaEswatini (Kingdom of)ZambiaGuineaCameroon
Gabon
Tanzania (United Republic of)
Burkina Faso
BurundiMadagascar
Sao Tome and Principe
Mozambique
Morocco
Mauritius
Egypt
Côte d’Ivoire
Nigeria
Sudan
AlgeriaTogo
Benin
Cabo Verde

Not wrong at all

Wrong, but
understandable

Wrongand punishable

Strongly Disagree
disagree

Neither Agreeagree
nor disagree

Strongly
agree

Note: The survey question for the left figure was “Please tell me whether the following is not wrong at all; wrong, but understandable; or wrong and punishable:
Not paying the taxes they owe on their income,” and the survey question for the right figure was “Please tell me whether you disagree or agree: The tax department always has the right to make people pay taxes.’’
Source: Based on the results of Afrobarometer Round 6, 2014/2015 (https://www.afrobarometer.org/, accessed 25 January 2024).

countries: more trusting individuals have a higher
voluntary compliance.26
A study in Uganda finds that history also plays arole in that people in historically centralized partsof Uganda have mistrust towards the central government and public institutions but may be willingto follow rules and pay taxes when they live in a setting with higher interpersonal trust.27 Trust affects
voluntary tax compliance, and trust is affected bygroup heterogeneity shaped by history. Thus, historical events and organization of societies continue toshape present voluntary tax compliance through trustand social norms. This finding relates to results in the

broader literature in institutional economics that history can matter for present-day outcomes throughthe evolution and persistence of early institutions.28

How trust and norms inform
challenges with tax compliance
Opportunities for tax evasion by
self-employed individuals
Self-employed professionals have more opportunities than salaried workers to minimize their reported

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

137

incomes—because more of their income is self-reported as opposed to reported by a third party29—andare more likely to take advantage of these opportunities.30 Opportunities for tax evasion may affectpeople’s voluntary tax compliance. Research showsthat self-employed individuals have less favourable
views on taxes and the tax authorities than other taxpayers.31 Tax evasion is also found to be high among
many self-employed individuals.32
Taxing the rich: Noble objectives,
unrealistic expectations?
Some studies argue that “the weakness of taxes on thewealthy not only affects revenue but also risks undermining broader trust in the tax system and weakening

the social contract.”33 Thus, it is argued, “taxing thewealthy more effectively is critical not only to increasing revenue, but also to building trust in the tax system,
thereby unlocking more sustained political support for
taxation and the achievement of longer-term gains.”
However, redistribution through taxation is not a salient election issue in most African countries,34 nor is it astrong priority of their citizens.35 In most countries theaverage response to the Afrobarometer survey question
on the amount of taxes that rich people are required to
pay is closer to “about the right amount” than to “toolittle,” and while the average respondent in all countries is closer to agreeing than disagreeing with thestatement that rich people should be taxed at a higher
rate to help poor people, the support for the statement
is relatively weak in many countries (figure S4.4.2).

Figure S4.4.2 Redistribution through taxation is not a salient election issue in most African countries, nor is it a strong
priority of their citizens
Amount of taxes paid by rich people

Tunisia
SenegalGabon
Mauritius
Malawi
Morocco
Ghana
ZambiaKenya
Mali
Côte d’Ivoire
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Cabo Verde
EthiopiaEswatini (Kingdom of)Malawi
UgandaZambiaTanzania (United Republic of)Mozambique
Ethiopia
GambiaGuineaLesotho
Zimbabwe
Benin
South Africa
Cabo Verde
Togo
Sudan
Burkina Faso
Cameroon
Niger
Namibia
Mali
Côte d’Ivoire
Botswana
AngolaSierra Leone
Kenya
Ghana
Nigeria
MoroccoLiberia
SenegalGabon
Tunisia
Mauritius
Far too little

It is fair to tax rich people at a higher tax rate

Tanzania (United Republic of)South Africa
Togo
GuineaNigeria
UgandaBotswana
LesothoMozambique
Benin
Sierra Leone
Eswatini (Kingdom of)
Namibia
Sudan
Liberia
GambiaNiger
AngolaZimbabwe
Too little

About theright amount

Strongly
disagreeDisagree Neither agree
nor disagree

Agree

Note: The survey question for the figure on the left was “Do you think that the amount of taxes that rich people in [COUNTRY] are required to pay is too little, toomuch, or about the right amount?” and the survey question for the figure on the right was “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: It is fair to tax
rich people at a higher rate than ordinary people in order to help pay for government programmes to benefit the poor.”
Source: Based on the results of Afrobarometer Round 8, 2019/2021 (https://www.afrobarometer.org/, accessed 25 January 2024).

138

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Redistributive coalition building in ethnically diverse
societies may be especially difficult,36 so that any push
for a wider redistributive agenda to benefit the poortends to be weak.37 While we sympathize with the argument that “the time has come to tax the rich,” the focus
of many African governments is to increase revenue by
broadening the tax base to incorporate larger segments
of individuals and firms in the tax net. The wealthyelites will probably be affected little by these reforms.
This is reflected in what Mick Moore refers to as tax administrations’ obsession to register new tax taxpayers,
the majority of which are small-scale businesses andpoor individuals.38 This approach is associated with theidea that the major source of uncollected revenue in
Sub-Saharan Africa is the informal sector.39 A policy oftaxing the very rich is not easy to implement.40
Corporate taxpayers: Trust anda predictable tax system
Medium and large firms account for most of the tax
revenue in many low- and lower-middle-income
countries. Their voluntary compliance is likely to be
influenced by different factors than individuals andsmall firms and needs to be conceptualized differently.41 Voluntary compliance by firms is likely to be driven by self-interest to a larger extent than voluntarycompliance by individuals.42 Predictability is a criticalconcern of corporate taxpayers and enhances trust
in a way that can allow firms to properly budget andmake realistic plans for the future.43 It also ensuresthat firms will be treated like their competitors. Questions about fairness and equity are often importantfor corporations because they affect market competition, profitability and the predictability of their operations.44 For instance, are other firms in the same sector
bearing equivalent tax burdens? Firms also are more
likely to be compliant when they believe the government is funding services and activities that benefit
them and when they have a voice in shaping thosedecisions.45 Thus, improving the predictability andfairness of tax enforcement can foster voluntary compliance and support for reform for corporations.46
Taxing the informal sector
A large share of economic activity in poor countries
takes place in the informal sector, which is hard totax.47 Until recently, tax administrations tended togive it little priority because returns to effort may be
low in cash terms, and collection is likely to be difficult. From the economic and administrative perspectives, it makes sense not to tax multitudes of poor
people. The value-added tax system generally exempts basic goods that are consumed heavily by poor
people, and the income tax code generally excludes
individuals and entities with incomes below a certain
threshold. However, in recent years several national
revenue agencies have introduced special presumptive taxes directed at the informal economy that are
based on workers’ presumed rather than actual income, given the type of work they perform.48
A wider tax net is not always a good thing, but thepossibility that tax reforms are driven by a calculusthat emphasizes the advantages of excluding marginal payers must be a cause of concern.49 This would
be less of a problem if the actual tax burdens in poor
countries were fairly and effectively distributed, butthey are not. In particular, they often fall heavily on asmall number of registered, formal companies.
Evidence suggests that the relationship between
firm size and evasion is negative or U-shaped, implying that small firms are more likely to evade taxation.50 This evasion may lead to unfair competition,
which can undermine trust and negatively affect thevoluntary tax compliance of medium firms.51 Thus,
one argument for improving taxation of small andmedium enterprises is that it is important for ensuring equity and improving voluntary compliance. It
thus makes sense to question the arguments for excluding smaller taxpayers from the tax net on pure efficiency grounds and to explore the potential politicaland revenue advantages of widening that net, while
also carefully considering the administrative implications of doing so.

Policy levers to address tax evasion:
Beyond formal laws and regulations
Findings from the research reviewed above show that
history, ethnic diversity and how tax revenue is spent
may substantially affect people’s voluntary tax compliance and trust in government and other citizens.
Voluntary tax compliance is also likely to differ between segments of taxpayers (for example, between

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action139

individuals and businesses), between different taxes(for example, between direct and indirect taxes) andin how taxes are enforced. A general conclusion fromthis literature is that policies aiming to improve attitudes towards taxes in Africa should pay attention
to strengthening the general environment of trust.52
This is linked to a political economy approach thattakes the historical, cultural and political contexts
seriously, combined with conventional economic
thinking.53 Thus, it is important to move away froma purely technocratic approach when addressing tax
evasion. Advice on tax policy, including methods ofauditing and better tax design are valuable but must
be located in a wider and case-by-case context, especially given the characteristics of many Africancountries.
A first step to addressing deep-rooted tax evasion
norms is understanding how things actually function in the specific context, independently of how wewould expect the tax system to perform according togood governance. This calls for more robust analysis
of country and local contexts and institutions, particularly trust in tax authorities and social norms fortax compliance. Improving voluntary tax compliancefurthermore requires thoroughly analysing different
segments of taxpayers and revenue administrations,as well as their environment, to understand key players’ norms and incentives.
This analysis leads to a two-pronged approach toreform. The first prong relates to developing policy
instruments that are directed at both the incentives
and opportunities for evasion. Unless taxpayers recognize that the penalties for being caught are much
more severe than the potential gains, they will continue to take risk evading taxes. This, of course, requires enforcing the rules, which depends on thewillingness at the top to reduce tax evasion. The
second prong must go beyond legal and regulatory reform to address the root causes of tax evasion.
Many efforts to adopt stricter rules for tax administration have failed because informal practices havecontinued. Changing social norms and mindsets ismuch more difficult than bringing in new regulations in part because social norms are deep rooted.
Successful reforms are not achieved overnight. Reformers must keep this in mind and not be discouraged when they face challenges in implementing
their reforms.
140

Social norms can be persistent across generations,
economic development and political regimes.54 But
when they change, it can happen quickly—for instance, when new public information becomes available.55 Behavioural tipping points—that is, whenenough people have strong attitudes against an existing social norm (or towards a new one)—are decisive for norm change. In situations where the social
norms for tax compliance are misperceived (underestimated), providing factual information about others’
views may enhance compliance.56
Education can play a role when designed to help
taxpayers understand the importance of paying taxes
and how to do so. A wide range of taxpayer outreachand education activities exist across countries.57 For
instance, the Tanzania Revenue Authority is working
with secondary schools to mainstream tax education
into the curriculum. Government taxpayer educationand outreach programmes generally often appeal
to state-building narratives. Such programmes arevaluable, but they must move beyond the frequentemphasis on why people should pay taxes towards
emphasizing who pays taxes, how to pay them andwhat taxpayers receive in return.58
An essential component of building trust is thegovernment’s ability to demonstrate that tax revenue results in public services and broader benefits
for taxpayers.59 When governments can demonstrate
those connections, it is possible to build meaningful
popular support for more effective taxation and compliance.60 This, combined with more transparent andpredictable tax systems, is likely to result in morepositive attitudes towards taxation in Africa and popular support for more effective taxation.
Just as improved service delivery is likely to be critical to encouraging voluntary compliance, so too isthere an opportunity for more sustained investment
in building trust with taxpayers.61 A starting point forsuch trust building lies in improving the basic fairnessof tax systems. Although discussions of building voluntary tax compliance often centre on improving theprovision of public services, improvements in fairness may be important.62 Such improvements are alsomuch more directly under the control of tax administrations, which may be pursuing reform and seeking
to build voluntary or quasi-voluntary compliance. Perceived corruption in tax authorities remains a major
barrier to improving trust and voluntary compliance.63

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

N OT E S
1.

Early research includes Allingham and Sandmo (1972); for a recent review,see Slemrod (2019).

33.

Dom and others 2022, p. 60.

34.

Bleck and Van de Walle 2019.

35.

Except, perhaps, in Ghana (Bleck and Van de Walle 2019). Inequality per
se is not mentioned as a priority of citizens in a large recent Afrobarometer survey of 34 African countries (Coulibaly, Silwé and Logan 2018). Poor
access to public services is a major concern, however—one that clearly
has equity implications.

2.

A related term for voluntary compliance is “tax morale.” We prefer “voluntary compliance” because it better captures aspects of taxpayer motivation that we consider important.

3.

Besley 2020; Besley, Jensen and Persson 2023; Luttmer and Singhal
2014; Prichard and others 2019.

4.

Kirchler, Hoelzl and Wahl 2008.

36.

Mazrui 2008.

5.

OECD 2017.

37.

Bolch, Ceriani and López-Calva 2022.

6.

Algan and Cahuc 2014.

38.

Moore 2023.

7.

Kirchler, Hoelzl and Wahl 2008.

39.

8.

Kirchler, Hoelzl and Wahl 2008.

9.

Besley, Jensen and Persson 2023; Luttmer and Singhal 2014.

Moore 2023. For instance, in a survey of 26 national tax administrations
for the 2018 African Tax Outlook, 15 reported one or more special programmes or initiatives to deal with the informal sector (ATAF 2018). By
contrast, only 4 had special sections for high-net-worth individuals.

10.

Köbis, Jackson and Carter 2020; Onu 2016.

40.

Harrington 2016.

11.

Miller and McFarland 1987.

41.

12.

Wenzel 2005.

Alm and McClellan 2012; OECD 2019; Prichard and others 2019; Slemrod
2019.

13.

Bursztyn, González and Yanagizawa-Drott 2020.

42.

Prichard and others 2019.

14.

Bursztyn and Jensen 2017; Hallsworth and others 2017.

43.

Campos, Lien and Pradhan 1999; World Bank 2018.

15.

Bicchieri 2016. In the literature on tax compliance, see, for instance,­Antinyan and Asatryan (2020), Bott and others (2020), d’Adda and others (2020), Dwenger and others (2016), Hallsworth and others (2017) and
Slemrod (2019).

44.

Alm and McClellan 2012; OECD 2019; Prichard and others 2019.

45.

Prichard 2015.

46.

Dom and others 2022.

47.

Bird and Wallace, 2003. The concept the informal sector is disputed.
When the term is used in relation to taxes in Africa, it generally refers
to unregistered, small-scale economic operators (Moore 2023). The sizeof the informal economy is difficult to estimate. Estimates for low- andmiddle-income countries suggest that informality accounts for 30–70
percent of GDP and 20–80 percent of the labour force (Ulyssea 2020;
Ulyssea, Bobba and Gadenne 2023). Estimates from West Africa suggestthat more than 80 percent of total employment is informal and up to 60
percent of GDP is produced by informal activities (Benjamin, Mbaye andDiop 2012).

48.

Dube and Casale 2016; Joshi, Prichard and Heady 2014; van den
Boogaard, Prichard and Jibao 2018.

49.

Ali, Fjeldstad and Sjursen 2014; Fjeldstad and Moore 2008.

50.

Abdixhiku and others 2017; Cowell 2003; Hanlon, Mills and Slemrod
2007; Slemrod 2004.

51.

Torgler and Schneider 2007.

52.

Kouamé 2021.

53.

Besley and Mueller 2021.

54.

Jackson and Köbis 2018.

55.

UNDP 2019.

56.

Wenzel 2005.

57.

Dom and others 2022.

58.

Dom and others 2022.

59.

Ali, Fjeldstad and Sjursen 2014; Bird 2011.

60.

Dom and others 2022; Sanogo 2019.

61.

Dom and others 2022.

62.

Kogler, Muehlbacher and Kirchler 2015.

63.

Aiko and Logan 2014; Fjeldstad 2006.

16.

Ali, Fjeldstad and Sjursen 2014.

17.

See Prichard (2022) for an overview of survey questions used in crosscountry studies on voluntary compliance and a discussion of the weaknesses and limitations of these measures. Afrobarometer Round 6 waschosen because it is the most recent survey that includes both of thequestions reported in the figure.

18.

Besley and Mueller 2021; Blimpo and others 2018.

19.

Besley and Mueller 2021.

20.

Ali, Fjeldstad and Sjursen 2014; Sacks 2012.

21.

Ali, Fjeldstad and Sjursen 2014; Blimpo and others 2018.

22.

Ali, Fjeldstad and Sjursen 2014. See Fjeldstad, Schulz-Herzenberg andHoem Sjursen (2012) for a broader review of correlates of voluntary tax
compliance.

23.

See Nunn (2020) for a review of the research on the historical roots ofeconomic development more broadly.

24.

Dinesen 2011; Kouamé 2021; Uslaner 2008; Woolcock and Narayan 2000.

25.

Nunn 2008; Nunn and Wantchekon 2011.

26.

Kouamé 2021.

27.

Ali and Fjeldstad 2023. A state’s organized power to uphold authority implies that it can uniformly apply policies throughout a given territory, suchas extracting labour, enforcing the law and demanding taxes (Schraeder
2000).

28.

Nunn 2009.

29.

Dom and others 2022; Kleven and others 2011.

30.

Engström and Holmlund 2009; Saez 2010.

31.

Kogler and Kirchler 2020.

32.

Chetty, Friedman and Saez 2013.

Chapter 4 — Examining how to enhance collective action

141

CHAPTER
5Expanding agency
for collective action

PA RT II — REIMAG IN IN G CO O PERATION BY EXPAND ING AGENCY AND EAS ING P OLAR IZATION

143

CHAPTER 5

Expanding agency for collective action

Enhancing human development—including agency—
expands possibilities for people to act as “agents
who can do effective things.” So, how best to expand
agency to foster collective action to address global
challenges?
Narrowing agency gaps can support establishing andpursuing common goals, such as providing global
public goods, even when differences in preferences,beliefs and interests persist. Expanding agency canthus enhance collective action. Institutions can linkhuman agency and collective action at scale by being
people-centred, co-owned and future-oriented.

144

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

The toll of mismanaged global interdependence onhuman development (chapter 1) reflects inadequate
or slow collective action on global challenges ranging
from climate change to pandemics. Not for a lack ofknowledge on what to do. Technologies to power anenergy transition or vaccines to save lives either are
already in place or have been developed quickly­—­but
our ability to act collectively at scale is falling short(chapter 2).
Institutions and behaviour are intimately interlinked (chapter 4). Policy has long focused on institutional design and interventions premised ona set of fixed and universal assumptions abouthuman behaviour, downplaying broader social contexts and how they change over time. Expanding
assumptions about human behaviour with insightsfrom behavioural science and the role of culture canwiden the set of options to enhance collective action to provide global public goods (chapter 4). To
do so, it is critical to recognize the role of humanagency: people’s ability to hold values, set goals andmake commitments that may, or may not, advancetheir wellbeing.1
Enhancing human development­—­including agency­—­expands possibilities for people to act as “agents
who can do effective things.”2 So how to expand
agency to foster collective action to address global
challenges?
The question motivates this chapter. Advances in wellbeing can support agency­— ­k nowledge,
health and material means enhance the possibilities for people to act as agents­— ­but the relationship is far from automatic. Indeed, the chapter
documents agency gaps­— ­p eople’s inability to be,
or to believe they can be, agents for change­— ­that
persist or are widening, even as the world is reaching peak levels of income, as well as of health andeducation outcomes, along with unprecedented
technological achievements. The focus is on how
agency gaps hinder collective action and how they
are connected with, for example, intensified perceptions of insecurity and distress in parallel withmassive increases in standards of living. For example, only about half of people in the world today feelthey have high control over their own lives, a proxy
for agency. And the share of people feeling in control drops even more when it comes to influencing
collective decisionmaking, since only 31 percent ofpeople feel they have a say in the decisions of theirgovernment.3
These agency gaps parallel deficits in the collective action needed to address shared challenges ona shared planet. Mismanagement of global interdependence may in turn further erode human development (chapter 1) and open space for polarization,
resulting in gridlock on collective action (chapter 2).
To break free from this gridlock, the chapter explores
how narrowing agency gaps can support establishingand pursuing common goals, such as providing global public goods, even when differences in preferences, beliefs and interests persist. In this way it argues
that narrowing agency gaps can enhance collective action. It further argues that expanding agency
needs to be a complementary policy objective alongside advancing wellbeing achievements and that
institutions can link human agency and collective action at scale by being people-­centred, co-­owned andfuture-­oriented.

How agency gaps hinder collective action
Despite the dip in Human Development Index (HDI)
values in 2020–2021 and the unequal recovery sincethen (chapter 1), there has been notable progress inthe wellbeing aspects of human development: in expanding the achievements and freedoms to live a
better life. At the same time, the agency aspects ofhuman development4­—­people’s ability to hold values, set goals and make commitments,5 which imply
the ability to lead a life with purpose­—­have been relatively neglected as policymaking objectives, particularly those required to pursue collective outcomes.6
Agency enhances people’s capabilities and is positively correlated with mental wellbeing.7 It is also key
to transforming our world towards sustainability andequity, an aspiration codified in the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development.8

Agency gaps are opening at multiple levels,“
limiting people’s ability to act as agentsof change to support collective action

Agency gaps are opening at multiple levels, limiting
people’s ability to act as agents of change to support collective action. It is curtailed by inequalities and power
imbalances that hinder collective decisionmaking.9

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

145

Shortcomings in collective action: Limits tocooperation, despite unprecedented coordination
Interdependence stems in part from human ultrasociality,10 reflected in coordinated actions involving individuals around the world. Markets, which
involve interactions between participants who,
for the most part, may never meet, have become
globalized (chapter 2). Governments have implemented extensive social insurance programmes,with 3.7 billion people covered by at least one social protection benefit.11 Education systems provide
schooling for 1.6 billion children worldwide.12 Whilestill insufficient, these numbers represent massive
achievements.
Multilateral institutions, particularly the United
Nations, strive to uphold human rights, advance development and promote peace. The United Nations
convenes parties to international treaties, enabling
agreements such as the establishment of a loss anddamage fund at the 28th meeting of the Conferenceof the Parties to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change, from which morethan 3 billion people are set to benefit.13 Civil society has rallied behind the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,14 bolstered by social movementsthat have expanded the realm of possibilities,
championing the rights of women; individuals
who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
queer, intersex or other sexuality minority; Indigenous peoples; individuals living with disabilities;
and more. Social networks facilitate the instantaneous exchange of information among some 5.4 billion internet users.15
Despite these achievements, which often reflect
advances in addressing coordination challenges, international collective action is falling short. For instance, in the case of climate change, the following
shortcomings reflect less progress with cooperation:• Markets fail to account for externalities, but someexternalities are now at planetary scale. For example, carbon prices hugely undervalue the costs
associated with greenhouse gas emissions,16 exacerbating global inequalities.17• Governments have mobilized substantial investment to facilitate the energy transition­— ­but not
at the scale required. In 2023 governments allocated an estimated $1.34 trillion for clean energy146

investment, a 25 percent increase since 2021.18
But this effort pales next to subsidies to fossil
fuels: $7 trillion in 2022, up from $4.5 trillion in2015 (when the Paris Agreement was adopted).19
Increased political polarization, which affects
more than two of every three countries, makes
government action even more difficult (chapter
6). 20 Financing constraints are another impediment to government action, exacerbated by tax
avoidance and evasion: globally, multinationals
have shifted 36 percent of their profits to tax
havens.21• Multilateral arrangements have not marshalled
the pooling of resources required to meet theaspirations of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development and the Paris Agreement. The annual target of $100 billion in finance to support the
mitigation of climate change in low- and middle-­
income countries has been missed, even though it
represents just 0.1 percent of the global economy(about $100 trillion).22 And the loss and damage
fund has received annual pledges totalling morethan $600 million, but the annual loss and damage
associated with climate change are estimated to beas high as $400 billion a year.23• Civil society has expanded but is also facing headwinds.24 When people do mobilize, they are often
constrained in their efforts to occupy civic spaceand exercise their rights.25 In several countries environmental activists face violent crackdowns andpersecution; nearly 2,000 environmental activists
were killed between 2012 and 2022.26

Agency gaps are both a cause and an effect“of the mismanagement of interdependence,in a vicious cycle where shortcomings incollective action to deal with interdependence
lead to costly losses in people’s lives

Agency gaps are undermining collective action
Agency gaps are both a cause and an effect of the mismanagement of interdependence, in a vicious cycle
where shortcomings in collective action to deal withinterdependence lead to costly losses in people’s
lives (chapter 1), as well as to feelings of unsettledness27 and human insecurity. Human insecurity fuels

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

polarization, with many people gravitating towards
populism (chapter 2).28 The protectionist stance often
associated with populism29 further complicates collective action in addressing global challenges.
The consequences of this vicious cycle affect democratic norms and practices, as reflected in the decline in indicators tracking people’s ability to shapecollective outcomes (chapter 1).30
The erosion of democratic norms and practices is
associated not so much with a crisis of support for
democracy as an ideal but with a crisis in institutions
perceived as not delivering on that ideal.31 There isan emerging democracy paradox: nearly 9 in 10 people believe that democracy is a fundamental pillar ofpolitical systems. But support for leaders who may

bypass the fundamental rules of the democratic process has markedly increased (figure 5.1). Today, morethan half of those polled express support for suchleaders.
People are questioning some core principles ofcollective action. The increase in support for leaders
who might undermine democratic norms and practices has been accompanied by a rise in preferences formilitary rule, which today reaches 39 percent of the
population (figure 5.2).32 This apparent paradox (commitment to democracy along with increasing support
for leaders who undermine it) mirrors the gridlockin adjusting current institutions­—­not fit for purpose
amid shifting patterns of interdependence­—­to theevolving demands from people around the world.

Figure 5.1 The democracy paradox? Unwavering support for democracy along with increasing support forleaders who may undermine it
Percent of population that thinks positively
about leaders who may undermine democracy
60
Majority of population thinks
positively about democracy
but also about leaders who may undermine it
2017–202250
2010–2014

2005–200940

1994–1998
1999–2004
Majority of population thinks
positively about democracy
and leaders who do not undermine it

30
40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Percent of population that thinks positively about having a democratic system
Note: Data are population-­weighted averages for a panel of countries representing 76 percent of the global population. Percent of population on thevertical axis refers to people who responded that having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections is “very good”
or “fairly good.” Percent of population on the horizontal axis refers to people who responded that having a democratic political system is “very good”
or “fairly good.”
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from multiple waves of the World Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

1 47

Figure 5.2 Large and increasing shares of the population
support leaders who may bypass democratic norms andpractices, 1994–2022
Percent of population
Supporting leaders who
may undermine democracy

55

45

35
Supporting army rule
25

1994–
1998

1999–
2004

2005–
2009

2010–
2014

2017–
2022

Note: Data are population-­weighted averages of a balanced panel of countries representing 76 percent of the global population. Percent of population
supporting leaders who may undermine democracy refers to people who responded that having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections is “very good” or “fairly good.” Percent of population
supporting army rule refers to people who responded that having an army ruleis “very good” or “fairly good.”
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from multiple
waves of the World Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

Narrowing agency gaps can strengthen andlegitimize institutions that enhance collective action
Narrowing agency gaps can enhance collective outcomes by improving the perceived legitimacy of institutions (see box 4.7 in chapter 4). Narrowing agency
gaps allows people to have more opportunities toparticipate in public reasoning and decisionmaking
through institutions they have confidence in. That
confidence is in turn rooted in people’s beliefs that
institutions deliver on the collective action outcomes
they are meant to support. Low confidence in institutions reflects shortcomings in delivering on thosecollective action outcomes. While economic shocks(such as increased unemployment) do not affect generalized trust or the belief that people are helpful,they are strongly associated with a decline in trust
in institutions such as national parliaments (including the European Parliament in countries that are
members of the European Union) and in politicians.
Trust in the United Nations is less affected, suggesting a strong association between negative economic shocks and a decline in trust in institutions and148

individuals that people expect to more directly lookafter the common interest (figure 5.3).
Based on this reasoning, we assess agency gaps
using two proxy variables. First, agency gaps aremeasured by the percentage of people who reporthaving no or limited control over their lives. Second,agency gaps are measured as the percentage of people who report that their voices are not consideredin the political system.33 About half the world’s people report not being in control of their own lives. And
the agency gap in influencing collective outcomes ismuch higher, with more than two-­thirds of people
worldwide perceiving that they have little influencein the decisions of their government (figure 5.4).34
The less that people feel their voice is heard ingovernment, the less confidence they have in government, regardless of how corrupt they perceive authorities to be (figure 5.5). In turn, higher perceptionsof corruption are associated with reduced confidence
in government. So, while addressing corruption is central to enhancing confidence in government (as widely recognized), confidence in government can also be
increased at each level of perceived corruption by giving people more agency (as measured by their perception of having voice in government decisions).35

Narrowing agency gaps tofoster collective action
Narrowing agency gaps can enhance collective action, particularly when cooperation is required. Indeed, agency opens space for cooperation beyond
self-­interest.36 If “the concern for others directly affects one’s own welfare,”37 it pertains to advancing
one’s own wellbeing. But when cooperation follows
from commitments that go beyond advancing one’s
own wellbeing,38 we are in the realm of agency.39
When agency includes the pursuit of commitments associated with collective outcomes, narrowing agency gaps can foster cooperation, but it isimportant to understand the mechanisms that may
facilitate or hinder that link. Over the past several
decades the association between agency (as measured by the belief that one is in control of one’s life)and generalized trust (important for cooperation)
has weakened; among people reporting high levelsof control over their lives, there has been a large increase in those who do not trust others. A third of the

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure 5.3 Economic shocks are associated with lower trust in institutions­—­but the relationship is weaker fortrust in the United Nations and in one another

Belief that people are helpful

Trust in other people
Difference in level of trust

Difference in belief

0.3

0.3

0.2

0.2

0.1

0.1

0

0

–0.1

–0.1
–10

0

10

–10

0

10

Difference in unemployment rate
(percentage points)

Difference in unemployment rate
(percentage points)

Trust in national parliaments

Trust in politicians

Difference in level of trust

Difference in level of trust

0.1

0

0

–0.1

–0.1
–0.2

–0.2

–0.3

–0.3
–10

0

10

–10

0

10

Difference in unemployment rate
(percentage points)

Difference in unemployment rate
(percentage points)

Trust in European Parliament

Trust in the United Nations
Difference in level of trust

Difference in level of trust
0.1

0

0
–0.1

–0.1

–0.2

–0.2

–0.3
–0.4
–10

0

–0.3

10

–10

North

0

10

Difference in unemployment rate
(percentage points)

Difference in unemployment rate
(percentage points)
South

CenterEast

Note: Each figure plots subnational regions of 24 European countries at the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics level of aggregation. Levelsof trust are based on responses to the European Social Survey. Differences are between observations pooled before the European debt crisis (2004,
2006 and 2008) and after the crisis (2010, 2012 and 2014).
Source: Algan and others 2017.

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

149

Figure 5.4 Agency gaps in collective action are higher than those in control over one’s own life

Control over own life
5 in 10 or about half the world’s people report not being in control of their own lives

Voice in political system
7 in 10 or 68 percent of people report that they have little influencein the decisions of their government

Note: Agency is the ability of people to act as agents who can do effective things based on their commitments (Sen 2013). It is proxied by two indicators: the share of the population that reported feeling in control over their lives (measured on a scale of 1–10, where 1–3 indicates an acute agency
gap, 4–7 indicates a moderate agency gap and 8–10 indicates no agency gap) and the share of the population that reported feeling that their voice isheard in the political system (those who responded “A great deal” or “A lot”). Data are computed using microdata and equal weights across countries.
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7 (2017–2022) of the World Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

Figure 5.5 Reducing corruption increases confidence in government but so does narrowing agency gaps
Confidence in government(percent of people in each category)80

Involvementof authorities
in corruption:

60

None

40

Few

20

Most
All

0

A great deal

A lot

Some

Very little

Not at all

Voice in the political system (proxy for agency gap)
Note: Computed using microdata and equal weights across countries. Confidence in the national government implies reporting “a great deal” or“quite a lot” of confidence (other options: “not very much” or “none at all”). Voice in institution is captured by responses to the question, “How much
would you say the political system in your country allows people like you to have a say in what the government does?” Perception of corruption is
captured by responses to the question, among state authorities, “How many do you believe are involved in corruption?”
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7 of the World Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

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HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

global population reports control over their lives andno trust (figure 5.6). In turn, the share of the world’s
people with a high level of agency and trust in othershas declined substantially.
Thus, it matters to understand the factors that may
account for the link between agency gaps and collective action. Factors that may mediate the relationshipbetween narrowing agency gaps and prospects forcooperation include inequalities, power imbalances, human insecurity, a lack of space for deliberationand social norms biased against cooperation. Overcoming these challenges can make narrowing agency
gaps more likely to enhance cooperation.40

Inequalities and power imbalances shape agency
Inequalities affect different agency gaps. There is asteep decline in the share of people reporting having very low control over their lives for the bottom
50 percent of the income distribution (figure 5.7).
That is, agency increases as income grows for the bottom 50 percent of the distribution. At the very bottom
lack of agency is particularly heightened (agency gaps

are three times greater among people in the lowest
income decile than in decile 6 and above). So, basic
capabilities, such as being healthy or acquiring basic
writing and numeracy skills, may be a binding constraint for agency (in addition to the well-­establishedimplications of people being deprived in wellbeing).41
Moreover, the share of people reporting having very
high control over their lives is low and fairly equal
for the bottom 50 percent of the population but rises
with income for deciles 6 and above. Thus, income
inequalities, which often intersect and are associatedwith other inequalities in human development, shapeagency.
In turn, inequalities in both income and education are associated with inequalities in having aninterest in politics, linking inequalities and processes that matter to shape collective action outcomes.
The lower the income, the less interested people
are in politics and the more likely they are to reportnever voting (figure 5.8). The relationship with education inequalities is even steeper: the lower the education level, the lower the interest in politics andthe higher the likelihood of reporting never voting(figure 5.9).

Figure 5.6 Agency in control over one’s own life and trust
Percent of population that reports being
in high control over one’s own life and…
…lacking trust in others

35
30
25
20

…having trust in others
15
10
5
0
1989–1993

1994–1998

1999–2004

2005–20092010–20142017–2022

Note: Data are population-weighted averages for a balanced planel of countries representing 76 percent of the global population. Agency in control
over one’s own life is measured by those reporting high control (8–10 on a 1–10 scale). Trust in others is measured using responses to the question,“Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?” Figures are basedon individual-level data, intersecting both conditions (agency in control over one’s own life and trust or no trust in others).
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from the World Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

1 51

Figure 5.7 The perception of agency (control over one’s own life) is shaped by income
No agency gap(in control over own life, percent of people in each income decile)

Acute agency gap

80

18

12
60
6

40

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

0

Income decile (within countries)
Note: Computed using microdata and equal weights across countries. No agency gap measures the share of the population reporting feeling incontrol over their lives (options 8–10 on a 1–10 scale). Acute agency gap measures the share of the population reporting feeling no or very low control
over their lives (options 1–3 on a 1–10 scale).
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7 of the World Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

Figure 5.8 The higher the income, the more likely people
are to report being interested in politics and voting

Figure 5.9 The higher the education level, the more likely
people are to report being interested in politics and voting

Never vote (percent of people)

Never vote (percent of people)

18

18

16

16

Low education

Low income
14

14Medium income

1212High income

10
8
6

10
Upper education

8

35

40

45

50

55

Interested in politics (percent of people)
Note: Computed using microdata and equal weights across countries. “Nevervote” refers to reported voting behaviour in national elections. Income reflects
the subjective income level and is measured on a 1–10 scale, which is thenrecoded into three groups: low (1–3), medium (4–7) and high (8–10).
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7 of theWorld Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

152

Middle education

6

35

40

45

50

55

Interested in politics (percent of people)
Note: Computed using microdata and equal weights across countries. ”Nevervote” refers to reported voting behaviour in national elections. Education iscategorized based on the highest education level attained: lower education(up to lower secondary education), middle education (upper secondary education and postsecondary nontertiary education) and upper education (tertiary
education and above)
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7 of theWorld Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

These inequalities in political participation by income and education achievements can exacerbate
the biases in collective outcomes shaped by power
imbalances that drive political decisions towards theinterests of the more powerful.42

Human insecurity reduces agency
People who report feeling more insecure about some
aspects of their lives also report feeling less in control of their lives. The decline of agency with the increase in perception of human insecurity holds acrossall world regions (figure 5.10). Human security is amultidimensional concept that pertains to people
being free from fear, want and indignity.43 Human
insecurity constrains agency when people fear participating in social life or using public spaces and deliberation mechanisms without shame.44
Perception of human insecurity also affects generalized trust, key for cooperation. The higher theperceived insecurity, the lower the share of people
reporting generalized trust, with this relationshipstronger at higher HDI levels (figure 5.11). Moreover,among people in very high HDI countries, perceived
human insecurity is associated with lower support
for democracy and greater tolerance of violence as ameans of political action.45
Higher perceived human insecurity is also associated with less confidence in institutions across thethree branches of government­— ­executive, legislative and judiciary (figure 5.12). The association getsstronger as the HDI level declines. Moving from association to causality between perceived human insecurity and confidence in institutions is difficult.
Causality may be mediated by perceived human insecurity; if so, the association reflects shortcomings
in the ability of institutions to deliver human security.
And if that is so, addressing human security concerns
directly can not only restore trust but also improve
confidence in institutions. Both channels can enhance collective action.
A human security lens can integrate policy goals
and agendas, taking into consideration issues ranging
from concerns with social cohesion (spotlight 5.1) topeople’s embeddedness in nature.46

Figure 5.10 The higher the perceived human insecurity, the lower the sense of control over one’s own life
Percent of people in each insecurity category
facing acute agency gap
14
Arab States

1210

Sub-Saharan Africa
East Asia and the Pacific
Developed countries
South Asia
Europe and Central Asia
Latin America andthe Caribbean

8
6
4
2

Low

Medium/High

Very high

Perceived human insecurity
Note: Perceived human insecurity is measured as “low,” “medium and high” and “very high,” using microdata and equal weights across countries, andis based on the index described in annex 1.2 of UNDP (2022d). Acute agency gap measures the share of the population reporting feeling no or very
little control over their lives (options 1–3 on a 1–10 scale).
Source: Human Development Report Office based on the latest available data from wave 6 (2010–2014) and wave 7 (2017–2022) of the World Values
Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

153

Figure 5.11 Perceived human insecurity is related
to generalized trust, especially for higher Human
Development Index (HDI) groups
Generalized trust(percent of people in each insecurity category)

Figure 5.12 Perceived human insecurity is related toconfidence in state institutions
Confidence in state institutions(percent of people in each insecurity category)
50

50
Very high HDI

Low/Medium HDI

40
High HDI

40
30
30High HDI

20

Very high
HDI

20
Low/Medium HDI

10

10
0
0

Low

Medium/High

Very high

Perceived human insecurity
Note: Perceived human insecurity is computed using microdata and equal
weights across countries and is based on the index described in annex 1.2 of
UNDP (2022d). Generalized trust implies reporting that “most people can betrusted” (other option: “need to be very careful”).
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7 of theWorld Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

Fostering the conditions for agency
to enhance collective action throughpublic reasoning and deliberation
Fostering the conditions that enable the formationof collective beliefs that transcend group boundaries
can narrow agency gaps to enhance collective action.
Promoting meaningful civic engagement in publicdecisionmaking implies that people feel their voices
are heard and considered­—­not only as an expressionof interests but also as a broader process of public
input reasoning that scrutinizes beliefs, particularly
those associated with polarization (chapter 6). One
way to achieve this is through deliberative assemblies
that some countries and communities are experimenting with (box 5.1).
Processes of public reasoning and deliberation
are also used to enhance collective action at lower
scales, as in the world of work, where there is growing
154

Low

Medium/High

Very high

Perceived human insecurity
 DI is Human Development Index.
H
Note: Perceived human insecurity is computed using microdata and equal
weights across countries and is based on the index described in annex 1.2 of
UNDP (2022d). Confidence in state institutions reflects combined confidence
in the national government, the parliament and the justice system. Confidence
implies reporting “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence (other options:“not very much” or “none at all”).
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7 of theWorld Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

recognition of the need for dialogue (box 5.2). Overthe past few decades changes in the world of work­—­fragmenting global production through global value
chains and de-­unionizing workers­—­have reduced
some of the established institutions that facilitate collective bargaining. With continuing rapid technological change, the demand for spaces for social dialogue
among workers, firms and governments is likely topersist.

Social norms can support or limit collective action
Social norms, shared by many and socially enforced
in a decentralized way, affect people’s beliefs andagency and thus shape social behaviours and can support collective action (chapter 4).
Not all social norms are conducive to express
human agency in cooperative outcomes. For example,

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Box 5.1 Promoting more deliberative forms of citizen participation
UNDP Governance Team
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in deliberative democracy­—w­ hich has been described as a deliberative wave.1
Researchers and practitioners see these approaches as having the potential to address the crisis of democracy2 by enabling
new forms of citizen participation that are truly inclusive and grounded in evidence, informed by thoughtful analysis andconducive to consensus building.
Deliberative minipublics, such as citizen assemblies, are one way to operationalize deliberative democracy ideals. In Ireland
a citizen assembly was established in 2016 to review aspects of the Irish constitution. Its recommendations resulted in two constitutional referendums, which led to substantial policy change on same-­sex marriage and abortion. Voting patterns differed
between voters familiar with the assembly and those not, suggesting an impact on the deliberative nature of the referendum
in the wider community.3
Deliberative minipublics face challenges. One is the ethical and methodological difficulty of addressing the impact of inequality on minipublic dynamics.4 A second is the complexity of embedding minipublics into broader systems of participation andpolitical representation.5 And a third is the risk of minipublics being used as a strategy to displace civic organizing and otherforms of activism.6 Even so, integrating deliberative standards into citizen engagement processes can overcome polarizationand help elaborate high-­quality public input.7 So, there seems to be great merit in continuing to explore this field.
Notes
1. OECD 2020. 2. Dryzek and others 2019. 3. Elkink and others 2017. 4. Lupia and Norton 2017. 5. Lafont 2017. 6. Young 2001. 7. Curato and others 2017.

Box 5.2 Social dialogue in the world of work
International Labour Organization
Collective action and the representation of workers and employers through social dialogue, essential for democracy andgood governance, hold potential for advancing human development. Social dialogue encompasses all types of negotiations,consultations and exchanges of information among representatives, governments, employers and workers. These interactions
revolve around issues of common interest related to economic and social policies and include collective bargaining, workplaceconsultation and cooperation, and bipartite and tripartite social dialogue at the national and sectoral levels.
Social dialogue embodies a fundamental democratic principle: involving those most affected by decisions in shaping policies that directly affect them. Employer and worker organizations are crucial in this process. They act as agents and provide acollective voice for enterprises and workers. By broadening the scope of decisionmaking, social dialogue improves the quality,
legitimacy and ownership of decisions, fostering a stronger commitment to their implementation. Consequently, this enhances
the adaptability, agility and resilience of economies. Social dialogue­—e­ nabled through independent, strong and representative employer and worker organizations­—p­ rovides space for cooperation and can advance economic and social progress,
including by addressing inequality and inclusiveness in labour markets.
However, social dialogue must be based on two fundamental principles and rights at work: freedom of association and theeffective recognition of right to collective bargaining. These core labour rights, coupled with effective institutions of work,
underpin sustainable economic development and social justice. They empower both workers and employers to engage inmeaningful dialogue, ensure that their voices are heard and lay the foundation for decent work and inclusive labour market
outcomes.
Throughout the Covid-­19 pandemic governments and social partners joined forces to create short-­term strategies while
formulating comprehensive, forward-­looking policies and measures to shape an inclusive, sustainable and resilient recovery.
In countries where active engagement between employer and worker representatives was integrated into the response, social
dialogue not only was crucial in addressing the immediate challenges but also emerged as a vital part of the medium- and long-­
term solutions. Social dialogue is expected to play an even more important role in helping governments, working hand in handwith employer and worker organizations, to frame the appropriate policies for managing the deep and rapid transformations(continued)

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

155

Box 5.2 Social dialogue in the world of work (continued)
at play today in the world of work and ensure a just transition towards more sustainable economies and societies, in line withthe 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
In this regard social dialogue and collective action by social partners are not just important tools for supporting human development; they are also foundational pillars for revitalizing the social contract, as laid out by the UN Secretary-­General in Our
Common Agenda.1 By boosting confidence in democratic governance, promoting equality in opportunities and outcomes andensuring social peace and prosperity, social dialogue contributes to rebuilding trust in public policies and institutions of work. It
stands as an inclusive process for engaging diverse stakeholders, enabling participation in decisionmaking and guaranteeing
fundamental rights at work, while extending protections to all.
Note
1. United Nations Secretary-­General 2021.

social norms that are biased against the rights of andopportunities for groups of people hinder collective
outcomes and hurt human dignity. Social norms biased against women and girls are an example. They
are also threats to human security, not allowing someto live lives of dignity, representing an instance ofwhat Amartya Sen would call “clearly remediable injustices.”47 Injustice can also be determined against
widely agreed consensuses, such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights or in the UN Charter and the corpus of international law, including“soft law” (agreements such as the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development).
Still, despite these normative and aspirational
consensuses, social norms­—­along with policies andinstitutions­—­matter in how they are implemented andpursued. For example, gender social norms can either
advance or curtail agency.48 To see how, note how atthe beginning of the 20th century, women in mostcountries were officially prohibited from participatingin various societal roles, ranging from owning property and attending universities to engaging in politics.
Women’s agency gaps were stark and widespread.
Throughout the 20th century extensive reforms worldwide recognized the equal legal, social, economic andpolitical rights of women and men.49 Although womenin many countries still face legal restrictions affecting their agency, the progress in institutional reforms
has been remarkable. Agency gaps encoded in formallaws have tended to disappear. The legal right to votein elections­—­a basic expression of political agency­—­
serves as a visible example of this evolution.
However, the effective agency of women remains restricted in many areas. A notable example is156

women’s access to top political office­—­the pinnacleof political agency. Women serve as heads of stateor heads of government in only about 10 percent ofcountries, a share little changed in recent decades.50
The 2023 Gender Social Norms Index, which treatsbiases as deviations from global shared standards ofgender equality, shows that gender equality is being
constrained by social norms biased against women.51
Almost half of people believe men make better political leaders than women.52 And biased norms might be
so entrenched that women who occupy high political
offices are judged more harshly. These biases permeate voting booths, interview panels, board meetingsand more, limiting women’s agency (figure 5.13). Simultaneously, they diminish our collective potential
by perpetuating inequalities, excluding a diverse rangeof perspectives and experiences from public discourseand fostering further misperceptions and divisions.
When social norms suppress agency, they hinder
broader processes of collective action by obstructing participation and cooperation­— ­and exacerbating inequalities and divisions. Biased gender social
norms can limit the effectiveness of policies53 andcurb women’s agency­— ­even when policies for gender equality are in place.54 Fostering more equitablegender norms, where women are seen not just as
beneficiaries of development interventions but as active agents of change and contributors to addressing
shared challenges, allows for tapping into women’screative potential and boosts the diversity of ideasthat can enhance collective action.55
Achieving equal rights and opportunities for womenand men and dismantling harmful gender stereotypes advances the wellbeing and agency of everyone,

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Figure 5.13 Biased gender social norms limit women’s political agency

Share of parliamentary seats
occupied by women (%)
60

50

40

30

20

10

0

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Biases in gender social norms (% of population who agree or strongly agreewith the statement “Men make better political leaders than women do”)
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from wave 7 (2017–2022) of the World Values Survey (for biases in social norms) and datafrom the Inter-Parliamentary Union (for the share of parliamentary seats occupied by women in 2021). See also UNDP (2023a).

regardless of gender identity and expression. Redressing biased gender social norms can generate collective
outcomes that go beyond directly improving the conditions of those excluded.56 For example, peace processes that explicitly include women not only uphold
women’s human rights and strengthen their agency but
also are more likely to result in comprehensive and durable peace agreements.57 Close links between female
peace agreement signatories and civil society groups,
grassroots movements and other networks facilitate
more bottom-­up influence and local ownership overpeace agreements and can enable inclusion of agreement provisions that address inequalities and power
imbalances58­—­which are often among the root causesof violent conflicts.59 Because women, still today, remain largely absent from formal peace processes,60 advancing gender equality and opening spaces for more
women to participate in these processes represent ahuge potential peace dividend for societies at large.

A gender lens can help identify opportunities to advance collective action. Consider pandemic prevention and response, which require collective action atscale. Applying a gender lens implies recognizing andaddressing gender differences in the global burdenof diseases, as well as potential gendered impacts of
response measures. For example, while men were athigher risk of dying from Covid-­19,61 the measures
to contain the Covid-­19 pandemic in many cases hit
women harder, as they generally suffered higher job
and income losses,62 increases in domestic violence63
and declines in mental wellbeing.64
While social norms are often contrasted with formal institutions and laws, they are always interacting with formal institutions, sometimes in mutually
supportive ways and in other cases in tension. Recognizing how social norms may be curtailing agency, and identifying the mechanisms that can trigger
norm changes towards enhanced agency, can inform

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

157

options to advance collective action. As the discussion on gender social norms shows, pinning all hopeon formal institutions can be ineffective and evenbackfire if social norms are ignored.65
Women also feel less able than men to protect
themselves or their families in the face of a futuredisaster. This can be interpreted as another agency
gap, affecting 53 percent of women and 44 percent
of men globally.66 In addition to the fact that thisagency gap is higher for women than for men, otherpatterns identified in this chapter emerge again: thehigher the level of (economic, in this case) insecurity, the higher the agency gap, and belief that the
government is unprepared to respond to disasters
is associated with higher agency gaps (figure 5.14).
This points directly to ways of narrowing agency
gaps: eliminating gender inequality, strengthening

national institutions’ preparedness to respond to disasters and redressing insecurity. The discussion on
disasters, specifically, also has relevance as we go
deeper into the Anthropocene, given that unfolding
processes of dangerous planetary change are likely
to make disaster preparedness and response all themore relevant.67

Institutions to bring collective
action to scale­—­people-­centred,co-­owned and future-­oriented
Institutions can link agency with collective action
at scale. With global interdependence being reshaped, narrowing agency gaps would be a way to
pursue enhanced collective action. Narrowing thosegaps involves promoting human security, redressing

Figure 5.14 Gender inequalities in agency gaps in facing future disasters are pervasive
Perceived agency gap in a future disaster(percent of people in each category)
75

60

Women
Among those who
believe that governmentis unprepared torespond to disasters

45
Men
Women

Men
30

0

1–2

2–4

4–8

Among those who
believe that governmentis prepared torespond to disasters

8+

Economic security (weeks of basic needs covered if income is lost)
Note: Perceived agency gap in a future disaster is measured as people not responding affirmatively to the question, “Could protect yourself or family in a futuredisaster?” Government preparedness is measured by the response to the question, “Is the national government well prepared to deal with a disaster?” Economic
security is proxied through the number of weeks that a household could cover basic needs if income was lost.
Source: Human Development Report Office, based on data from Lloyd’s Register Foundation and Gallup (2022).

158

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inequalities, promoting social norms for cooperation and widening and strengthening spaces fordeliberation.

Institutions would be better placed to support“
collective action at scale if they were people-­
centred, co-­owned and future-­oriented

To this end, institutions would be better placed tosupport collective action at scale if they were able tofulfil three core functions: being people-­centred, co-­owned and future-­oriented.
• People-­centred is about placing the enhancementof human development (including wellbeing andagency) as the ultimate goal, which includes also
advancing human security.
• Co-­owned is about the real and perceived fair
distribution of the power to set collective goals, of
responsibilities to pursue them and of the resulting
outcomes.
• Future-­oriented is about not only ensuring that
future generations will have the ability to advancetheir human development but also putting in placemechanisms that are more predictable in enabling
people to navigate an uncertain and volatile world(spotlight 5.2).68
These functions match the framing of beyond income, beyond averages, beyond today put forward in
the 2019 Human Development Report.69
To illustrate what pursuing these functions would
mean in practice, the chapter concludes by analysing what might be missing to support the provisionof global public goods­—­and a perspective on ongoingand perennial debates about the evolution of multilateral institutions.

Building an institutional architecture to enhance
the provision of global public goods
Development cooperation is premised on a dichotomy of so-­called developed and developing countries,
reflecting the aspiration to narrow the great divergence that emerged in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution and has framed development thinking
and practice since the middle of the 20th century.70
Development finance evolved to support developing countries in converging, with finance channelledthough both bilateral and multilateral means andcomprising both capital and transfers from or guaranteed by developed countries. Development finance­—­such as official development assistance, including
humanitarian funding­—­remains essential and insufficient. But it is clear, as expressed in the 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development, that there is a need tolook at universal aspirations beyond this dichotomy.
One way of giving expression to those aspirations is
recognizing the need, in an interdependent world,
to enhance the provision of global public goods. And
that implies building an institutional architecture to
support the endeavour.
Providing global public goods is consistent with thethree institutional functions proposed in this chapter.
Their pursuit is people-­centred, given the losses inhuman development and exacerbation of inequalities
associated with their underprovision.
Given that global public goods are nonrival andnonexcludable at the global scale, institutions geared
to support their provision are consistent with beingco-­owned. Outcomes matter, but so does the process of provision. And global public goods leave legacies well into the future, as with the eradication ofsmallpox, the mitigation of climate change and theintroduction of a novel technology. So, their pursuit isoften intrinsically future-­oriented.
To elaborate further on how the three functions interplay with providing global public goods, consider
how enhancing the capabilities of different countries
or groups to contribute to global public goods is bothan outcome and a process that matters intrinsically.
They matter because perceptions of fairness, orlack thereof, can stand in the way of providing global
public goods (chapter 3).
Often, fairness and the expansion of capabilities
work together. Indeed, one way of demonstratingthat efforts to enhance the provision of global public goods can also advance equity is by showing thattransferring resources and technologies to enhance
the provision of global public goods often has national and local benefits in the recipient country.71 For instance, international assistance to fund a renewableenergy project in a low-­income country with the aimof mitigating climate change can reduce local pollution and generate jobs.72 These ancillary national
benefits not only enhance equity­—­they also enhance
efficiency by increasing the aggregate benefits ofChapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

159

enhanced global public good provision.73 They are,however, typically neglected in policymaking associated with global public good provision, such as climate change mitigation,74 for which the policy debate
often emphasizes costs of mitigation.75
At the same time it is important to recognize that
supportive policies in high-­income countries for outcomes that seek to advance global public goods canhave globally beneficial outcomes. In the mid-­2000s
both Germany’s Energiewende and the California
Solar Initiative in the United States provided generous benefits for solar installations at substantial
short-­term cost.76 These subsidies led firms aroundthe world, including those outside high-­income countries, to innovate more, reducing prices and increasing adoption of solar panels elsewhere.77 In addition
to this induced innovation effect, subsidies also led tocost reductions through learning by doing and economies of scale.78 While learning by doing and economies of scale can largely be appropriated by firms,79
the subsidies were key because (in the absence of carbon prices that internalize the externalities of greenhouse gas emissions) they stimulated production thatlikely would not have happened otherwise due tounderpriced fossil fuels.80 These examples illustrate
how subsidies for technologies in a few high-­income
countries can result in global spillovers, reaching lowand middle-­income countries.

Co-­ownership can considerably enhance the“social valuation of global public goods, recognizingthem as shared achievements worldwideCo-­ownership can considerably enhance the social
valuation of global public goods, recognizing them asshared achievements worldwide. The value and sustainability of global public goods may hinge on theirimpact and on mechanisms that foster public participation in their provision. If these mechanisms areco-­owned, they are more likely to empower people toboth contribute to and celebrate these achievements.
As Martha Nussbaum points out, the social room fordeliberation should be not only a safe space for criticisms and dissenting voices but also a nurturing
ground for devotion to ideas that embody an overlapping consensus, which the pursuit of providing global
public goods can be mobilized to deliver (chapters 4
and 6).81
160

Recognizing that global public goods have both
domestic and global benefits has important implications for institutional design, including the supportof international cooperation. For example, in climatechange mitigation acknowledging the co-­benefits ofglobal public goods tends to bolster domestic support for participating in international agreements.
Such participation generates benefits at the global and national scales82 and may increase the likelihood of forming a robust coalition to combat climatechange.83 Providing support to countries in health-­
related weakest-­link or best-­shot global public goodinitiatives can yield substantial national and regional benefits.84 Moreover, there can be synergy in flows
aimed at advancing local or national public goods
that cumulatively contribute to a global public good.
International efforts to support biodiversity in African countries, for instance, can complement tourism
revenue. Both revenue streams support local conservation efforts, generating biodiversity benefits nationally and globally.85
The flip side of co-­benefits is that if domestic investment is motivated exclusively by benefits that accrue within borders, there may be underinvestment
from a global perspective. At the same time it might
not be reasonable to expect low- and middle-­income
countries, which are more likely to be resource constrained than high-­income countries, to incur the additional cost that may be needed for global benefits
to emerge. The economics from the national perspective may be such that it is not feasible for a country
to invest in renewable energy. So, the international
community could provide the funding for the incremental cost that results in generating global benefits.
This is one way of interpreting existing financing arrangements that support the provision of global public goods, such as the Global Environment Facility.86
The logic of financing this incremental cost could be
extended to the support of global public goods beyond the environment, in most cases in the form offully concessional financing.87
Several of the most promising opportunities for
global public goods might be in low- and medium-­income countries, where some mitigation projects(with global benefits) might be privately profitable.
But even in those cases the projects are rarely implemented, because of regulatory challenges, a lack of
capital or volatility (real or perceived).88 So projects

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

with global positive externalities face the prospect ofunderinvestment.
Being future-­oriented implies thinking about financing that addresses volatility, which can both
attract private financing and make public financecountercyclical. In fact, in a volatile world countries are subject to shocks not of their own making,such as climate-­related disasters, pandemics orglobal financial crises. These shocks often reflect
the underprovision of global public goods and leavelow- and middle-­income countries on the receiving
end of having to deal not only with the immediate
costs but also with servicing the debt incurred to finance, for instance, infrastructure that may havebeen wiped out in a tropical cyclone. As the ongoingexperience with high debt burdens in low-­income
countries in the aftermath of the Covid-­19 pandemic illustrates, there is no predictable way for countries to collectively agree on how to deal with thechallenge.

Being future-­oriented implies thinking“
about financing that addresses volatility,
which can both attract private financing
and make public finance countercyclical

One way to have a future-­oriented approach is toprovide financing through instruments that include
state-­contingent clauses that pause or defer debt
service payments when countries face of shocks resulting from climate change or pandemics (spotlight5.3).89 This would increase the ability of low- andmiddle-­income countries to contribute to providing
global public goods even in the aftermath of external
crises­—­to the benefit of all. These measures require
coordination (if these financing options that carry an
insurance element are more expensive than “plan vanilla” options) and enhanced capacity to allocate resources that may include a large share of concessional
financing.90

Identifying gaps in existing multilateral institutions
Multilateral institutions have supported international cooperation and advanced welfare in several otherways.91 But there is perennial debate about the needto have these institutions evolve.92 How can they bedesigned to meet the three functional goals of being
people centred, co-­owned and future-­oriented?
While nominally people-­centred, multilateral institutions often have a limited or partial recognition of
the pursuit of human development as an explicit goal.
International financial institutions and parts of theUN system continue to invest considerable resources in estimating and projecting indicators associatedwith economic performance. This is very importantand needed, but it sometimes is used and interpreted as defining the whole of development prospects
and aspirations of people. Thus, the UN Secretary-­
General’s emphasis on moving “Beyond GDP” aims
at restoring a balance on how development progress
and policies are assessed, beyond averages at thecountry level.93 For instance, from the perspective ofmultidimensional poverty, nearly two-­thirds of people in acute multidimensional poverty (730 million)
live in middle-­income countries.94 This agenda offers
the prospect of enhancing policymaking to address
the multidimensional nature of human development
as advocated in Human Development Reports over
the years.95
Gaps in co-­ownership are manifest in the continuation of the governance arrangements through written
and unwritten rules that reflect a legacy of the distribution of power in the immediate aftermath of WorldWar II. This extends from international financial institutions to the United Nations, with several proposals over the years to redress the lack of representative
governance arrangements.96
Co-­ownership implies a fair distribution of theburden of government action, avoiding inequalities
resulting from tax avoidance and evasion. Over the
past decade there has been progress in controllingtax evasion, mainly through increased informationand transparency around the world.97 And there has
been extensive cooperation through the Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development/Group of 20 Inclusive Framework on base erosion
and profit shifting, with the participation of 140
countries and jurisdictions. A recent international tax reform changes the rules for tax jurisdiction
and imposes a global 15 percent minimum effective
corporate income tax, which is expected to collect$150–$200 billion a year.98 To facilitate policy coordination on these issues, the UN General Assembly
has started the process for a Framework Convention

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

1 61

on International Tax Cooperation.99 Global minimum tax rates do not have to be very large to raise
substantial sums if they are well enforced.100 Enforcement is largely a policy choice and hinges oninternational coordination. For example, leveraging
new technologies and advancing regulation that allowed automatic information sharing between banks
and financial institutions helped speed progressagainst tax evasion.101
Trust and social norms also determine tax compliance, and policies that target these aspects cancomplement incentives and enforcement, such as
taxpayer education and information programmes
and stronger public services (see spotlight 4.4 in

162

chapter 4). A future-­oriented approach can contribute to a process of reform and effectiveness. The
United Nations and the international financial institutions were created cognizant of the need to manage global interdependence (see spotlight 2.1 inchapter 2), objectives still valid today. But there is
now greater recognition of the challenges of a planet undergoing dangerous changes and of interdependence being reshaped as we go farther into the
Anthropocene.102 An explicit focus on providing andfinancing global public goods could also strengthen
a future-­oriented focus of multilateral institutions­—­facilitating a push for investment, insurance andinnovation.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

S POT L IGH T 5 .1

Strengthening social cohesion to mitigate
human insecurity: Promise and peril
Julia Leininger, Armin von Schiller and Charlotte Fiedler, German Institute of Development and Sustainability

With growing human insecurity and polarization,
policymakers have shifted attention to the resilienceof societies. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), for example, emphasizes solidarity
as an essential building block for addressing universal challenges.1 “Social cohesion” stands out as a buzzword in these discussions and is often suggested as acure for many development problems and for the unintended consequences of development efforts.
In particular, social cohesion is praised for its alleged role in mitigating tensions, dealing with shocks
and enabling productive cooperation for the common
good. As such, social cohesion, understood as theglue that holds societies together, has been declaredin policy and academic discussions as a precondition
for sustainable and inclusive development. Fostering
but also protecting it are now high priority goals inpolicy documents and in international cooperation.
The Covid-­19 pandemic accelerated this trend.
But is social cohesion a cure for the apparent dichotomy of human development with human insecurity?2 As many governments and internationalorganizations launch or scale up campaigns to promote social cohesion in societies­—­among groups or
between citizens and public institutions­—­it is time
to ask what we know about the relevance of social
cohesion for supporting human development and reducing human insecurity. Also, what are the leverage
points for policy action, and what is the effectivenessof currently applied measures?

Social cohesion for human development
Social cohesion is not a panacea, but there is proofof its relevance for human development and, thus,
human security. One of the most important yet barely
recognized values of social cohesion is as the foundation for societies to reach agreement on what a common good is in a particular context and who gets ashare of it. Where polarization divides societies, opposing groups develop unbridgeable disagreements
over issue-­oriented questions such as the right pandemic measures (for example, Covid-­19 vaccines)
and over shared values such as the right to live.
Evidence on development outcomes indicates
positive effects of social cohesion on a variety of indicators. Overall, social cohesion correlates positively with human development, as measured by the
Human Development Index, in Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development members3
and in Asian countries.4 However, such macroanalyses also indicate that human development affects
social cohesion more than vice versa. Interestingly, social cohesion’s effect on human development
increases further when mediated through state legitimacy.5 This underlines that social cohesion is independent of a country’s income level.
One of the richest pools of evidence for the relevance of social cohesion for human development is
its relationship with health. Evidence for 39 US statesindicates that social cohesion, measured as social
trust and membership in voluntary organizations,fosters mental as well as physical health, even moderating the effect of income inequality on increased
mortality.6 Most studies focus, however, on individual elements of social cohesion and their relationshipwith health. For example, social trust has a positive
impact on health, but the intensity of the impact varies considerably with a country’s socioeconomic development: the impact is much stronger in developed
countries than in developing countries.7 Also related to social cohesion, disinvestment in social capitalis related to higher mortality rates.8 Social cohesion
also matters for effective decisionmaking and people’s solidarity.9 This mechanism is key in times ofcrisis: where societies are cohesive, governments canassume that their policies enjoy public confidence10
and that individuals show unity with each other whenfacing collective problems.11

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

163Social cohesion has a direct positive effect on GDP,
particularly in western and Asian countries.12 Less
comprehensive analyses of social cohesion suggestthat it has a positive effect on GDP because of thehuge economic costs of interracial conflict and war
or because it facilitates the emergence of better institutions such as a strong judicial system and freedomof expression.13 However, these insights are basedon broader measures of social cohesion that include
indicators such as ethnic fractionalization. Overall,there is very little cross-­country evidence on the relationship between social cohesion and economic
development.14
More cohesive societies­—­
p articularly societies where citizens trust and are willing to cooperatewith state institutions­— ­could be expected to be better positioned to more effectively deliver basic services such as education. But most attention has beendrawn to the opposite direction of the relationship:from education to social cohesion. In particular, universal education can contribute to social cohesion by
reducing inequality and by creating “strong social
bonds among different groups in a society.” 15

Strengthening social cohesion for cooperation
To some degree the salience of the concept of social
cohesion and its proven relevance for developmentmasks conceptual and empirical challenges. Social
cohesion is to many an elusive concept, and indeed,
how it is defined, used and measured varies widely
among those using it. That makes it essential to specify what social cohesion is if it is to feature prominently in policy discussion and design. In particular,
conceptual clarity is essential to enable exchange on
strategies to foster this key foundation of the social
fabric in every society and aggregate existing knowledge on how best to do that. A useful and usable concept of social cohesion enables a global exchange,
structures policy thinking and aggregates existingknowledge.
The following understanding of social cohesionbuilds on common denominators in research (figureS5.1.1). The starting point is the consensus that social cohesion is multidimensional. Furthermore, weneed a concept that travels across levels and contexts
and is therefore as effective in characterizing small
164

Figure S5.1.1 Proposed elements of social cohesion

State–society
cooperation

Institutional
trust

National
identity

Cooperation
for thecommon good

Trust

Inclusive
identitySocial cohesion

Intergroupcooperation

Socialtrust

Groupidentity

Source: Leininger and others 2021.

communities in all regions as characterizing transnational contexts. While the concept needs to becapable of traveling across world regions, its measurement might vary with the context. In any casesuch an aggregated measure does not substitute foran analysis of the particularities of social cohesion in
specific contexts.
In addition, it is essential to keep the concept lean
if it is to be instrumental in analysing relationships
with other development outcomes, such as humandevelopment or inequality. Based on this reasoning,
we propose the following definition:“Social cohesion refers to the vertical and horizontal relations among members of society and thestate that hold society together. Social cohesion ischaracterised by a set of attitudes and behavioural manifestations that includes trust, an inclusive
identity and cooperation for the common good.” 16
Trust often appears in conceptualizations of social
cohesion. Used here, it includes social and institutional trust and thereby captures both the horizontal
and the vertical dimensions of trust.17 Inclusive identity reflects that individuals can feel that they belong
to multiple groups and thus have several identities(religion, ethnicity and gender, for example). A socially cohesive society implies that individuals withHUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

different identities tolerate these differences andcan coexist peacefully, so particular identities do not
dominate the overall collective identity. Cooperation
for the common good means that many people andgroups cooperate for public interests that go beyond­—­and sometimes even conflict with­—­those of the individuals involved.
Although there is a common sense that social cohesion is more than the sum of its parts, scholars often
study its parts individually, and policymakers address
discrete parts of it. Most often the focus lies on trust.
The concept of social cohesion proposed by the German Institute of Development and Sustainability18 enables focusing on particular elements and identifying
specific weak spots to concentrate on, but structurally
it demands conceptualizing these analyses within the
broader concept and phenomenon of social cohesion.
In this approach trust is important, but it is only one
part of the whole. It is important to analyse the otherattributes as well as the interactions and synergies between them. But more important, to determine howsocially cohesive a society is at a given (measured)time and how social cohesion evolves over time, it isnecessary to analyse all of its parts, understandingthat not all dimensions will develop in parallel.

Behind the bright light is a dark side of social cohesion
It is also necessary to acknowledge that despite its
relevance, social cohesion does not necessarily adhere to the simplistic claim that more is always better.
Knowing how social cohesion interacts at different
levels, how it is used and how it is constructed is essential to avoid highly cohesive subgroups instrumentalizing social cohesion as a platform for exclusion.
Social cohesion does not have only a rosy side.
Social cohesion as fuel for polarization
Social cohesion can be easily interpreted as an equalizer, forcing homogeneity on societies. This is a particularly salient issue in the context of the recent
global trend towards autocracy. Nationalist politicalelites have been using polarization strategies to divide societies and increase their own power. These
attempts­— ­o ften successful­—­pursue an us-­versusthem rhetoric, which defines criteria for “goodcitizens” and sets them apart from other groups whoare “out.” While this has created cohesive groups, it
has also fostered unbridgeable divides over certain
issues. Strengthening social cohesion requires understanding that the social fabric is sustainable only if ittolerates differences.
And this brings us back to the idea of solidarity aspresented in UNDP’s 2022 Special Report on Human
Security.19 It is about our capacities as human beings
who constantly act collectively at different levels to
face shared challenges together, such as the effects ofclimate change or health crises.
Disregard for scale and space canlead to unintended effects
Social cohesion suggests a peaceful social togetherness. Although it can be seen as a function of peace,it has an important discrete meaning. Conceptual
distinctions are important because they have criticalpolicy implications. For example, strengthening social cohesion within local groups might increase their
togetherness. At the same time fostering bonds within a particular group can have countereffects if thewithin-­group togetherness makes it difficult to bridge
conflicts between that group and others.
There are risks to enhancing social cohesion for thesake of cohesion without identifying the basis for thecommon identity, trust and cooperation, as well as its
goals. Social cohesion manifests on different interacting levels (from local to global) and in various spaces(communities in different locations or online spaces).
Connecting levels and spaces is thus key for allowing
the bright side of social cohesion to shine.

Looking at the bright side
With its potentials and its risks, social cohesion isrightly on national and international agendas. Increased attention to social cohesion comes at a time
when polarization has been eroding it and human insecurity has intensified in all parts of the world. Recovering and rebuilding social cohesion are difficult
once it has been damaged or lost. In this way it is notdifferent from other positive types of human relationships: we often become aware of them only after they
have been substantially weakened.

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

165

Using the concept of social cohesion to carefully
think through how best to foster cohesive societies
and limit polarization is a good starting point for international cooperation and policymaking at a timeof increasing challenges. Social cohesion is both an
explicit goal and a precondition for effective cooperation at all levels. In this sense it is wise to ensurethat discussions are conceptually sound and that

our still-­fragmented knowledge is properly and efficiently aggregated to enable governments and international organizations to effectively engage on
this topic. At all levels we face problems and crisis
that must be addressed, navigated and solved collectively. Social cohesion explicitly addresses thiscollective dimension that so far has been highly
underestimated.

N OT E S
1.

UNDP 2022b.

11.

Green and Janmaat 2011.

2.

UNDP 2022a, 2022b.

12.

Delhey and others 2018.

3.

Dragolov and others 2013.

13.

Easterly, Ritzen and Woolcock 2006; Foa 2011.

4.

Delhey and others 2018.

14.

Sommer 2019.

5.

Seyoum 2021.

15.

Uslaner 2019, p. 4.

6.

Kawachi and Berkman 2001; Kawachi and others 1997.

16.

Leininger and others 2021, p. 3.

7.

Hamamura, Li and Chan 2017.

17.

Mattes and Moreno 2018.

8.

Kawachi and Kennedy 1997.

18.

Leininger and others 2021; Leininger and others 2023.

9.

Leininger and others 2021.

19.

UNDP 2022b.

10.

Abrams and others 2020; Wilkinson and others 2017.

166

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

S POT L IGH T 5 . 2

Solidarity and creative resolve
Nicole Hassoun, Binghamton University and the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki

How can we respond to the challenges of our times?
This spotlight argues that solidarity and creative
resolve can help overcome the threats to humandevelopment associated with mismanagement of interdependence and underprovision of global public
goods.1 Solidarity is “a sympathetic and imaginative
enactment of collaborative measures to enhance ourgiven or acquired relatedness so that together we farewell enough.”2 It requires empathizing with others
and recognizing the ways in which we are interdependent and related.3 Often solidarity also requires
creative resolve: a fundamental commitment to overcoming apparent tragedy together.4 More precisely,
creative resolve requires us to question, imagine andact to promote human development insofar as necessary, possible and otherwise permissible.
Consider each component of this resolve in turn.
First, creative resolve requires questioning limits tothe possibility of promoting human development.
We must question the claim that we cannot promote
human development, as well as our background beliefs about what we can do. What questions we mustraise will depend on the nature of the claims­—­wemight question their reliability, source or implications. Second, this resolve requires seeking out creative ways of promoting human development, evenwhen we do not yet know how to do so. It is notenough to consider existing options; we must often
put new options on the table.5 Finally, creative resolve
requires acting on plans to promote human development, often through social movements or by helping change policies or institutions.6 At least, we muststrive to promote human development in this way
as long as that does not require sacrificing anything
more significant.
Solidarity and creative resolve can help in responding well to shared challenges together. Unlike mere
teamwork, solidarity connects those on opposite
sides of the planet in recognition of the fact that weare all vulnerable and interdependent and engages

us in building the valuable relationships that promote
development.7 Unlike mere perseverance, creative
resolve helps people think outside the box and reveals opportunities for addressing some of the mostdifficult, and seemingly tragic, problems of our time.
Unlike mere problem solving, solidarity and creative
resolve require us to put our commitment and cooperation into action to address difficult problems.8
Reflecting on how solidarity and creative resolve have helped people address major challenges to human development in the past may help us
overcome substantial threats in the future. Consider the smallpox eradication campaign (chapter 3). The campaign was creative and resolute.
When traditional vaccinations did not work, theglobal smallpox eradication programme tried ring
vaccination­—­
vaccinating all the people aroundthose who were infected­—­which eventually helped
conquer the disease.9 The fact that smallpox was
eradicated globally during the Cold War shows thatsolidarity and creative resolve can spur international
cooperation to overcome some of the greatest threats
to human development, even when countries facedisparate interests and resources.
Contrast the global fight against smallpox with theinternational response to the Covid-­19 pandemic(chapter 3). When the pandemic first swept across theglobe, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued
a solidarity call to action to realize equitable global
access to Covid-­19 health technologies through pooling of knowledge, intellectual property and data.10
The Access to Covid-­19 Tools Accelerator­—­a platform for international support for addressing thedisease­—­helped coordinate the global response. The
platform supported diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics, equitable access and basic health systems development.11 Although the COVID-­19 Vaccines Global
Access facility (better known as COVAX)­— ­or vaccine
arm of the global response­—­was the best funded, it
failed in its aim to vaccinate 20 percent of the world

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action167

by the end of 2021.12 Vaccine nationalism in high-­
income countries and profit-­driven neglect of global
equity stymied this effort.13
Consider how we might better prepare for, andrespond to, future pandemic threats with solidarity
and creative resolve. First, the international community should come together and create new funding
mechanisms for vaccines and other essential countermeasures. But this funding should be conditionalon companies sharing the knowledge, data and intellectual property rights needed to produce resulting
products. So, when supply is limited, manufacturers
can produce the technologies at low cost and distribute them widely.14 Moreover, funding should be tied
to the health impacts of resulting technologies. While
there is considerable development of new drugs for
affluent patients, inadequate treatments exist for several of the world’s worst killers, and often the global
poor cannot access the treatments that do exist in atimely manner.15 Paying for essential countermeasures based on health impact could incentivize theprovision of more impactful technologies. The incentives might consist of advance market commitments
for companies with sufficient manufacturing capacity
or prize funds for those without such capacity. They
should be sufficient to cover the costs of researchand development and ensure equitable access to theresulting products for all. Second, the international
community should facilitate transparent, accountable, collective procurement and differentially pricethe resulting innovations, charging market prices
in rich countries to recoup investment costs while
subsidizing distribution in low- and middle-­income
countries.16
Collective procurement and differential pricing
may also help us acquire the resources to implement
other measures to ensure equitable access to resulting products. The international community must,for example, invest in improved manufacturing, distribution and basic health systems, including monitoring and response capacity, healthcare workers,
and transparency, communication and community

168

engagement activities.17 Moreover, the international
community must support other technology transfer
initiatives. For instance, countries should exercise
flexibilities in the Agreement on Trade-­Related Intellectual Property Rights and support much more
extensive patent waivers in future pandemics if companies are unwilling to make existing essential technologies needed to combat these threats available toall on reasonable terms.18
Some argue that solidarity and creative resolve cannot help the international community promote humandevelopment and that proposals along the above lines
simply are not feasible, but what we can achieve together is up to us.19 We should refuse to accept theclaim that determining our collective fortunes andpromoting human development for all is impossible.20
Solidarity and creative resolve can help us comeup with and implement effective responses to a variety of threats beyond global pandemics­—­including
climate change, financial crises and war. Moreover,when good ways to address threats to human development exist, solidarity and creative resolve can help
the international community cultivate the political
will needed to implement them. To address existential threats such as climate change, we do not justneed to create incentives for making the green energy transition, to implement better land and water
use policies and so forth.21 We need ways of getting
people to think differently about their moral obligations.22 If people think that they do not have to act inenvironmentally sustainable ways because their individual action will not make a difference, humanity
holds little hope of overcoming the kind of collective
action problems we need to overcome to combat climate change. So, we may have to focus our creative
efforts on making the case that we should see ourselves as bound to promote human development for
all whenever we can achieve positive change together. Solidarity and creative resolve can give us hopeand help us make meaningful progress in addressing
the shared global challenges we must overcome toflourish on a changing planet.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

N OT E S
The author would like to thank Mia Lövheim, Ben Nelson, Ralf Grahn,
Anders Herlitz, Rick Furtak, Tony Reeves, Brandon Ruffin, Caesar Atuire
and the Global Health Impact Pandemic Health Equity Working Groupfor discussion (http://global-­health-impact.org/pandemic) and Milan Patel,
Xiaoshun Li, Noa M Mizrachi, Elisabeth Van Tassell and the Global HealthImpact Team for research assistance.
1.

Ba and others 2021, pp. 391–392.

2.

Atuire and Hassoun 2023, p. 4.

3.

Atuire and Hassoun 2023; Hassoun 2021c, 2022. This is compatible withusing market mechanisms to achieve positive change, but solidaristic efforts might also employ other methods that require changing the ways
markets function. For other interpretations of solidarity, see Davies andSavulescu (2019) and Gould (2018).

4.

Hassoun 2020.

5.

Those who fail to have creative resolve may believe that the status quo
is acceptable or think that it is impossible to change. However, there issubstantial psychological evidence that people do not consider enoughalternatives in decisionmaking and that when we imagine ourselves
succeeding in tasks, we are more likely to do so (Bearden, Murphy and
Rapoport 2005; Braithwaite 2004; Snyder 1995, 2000). It is important not
to take too narrow a view of feasibility or possibility, assuming tight timeframes or financial constraints (Brennan and Pettit 2004; Goodin 1995).
Many other virtues and capabilities are necessary for creative resolve, andcultivating it may require practice in favourable conditions. For further discussion, see Hassoun (2022) and Hassoun, Friedman and Cosler (2022).

6.

Gould 2018; Hassoun 2020. Creative resolve can also help us secureother essential moral goods; for further discussion, see Hassoun (2020)and Hassoun, Friedman and Cosler (2022).

7.

Hassoun forthcoming.

8.

Hassoun 2022.

9.

Hassoun 2020, 2022.

10.

WHO 2021b.

11.

WHO 2021a.

12.

Berkley 2020.

13.

Hassoun 2021a.

14.

Atuire and Hassoun 2023; Basu, Gostin and Hassoun 2021; Conrad andLutter 2019; Hassoun 2021b; Miller 2020; Saxena and others 2022.

15.

Hassoun 2020; Hassoun, Friedman and Cosler 2022.

16.

Basu, Gostin and Hassoun 2021; Moon and others 2011; Saxena andothers 2022. Companies and international organizations sometimes use
tiered pricing, but here the idea is to provide rich as well as poor countries access to medicines at reasonable costs for their contexts througha global procurement mechanism. Moreover, doing so has the potential
to save companies and countries money (as pharmaceutical pricing, evenfor the public sector, is complex, with many intermediaries).

17.

Hassoun 2020, 2021b. We must also do many other things to address the
problems with our current global response plans. For instance, we must
address the structural and social determinants of health to limit vulnerability and ensure adequate social protection during pandemics (Basu,
Gostin and Hassoun 2021; Saxena and others 2022).

18.

Basu, Gostin and Hassoun 2021; Saxena and others 2022. Any further
health dividend the international community can reap from cooperating
to prevent and address major pandemics might be fruitfully redirected
towards promoting other aspects of human development. This proposal’s
novel contribution is to combine delinkage with collective procurement, differential pricing and other measures to ensure access to essential technologies during pandemics to ensure that the mechanism isself-­sustaining.

19.

McAdams and others 2020; Moon, Alonso Ruiz and Vieira 2021. Drawing
together the overarching recommendations on addressing health threats
articulated above, we might parallel the World Social Charter’s suggestions in creating new, innovative institutional structures to address major
global threats; creating a multilateral fund to support these structures; andenhancing efforts to set targets and evaluate performance in addressingthese threats.

20.

Unless, of course, doing so is impossible or will produce worse results.
These limits are part of creative resolve’s definition.

21.

UNDP 2020a, 2020b.

22.

Sen 2008.

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

169

SPOT L IG HT 5 . 3

The role of multilateral development banks
in the provision of global public goods
José Antonio Ocampo and Karla Daniela González, Columbia University

There is broad-­based agreement among the United
Nations and the Group of 20 (G20) and in the proposed Evolution Roadmap of the World Bank thatmultilateral development banks should provide financing to support developing countries’ contribution to global public goods. Multilateral developmentbanks have increased their financing for climatechange mitigation and adaptation and to a lesser extent for combating pandemics and supporting biodiversity. However, the resources provided are still
very small relative to what is needed. To enhancesuch financing, the institutions mentioned above
share three recommendations.
• Increase financing to support the provision of global public goods by developing countries.
• Include contingency clauses to respond to the vulnerability of countries associated with climatological and health issues and to manage the effects ofinternational economic crises on these countries.
These clauses should allow the suspension of debt
service with these institutions and even, eventually, a reduction in associated liabilities.
• Work more closely with the private sector to support its contribution to global public goods.
An essential theme of all these proposals is theneed to channel concessional credits or donations
through multilateral development banks. Furthermore, these benefits must also favour middle-­income
countries and create mechanisms that allow partial
subsidies for credits to the private sector to leverage
their investment in providing public goods. To makethis possible, official development assistance must be
greatly increased, an important challenge given thelimited funds now available. Aside from concessional
resources, the proposals call for longer-­term multilateral development bank loans (30–50 years), withlonger grace periods and lower interest rates. To
manage exchange rate volatility, multilateral development banks must lend more in the national currencies of borrowing countries, based on the resources170

they raise, with the placement of bonds in these currencies, which would also support the developmentof national capital markets.
Various other financial management proposals
would enhance the relationship between the financing of multilateral development banks and their capital, while maintaining the standards that allow these
institutions to maintain high investment grades inbond markets. Innovative financial mechanisms areneeded to leverage private investment, including
guarantees and public–private partnerships.
To expand available resources, the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) issued by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) that have not been used bydeveloped countries could be channelled throughmultilateral development banks, which are alreadyauthorized to hold such assets. This will require developing a new instrument that preserves the roleof SDRs as reserve assets, based on the experiences of IMF funds that have already developed suchmechanisms.
One of those funds is the Resilience and Sustainability Trust, which operates as a loan-­based trust.
Approximately three-­q uarters of IMF member
countries­—­all low-­income countries, developing andvulnerable small states and lower-­middle-income
countries­— ­are eligible for extended affordable financing from the trust.1 It is strategically oriented
to address prolonged structural challenges, notably
those related to climate change and pandemic preparedness. Since becoming operational in October
2022, it has approved 11 arrangements through its
Resilience and Sustainability Facility.
For multilateral development banks to fulfil allthese functions, as well as their traditional ones, themost important element is their capitalization. Capitalizations of the World Bank in 2018 and of all multilateral development banks after the 2007–2008
global financial crisis responded to this demand. A
source of uncertainty, however, is whether some

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

major shareholders are willing to capitalize the WorldBank and regional banks again.
The proposals differ considerably in the magnitudeof the capitalizations required. The independent experts organized by the G20 proposed increasing theannual financing of these institutions to $500 billion
by 2030, a third of which would be in official development assistance or concessional credits and therest in nonconcessional credits.2 Given the amountof bank approvals by multilateral development banks
to developing countries, this means approximately
tripling the value of their loans. UN estimates of thestimulus needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are much more ambitious. In
February 2023 the UN Secretary-­General highlighted how the relationship between multilateral development bank financing and the size of the world
economy was substantially reduced in the 1960s
and 1970s, particularly for the International Bankfor Reconstruction and Development of the WorldBank Group.3 For this reason the United Nations has
suggested that a return to 1960 levels would imply athreefold increase in capitalization, enabling an increase in loans of nearly $2 trillion, an amount closer
to the SDG financing gap.
Finally, it is important that multilateral development banks constitute a service network. In the caseof the World Bank, this includes participating in regional projects alongside regional partners.4 Added
to this is the need for all multilateral developmentbanks to work with national development banks andother public institutions.5 Public development banks
finance 10–12 percent of investment worldwide,6 although with considerable differences across countries. This collaboration would allow national banks
to become executors of global public goods programmes, as well as channels of information on therelated financing needs of their countries.

N OT E S
1.

IMF 2023.

4.

World Bank, 2023.

2.

G20 2023a.

5.

Griffith-­Jones and Ocampo 2018.

3.

UN 2023a.

6.

UN 2023a.

Chapter 5 — Expanding agency for collective action

171

CHAPTER
6

Breaking thegridlock to enhancecollective action

PA RT II — REIMAG IN IN G CO O PERATION BY EXPAND ING AGENCY AND EAS ING P OLAR IZATION

173

CHAPTER 6

Breaking the gridlock to enhance collective action

Polarization divides societies into belligerent andopposing camps, poisoning domestic and international
cooperation.
Moving away from zero-sum thinking by providing
global public goods can ease polarization indirectly.
Addressing misperceptions about issues and othergroups can bridge divides and reduce perceptions ofinsecurity and thus ease polarization directly.

1 74

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Collective action that transcends group boundaries­—­
not within groups, such as those defined by country
borders, but across groups­—­is paramount for managing interdependence, including through the provisionof global public goods.1 Collective action is often particularly challenging when cooperation is required.2
This chapter considers how heightened politicalpolarization within countries impedes cross-­country
cooperation to enhance the provision of global public goods.3 It first delves into how narrow group identification can lead to political polarization, eroding
space for acting together on shared challenges. It
then shows how political polarization hinders the
emergence of shared narratives, beliefs and goals, diminishing the prospects for collective action. Finally,
it argues that polarization is surmountable and describes pathways for breaking the gridlock.

How does political polarization
come about?
Collective action is influenced by social contexts­—­through shared beliefs, values, social norms, worldviews, narratives and how agents see themselves andothers.4 Shared identities enhance social ties that can
produce many benefits for people’s wellbeing andpositive societal outcomes within groups.5 Identifying with social groups is sometimes supported by affiliation with abstract notions, such as being part ofa nation.6 National parochialism­— ­strong cooperation within countries­—­is ubiquitous.7 But global public goods require transnational collective action thattranscends country boundaries (chapter 3).8
Identifying with a larger global community would
facilitate contributions to global public goods.9 In
every society many people are inclined to care aboutothers beyond borders.10 Interdependence is linked
with people adopting a more cosmopolitan view ofthe world, shrinking their perceived social distancewith geographically distant others.11 For instance, as
people get exposed to greater diversity, stereotypes
diminish and lead people to perceive different socialgroups as more similar.12 While it is sometimes assumed that cosmopolitan attitudes are held primarily by elites, they are common across the population.13
Yet barriers to the emergence and consolidation ofbeliefs and attitudes supporting international cooperation are appearing as a result of within-­country

political polarization, which is particularly harmful when it takes the form of affective polarization,as people favour their group even more and othergroups even less.

Barriers to the emergence and consolidation“of beliefs and attitudes supporting international
cooperation are appearing as a result ofwithin-­country political polarization,
which is particularly harmful when it
takes the form of affective polarization

To see how, note that collective action is influenced
by the way people reason about societal issues­—­andthe beliefs, narratives, attitudes and viewpoints thatthey bring into public reasoning. And since many ofthe most pressing challenges must address the priorities of various diverse groups at once, people must
transcend group boundaries and fairly consider theneeds and priorities of others. To enhance collective action among this diversity of priorities and beliefs, the human development approach emphasizes
the centrality of public reasoning and deliberation(box 6.1).14
Strong group identification can work against intergroup cooperation, particularly when the adoption ofnorms and values of an ingroup is based on a strong
sense of identity.15 Group affiliation also has consequences for how people form and maintain beliefs.
Ingroup favouritism (seeing one’s own group in a positive light) has been described as one of a few fundamental beliefs that form the basis for a range of otherbehavioural and informational biases.16 When people
identify strongly with a particular group, they may
be more receptive to information that aligns withthe group’s beliefs while rejecting information that
contradicts them, thus engaging in identity-­based
reasoning.17
Some forms of identity-­based affiliation with an
ingroup can lead to affective political polarization­—­feeling positive about one’s own group and negative
about other groups.18 Social identity can be a powerful driver of positive within-­group cooperative behaviour.19 But it can also hinder intergroup cooperation
when it builds on the strong ties that people develop
towards their social group and takes a form of polarization that instils a heightened dislike and hostility towards outgroups. Then it can be pernicious,20 such as

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175

Box 6.1 Public reasoning and deliberation for human development
Human development emphasizes people’s values, beliefs and aspirations when determining the actions societies
might take in shaping our shared future.1 It also calls attention to processes of social choice and deliberation and tothe crucial importance of public reasoning for advancing just outcomes. People’s ability to engage in any processof collective action depends both on their individual agency and on the availability of practical avenues to influence
policies and decisions.
Agency is in turn enhanced by broader processes of public deliberation, which enable people to gather information, exchange ideas, consider diverse perspectives and resolve disagreements. Public reasoning processes draw
on the wide range of values and motivations. For example, people might have differing motives for supporting green
policies­—­from improving conditions in their own neighbourhoods to wanting a better world for future generations.
Drawing on different positions might help expand common ground and widen social support for green policies.2 In
addition to upholding a plurality of views and beliefs, public reasoning can ensure that collective decisions are seen
as fair, by engaging a wide range of interests and being seen as justifiable in the eyes of others, including those whohave differing views. It also allows for continually refining policies in the light of changing values, new information andsocietal evolution, thus ensuring that concerns of justice remain relevant.
The efficacy of procedures of social choice is thus greatly enhanced by social contexts that foster public reasoning,with an emphasis on agency and participation. Many of these characteristics of social choice procedures are in linewith democratic norms and practices, such as pluralism and accountability. Trust plays a role here as well. In addition
to facilitating the most basic activities in social life, generalized trust contributes to aspects of democratic politicalpractice, such as tolerating differences. Generalized trust also contributes to the development of overlapping social
networks and the forms of association where people can come together, participate in their communities and engage
in civic life.3 By contrast, trust only in those from one’s own social group and known others signals a lower radius oftrust, with a potentially diminished scope for cooperating with unknown others.4
For collective action, procedures of social choice allow people to be motivated by more than their own selfish
interests (as discussed in chapter 4). Indeed, one the biggest challenges to collective action among diverse groups
is overcoming people’s partiality towards their own groups and any vested interests connected to those groups. The
need to overcome this parochialism further underscores public reasoning processes. Subjecting viewpoints to theeyes of others beyond one’s own group can help in overcoming potential blind spots and biases when decisions
are justified only by the priorities of one’s own group. This includes subjecting beliefs and reasoning to an impartial
spectator, someone whose interests are not directly advanced by what happens to a particular group.5 Consider how
unjust positions­—s­ uch as religious intolerance or gender-­based discrimination­—c­ an go unchallenged if not subjected
to critical scrutiny. Engaging in public reasoning­—j­ustifying positions in the eyes of an impartial spectator­—­can help
limit the influence of such parochialism and curbs the possibility of vested interests of some groups dominating theprocedures of social choice.
To sum up, procedures of social choice that allow for a diversity of perspectives, draw on agency and mitigate theinfluence of group biases can enhance collective action in many ways. They expand the possibilities for acting together, by drawing on a larger consensus than within-­group agreement alone. They also open possibilities to draw on
a wide range of values and actions beyond what the exclusively self-­interested model of human behaviour suggests.
Notes
1. The description and value of public reasoning deliberation is based on Sen (2009b). 2. Echoing the arguments made in Oreskes (2019).
3. Uslaner 1999. 4. Enke 2023b. 5. This is an expression that Sen (2009b) borrows from Adam Smith. In contrast with Rawls (1993), Sen(2009b) argues that the possibility of having impartial spectators outside each country could break through parochialism.

undermining support for democratic norms and practices.21 Social identity can also erode social preferences.22 By tapping into the anger and biases that comefrom strong partisan identities, it fosters animosity between groups, even if their positions on issues are notthat divergent.23 Strategic identity signalling can lead
to behaviours motivated by belonging to the group176

rather than by self-­interest.24 It intensifies social divides and heightens divisiveness in political and publiclife.25 In the political sphere it can lead to the emergence of seemingly immovable and mutually distrusting political blocs, transforming political differences
into divisive zero-­sum battles of us versus them, withall the negative consequences described in chapter 4.

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Affective polarization is widespread and increasingaround the world.26 It is affecting national and international politics that will shape how shared global
challenges will be addressed in the decades to come.27
Because polarization often translates into intolerance
and an aversion to compromise and negotiation,
it can lead to political gridlock and dysfunction. It
does so in part by eroding trust across communities,
impeding efforts to address major shared challenges, such as health crises, violent conflict and climatechange. Since many of these issues engender opposing beliefs and intense political competition, polarization poses a major societal obstacle to addressing
shared problems.28

Political polarization imperils cooperation
Having diversity in preferences and considering a diverse range of perspectives and priorities can enrichcollective decisionmaking and action­—­it is the clustering and segregation of preferences into opposing
groups that can harm collective action.29 Indeed, political institutions have been designed to harness diversity, and even rivalry, to democratically serve the public
interest. For instance, the arguments invoked by James
Madison in designing the US constitution did not assume away competing interests. They sought, throughfragmented and overlapping institutions of authority,
to harness that diversity to build safeguards and adaptability to an ever-­changing environment. If politicalpolarization threatens that diversity, the very effectiveness of those institutional designs can be impaired.30

Having diversity in preferences and considering“
a diverse range of perspectives and priorities canenrich collective decisionmaking and action­—­it is
the clustering and segregation of preferences into
opposing groups that can harm collective action

Political polarization goes beyond differences inviews between various social groups. It collapses people’s beliefs and preferences into differences definedby a single, salient group identity, coupled with animosity towards those with different viewpoints andpriorities. It can have dramatic social and politicalconsequences within societies (spotlight 6.1). Thissection explores how polarization impedes prospects
for intergroup cooperation.

Beliefs tied to single or narrow identities
In many countries polarization parallels political
campaigns that heighten the salience of narrow andexclusionary group identities.31 Partisanship is often
a key dividing line for polarization: it is fairly stable, and it is regularly incited through frequent political campaigning.32 But other social identities canbecome politically salient as well, such as race, nationality, ethnicity and religion. In many parts of
the world, polarization occurs around rifts that areframed as identity conflicts, leading to longstanding
political cleavages.33 Polarization often ensues whensuch identities are made politically salient, as othercross-­cutting ties between groups diminish.34
Polarization can also emerge between groups holding competing political beliefs, opinions and worldviews, where holding a certain opinion is the basis ofsocial identity.35 The Brexit referendum gave rise to
new social identities­—­Leaver and Remainer­—­which
formed the basis of heightened affective polarization
between those two groups.36 In the United States andelsewhere, people’s self-­identification with their vaccination status during the Covid-­19 pandemic wasevident in the animosity between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups and the polarized social responses
to mandatory vaccination policies.37
Polarizing rhetoric has been described as a strategy
of identifying someone over something to blame forgroup-­based concerns and insecurities.38 Economic, political or cultural anxieties create conditions forpolarization. Declining economic opportunity andincreasing inequality (whether real or perceived) canfoster political polarization, leading people towards
closer integration with their ingroups.39 And cultural aspects can become more salient as wellbeing improves.40 Furthermore, affective polarization has thepotential to increase economic inequalities.41 Insecurities can make people more receptive to polarizing
messages­— ­such as narratives that draw on a dominant group’s perceived loss of status or contentious
debates framed as moral issues where people are likely to resist compromise (as seen in debates on gender).42 The 2021/2022 Human Development Report
showed that polarization and insecurity are closely
linked: people who feel insecure are more likely tohold extreme political preferences and less likely totrust others.43

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177

So, what matters is not the presence of group differences or disagreements­—­it is that all differences arecollapsed into questions of a narrow or single identity. Polarization ensues when people’s beliefs, attitudes and worldviews are closely tied to the groups
they identify with, coupled with strong ingroup bias
and loyalty, alongside antipathy and prejudice towards other groups. As discussed below, it diminishes
the possibilities for acting together and lends itself tonarratives rejecting pluralism.

Us versus them­—­the toxic brew of zero-­sum thinking
Polarization is associated with people perceiving
their differences as zero-­sum, making them lesslikely to seek joint actions and identify shared goals.
Zero-­sum beliefs (see chapter 4) make people in polarized societies less likely to trust or associate withindividuals from an opposing political or ideologicalcamp44 and more likely to seek social and moral distance from their perceived outgroups and describe
their political opponents in dehumanizing or derogatory terms.45

Polarization shaped by zero-­sum beliefs can“alter the functioning of political institutions,leading to gridlock and dysfunction

By reducing wide-­ranging political issues to questions of us versus them, where a group can gain onlyat the expense of the others losing, polarization canfoster resistance to actions viewed as reflecting thevalues and priorities of outgroups. Because polarization delegitimizes unifying or middle-­groundnarratives, groups seeking common ground and collaboration in a context shaped by zero-­sum beliefs
can lose credibility and public support. This can diminish confidence in other social institutions, suchas the media and civil society organizations, whichcome to be seen as biased and untrustworthy (spotlight 6.1).
Polarization shaped by zero-­sum beliefs can also
alter the functioning of political institutions, leading
to gridlock and dysfunction. And because it is often
deployed as a political strategy, it can create conditions for a vicious cycle: polarizing rhetoric and mobilization by one party leads opposing groups to also178

adopt polarizing messages.46 When people view theirpolitical opponents not just as people with differing
opinions but as enemies that gain at their expense,
they tend to adopt a conflict mindset, viewing theirown goals as attainable only by excluding outgroupmembers­—­and becoming more invested in addressing this perceived threat than in reconciling or cooperating with their opponents.47 Opposing groups thenlean towards more extreme beliefs and preferences,culminating in greater tolerance for behaviour thatflaunts democratic norms and practices.48 So, perceptions of political contests as zero-sum battles can leadpolarized groups to become more willing to accept
extraordinary measures.
Thus, polarization coupled with zero-­sum beliefs
has contributed to the recent support for populism
and to threats to democratic norms and practices,49
sometimes increasing support for authoritarianism.50
Indeed, increasing support for authoritarianism isalso correlated with increases in polarization,51 breeding cynicism about compromise and tolerance, which
are especially important for democratic processes.52
Compromise becomes a betrayal of principles rather
than a necessary part of the democratic process.

Threats to international cooperation
The rise in political polarization and zero-­sum beliefs
makes international cooperation more politicizedand contested in domestic politics, enflaming beliefs and narratives about international institutions.53
Partisanship and group affiliation often determine
people’s preferences on whether leaders should engage in international cooperation and how.54 Thus,
polarization can also contribute to policy instability,
where shifts in political power are accompanied bydramatic policy changes, including on matters of international cooperation and engagement, with direct
bearing on the prospects for the provision of global
public goods.
Political polarization’s impact on international cooperation is manifested, in part, through reduced
support for official development assistance in morepolarized high-­income countries.55 It is also manifested in reduced domestic support for global public
goods, such as mitigating climate change.56 Scepticism about international cooperation is not new.57

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But there is a growing recognition that lack of domestic support for international cooperation has parallelled the increase in political polarization.58 Between
1970 and 2019 there were 84 referendums concerning international cooperation (such as membershipin international organisations), with an increase inrecent decades.59 There have been campaigns forwithdrawing from international institutions in several countries.60 The European Union, the World
Trade Organization and international justice institutions have been described as facing legitimacy
challenges.61
Taking into account the influence of beliefs, narratives and cultural factors on international cooperation helps in understanding today’s heightened
relationship between political polarization and support (or lack thereof) for international cooperation.
People often hold strong beliefs and views about international issues, contrary to assumptions that people are uninformed or uninterested. People’s beliefs
about and preferences for foreign policy draw muchfrom their moral values, worldviews and ideologicalorientations.62 The way people conceptualize fairness
influences their evaluation of burden sharing in international cooperation: those concerned with equity
are less likely to support contributions to cooperative
initiatives when other countries are perceived as notpaying their fair share.63 In Germany people’s perceptions of transnational interdependence strengthen
corresponding beliefs about the importance of international institutions for solving problems.64
Euroscepticism often draws on economic and cultural anxieties in shaping political polarization.65
People who are hopeful about their societies viewthe European Union more positively than those who
are fearful, with the latter less satisfied with the direction of policy and the quality of democracy in EU
decisionmaking.66 International cooperation has
become more politically contentious in countries
where political polarization around economic inequality and immigration has gained prominence inpublic debate.67 The package of openness that international institutions are associated with­—­the combination of economic integration with exposure toforeign cultural influences and ideas­— ­can contribute to perceptions of insecurity and become a fault
line in political polarization.68 Additional explanations run through perceptions, attitudes and beliefs

and include popular support for leaders espousing
nationalism, protectionist policies and opposition tooutside influences, complementing economic explanations for backlash against international engagement (chapter 2).69

With rising polarization, international“
cooperation can be undermined by political

campaigns against international institutions
With rising polarization, international cooperation
can be undermined by political campaigns against international institutions. Participation in international
institutions can become polarizing. Polarization canmake the domestic political dynamics of international participation (domestic ratification processes)
uncertain and disincentivize the executive branch of
governments from entering agreements. Other nations may view a polarized country as less reliableand predictable in its foreign policy decisions, reducing trust in its commitments and alliances. One country’s effort to contest international commitments andalliances can prompt others to do the same, contributing to a contagion effect.70 And if such efforts are
not seen to be reflected, for example, in international institutions that support those commitments andalliances, that can intensify contestation on the basisthat the international institution in question has proven unwilling to accommodate demands.71 This contagion is not a given, but the possibilities for contagion
are shaped strongly by the extent to which people’s
existing beliefs are polarized.72
Since many global public goods are a matter ofchoice and agency, people’s beliefs, shaped by narratives and ideas, are central for driving action onshared challenges. Political polarization diminishes
the space for such action, given its association withzero-­sum thinking, making it harder for people to recognize that there are options where all sides can gain.
It steers decisionmaking away from collective action,
leading instead to contentious battles between opposing political camps. It erodes the possibilities foraddressing shared challenges between groups, instead fuelling mutual distrust and suspicion. Perceptions of insecurity exacerbate these dynamics, in partby making people more receptive to narratives of intergroup competition and constraining the possibilities for acting together (chapter 4).

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Enhancing international
collective action­—­now
Prospects for cooperation might seem uncertain
given that domestic political polarization is compounded by geopolitical upheaval (spotlight 6.2).
But international institutions, including the United Nations, have historically been both constrainedand enabled in periods of geopolitical change (spotlight 6.3).73 So, there is even more reason to pursue
collective action, including through multilateralorganizations.
International collective action can be enhanced
along four avenues.
• Drawing on a broader understanding of behaviour,
as discussed in chapter 4, may give more reason tosee additional options going forward, since frames
or narratives can shape the cultural and social context for behaviour and institutions. The provisionof global public goods can put forward frames beyond zero-­sum thinking.
• Expanding international financing for international cooperation beyond official development
assistance to include financing for domestic
contributions to global public goods.74 This may
imply new instruments and approaches,75 but key
considerations are the extent of domestic support
to channel resources internationally and whether
arguments to finance global public goods crowdout the motive to provide official development assistance. That crowding out appears unlikely.
• Leveraging the high correlation between trust in
one another with trust in both national and multilateral institutions.
• Directly addressing political polarization.

Framing alternatives to zero-­sum thinking
Zero-­sum beliefs lead to predictable psychological reactions and behaviours driven by the idea that if one
country gets ahead, others must be left behind, andvice-­versa.76 Narratives premised on zero-­sum beliefs
tend to make countries less inclined to cooperate withothers77 and are at the root of political polarization insome countries.78
Adequately provided global public goods are notzero-­sum in that a country benefiting from or using a
180

global public good does not detract from others doing
the same. This does not mean that the benefits areequally shared. But recognizing that multiple parties
can enjoy the benefits simultaneously may thus provide a framing that gives salience to the pursuit ofopportunities for cooperation in arenas that are notzero-­sum.79 This is particularly the case for planetarypublic goods, a lens that could offer a new perspectiveon the inevitability of human mutuality and interdependence on a shared planet.80

Recognizing that multiple parties can“enjoy the benefits of global public goods

simultaneously may provide a framing thatgives salience to the pursuit of opportunities forcooperation in arenas that are not zero-sum
In a selfish choice model of behaviour, agents seeking to advance their self-­interest can act strategically,sacrificing their wellbeing to benefit others if there isreciprocity. But reciprocity is not the only mechanismthat can lead to and sustain cooperation.81 As discussed in chapter 4, Elinor Ostrom famously documented the variety of institutional arrangements thatstructure interactions among people and between
people and common pool resources in a variety ofmutual engagements that foster collective action insome respects, even when differences and disagreements persist in others.
Determining the regularities of these arrangements and whether they could be scaled up to theglobal level has been a topic of enduring debate.82 But
there is evidence that people can support unilateral
action on some global public goods, not because they
misunderstand the need for collective action but because they have a sense of commitment and obligation, particularly in countries where people perceive
the need for the country to take a leadership role83
and even when social norms are not supportive.84

Financing global public goods
International flows of resources can be motivated primarily by supporting low- or middle-income countries in making progress, as in official development
assistance. Financing for global public goods follows
a different rationale­—­international flows are meant to

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

enhance the receiving countries’ ability to contributeto the provision of global public goods.85 Still, even if
the concern is purely motivated by, say, the pledgeof the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development toleave no one behind, the provision of global public
goods still matters, given that their underprovision
can drive exclusion and inequality. Just consider how
the underprovision of multiple global public goods
during the Covid-­19 pandemic widened inequalities
and increased deprivations, as documented in part Iof the Report. And looking ahead, failures or delays
in providing the global public goods needed to mitigate climate change will increase inequalities, as documented in chapter 1, with some of the most harmful
impacts of human development falling on people andcountries already deprived.
Moreover, when the incidence of benefits from theprovision of global public goods is favourable to those
who have the least, that provision can be progressive.
So, even those motivated by supporting poorer countries would have reason to support financing global
public goods in those instances.86

When the incidence of benefits from“the provision of global public goods isfavourable to those who have the least,that provision can be progressive

Using public resources internationally depends on
support from domestic constituencies. A rationale
to finance global public goods might be seen to risk
alienating domestic constituencies that support international flows and development cooperation motivated by the support to reduce poverty and makelow-income countries progress. Those reasons sustain support for humanitarian aid (saving lives) andincome transfers to low-­income countries and people
living in fragile settings. To address this concern, it isimportant to establish, first, whether people who support income redistribution at the national level also
support it internationally. Chapter 4 documented
that preferences for redistribution vary within countries and are influenced by social preferences and bybeliefs about whether inequalities are unfair­—­bothof which are heterogenous across and within countries. In Germany, despite a high correlation between
support for national and international redistribution(figure 6.1), the share of respondents who prefer thesame redistribution in the national and global contexts was 42 percent. Others want extensive national and very little global redistribution and vice-­versa.
So, even though the correlation between national andinternational redistribution is high, it is not perfect,
and additional factors beyond blanket support for redistribution must be at play.
While individual support for international flowsof resources is a new area of study, the main determinants of that support (whatever the rationale forthe flows) seem to be people’s beliefs about the geographic and moral boundaries of concern.87 Do
people believe they hold moral obligations towards
others anywhere in the world (a more universalist belief) or only to those who are closer or similar, including those living in the same country (a more parochial
belief)? The variation in these beliefs is widespread
both within and across countries, but it is possible
to place individuals along a spectrum from lower tohigher levels of universal beliefs. Evidence from 60
countries with 85 percent of the world’s population
and 90 percent of global GDP reveals a strong correlation between more universal beliefs and support for
the global poor versus helping the local poor and forprotecting the global environment versus protecting
the local environment (figure 6.2). These results holdafter country effects, income, education, age, gender, urban residence and religiosity are controlled for,consistent with evidence that within-­country variation in support to political outcomes is more strongly
associated with beliefs along the parochial-­universal
spectrum than with variables such as education andincome.88
So, people who hold more parochial beliefs are notopposed to redistribution as such, since they support it when asked about local or community-­based
redistribution.89 National redistribution in high-­
income countries in North America and Europe ishighly impersonal,90 typically not geared to support
particular groups or communities. Thus, the correlation between national and global redistribution
in countries such as Germany might be driven by agroup of people sharing more universal beliefs. Given
the insights about cultural differences in preferences and beliefs reviewed in chapter 4, one cannot assume that universalist beliefs in shaping attitudes
towards global redistribution are universal. Indeed,
the coefficients of regressions of political attitudes

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181

Figure 6.1 Support for national redistribution is correlated with support for global redistribution in Germany, butsome people want extensive national and very little global redistribution and vice-­versa
National redistribution
10 full
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1 none
1
none

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10
full

Global redistribution
Note: The correlation coefficient is 0.70 (p < 0.0001). Darker colors represent more responses in this area.
Source: Fehr, Mollerstrom and Perez-­Truglia 2022.

on universalism (with country effects controlled for)are positive for all high-­income countries but lower
for rich non-­WEIRD countries (western, educated,industrialized, rich and democratic)­—­and even lower
for low- and middle-­income countries (figure 6.3).
There is thus little reason to believe that presenting
a rationale for international flows from high-­income
countries to finance global public goods would dilute a commitment to international flows based on
motives linked to reducing poverty or saving lives,
given that the underlying motive for domestic public support for international flows is associated withless parochial beliefs. Moreover, enhancing the provision of many global public goods is key to reducing
global inequalities as well as vulnerability to poverty
and other deprivations. In addition, some evidence
suggests that people in low- and middle-­income
countries do not always favour international aid asa means of reducing intercountry inequality,91 withrecipients more interested in framings that address
182

justice and enhance dignity and agency92 than incharity-­based rationales that recipients may perceive
as stigmatizing.93
Advancing equity is also associated with higher domestic support for international agreements perceived
as fair, along with low domestic costs of implementation and, crucially, whether other countries also participate.94 In high-­income countries domestic support
to finance global public goods depends in part on thelevel of ambition in other countries.95 This observation
is in line with domestic constituencies and politicalleaders caring about how their countries are portrayedin the international context,96 as in global performanceindicators.97 Still, the impact is not uniform across the
population, with some groups more likely than others
to have their views shaped by these factors,98 making
political polarization particularly relevant.
In sum, countries may (and do) find it hard to agree
on providing global public goods. But advancing arguments for financing them does not necessarily

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Figure 6.2 More universalist beliefs are correlated withconcerns both for the global poor and for the global
environment

a. Focus on helping global versus local poor

Disagree

Focus on reducing
local poverty

Figure 6.3 Universalist beliefs are associated with global
redistribution and global environment in high-­income
countries, but the cultural context matters
OLS coefficient ofcomposite universalism
1.2
0.9

1.8

0.6

1.7
0.3
1.6
0
Agree

1.5
–0.3

1.4
0

20

40

60

80

Composite universalism

Reduceinequality
Rich, WEIRD

b. Focus on protecting global versus local environment
Focus onglobal environment
1.85
1.80
1.75

Prioritize
Prioritize
ProProglobal immigration immigration
globalenvironment in areapoor
in country
Rich, non-WEIRD

LMIC LS is ordinary least squares.
O
Note: The vertical axis shows the coefficients of ordinary least squares regressions of agreement with policy priorities on composite universalism, as definedin the note to figure 6.2. Each coefficient can be interpreted as the change
in agreement with a policy priority (on a scale of 1–4) in response to moving
the index of composite universalism from 0 to 100. Whiskers show 95 percent
confidence intervals. WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) countries comprise Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy,
the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom
and the United States. Rich, non-­WEIRD countries are Chile, Czechia, Croatia,
Hungary, Israel, Japan, the Republic of Korea and Poland. LMIC corresponds toa subset of low- and middle-­income countries included in the analysis.
Source: Cappelen, Enke and Tungodden 2022.

1.70
1.65
1.60
0

20

40

60

80

Composite universalism
Note: The scatter plots average agreement with a policy priority for a given
level of universalist beliefs, with country fixed effects controlled for. Policy priorities on the vertical axes are coded as 1–4, with 1 corresponding to “strongly
disagree” and 4 to “strongly agree.” The index of composite universalism isconstructed based on how respondents allocated hypothetical money between a specific ingroup member and a random stranger. The decision is
disinterested in that respondents were told that they could not keep any ofthe money for themselves. Robust evidence suggests that results are similar for hypothetical and real allocations of resources and that it makes little
difference when the question is asked invoking a moral concern or avoiding
any reference to moral obligations. The positive correlations are statisticallysignificant (p < 0.01).
Source: Cappelen, Enke and Tungodden 2022.

imply less support for international flows from high-­
income countries. Financing global public goods islikely to result in the need to substantially increaseinternational flows and potential domestic resource
mobilization in high-­income countries. But it is likely to enhance global equity through two channels.
One, by mitigating the drivers of inequality associated with the underprovision of global public goods.
And two, by generating ancillary national benefits,
such as less local pollution or poverty through job creation (typically one of the explicit intents of official
development assistance). Multilateral institutions
might need to more clearly articulate their potential
role in channelling these resources, building­—­but
also expanding­— ­on their track record of pooling andallocating international financial resources to meet

Chapter 6 — B reaking the gridlock to enhance collective action183country needs. This is well established in the humanitarian realm, for instance, with strong evidence
suggesting that when the United Nations allocateshumanitarian assistance, it does so on the basis of actual needs and is not driven by other considerations.99
The expansion would need to include supporting
low- and middle-­income countries to contribute to
global public goods.

Building trust in international institutions
through trust in national institutions

trust (table 6.1). This is consistent with evidence that
more-­trusting individuals also view international institutions more positively and show greater support
for compromising with other countries.109
Although “confidence in institutions” has varying interpretations and depends on multiple factors,
confidence in the national government explains two-­
thirds of the variance in national averages of confidence in the United Nations (figure 6.4). Assessments
Figure 6.4 Confidence in national institutions is correlatedwith confidence in multilateral institutions, key forinternational collective action

Generalized trust reflects people’s beliefs in the inherent integrity of others and contributes to cooperative action at scale.100 It is linked to a range ofsocially beneficial outcomes, and its importance for
economic performance is widely documented.101 It isalso linked to such outcomes as greater political stability and faster recovery from economic crises.102 It
is especially relevant for cooperating with those one
knows little about­— ­or in uncertain situations.103 For
international cooperation, trust facilitates collective
action. Indeed, international cooperation would benearly impossible without a basic belief that countries will respect their commitments, which also enhances multilateral institutions’ ability to function.104
While trust in institutions is difficult to specify
with precision,105 positive evaluations of institutions(particularly state institutions) have been associated with support for climate action106 and are linked
with generalized trust.107 For example, the belief thatstate institutions are effective punishers of free riders
enhances generalized trust.108 Confidence in national and international institutions is more than 10 percentage points higher among people with generalized

Confidence inthe United Nations
1

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Confidence in national government
Note: Confidence in institutions (the national government and the United Nations) implies reporting “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence (other options: “not very much” or “none at all”).
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from the World
Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

Table 6.1 Confidence in national and international institutions is higher among people who trust others
People who do not trust others (generalized trust)
Confidence in national
government
Confidence
in the United
Nations

People who trust others (generalized trust)
Confidence in national
government

No

Yes

Total

No

Yes

Total

No

41.0

14.9

55.9

28.2

16.6

44.8

Yes

17.6

26.5

44.1

17.9

37.3

55.2

Total

58.6

41.4

100.0

46.0

54.0

100.0

Note: Generalized trust implies reporting that “most people can be trusted” (other option: “need to be very careful”). Confidence in institutions (the national government and the United Nations) implies reporting “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence (other options: “not very much” or “none at all”).
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from the World Values Survey, using individual observations across countries with data.

184

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

of confidence in other institutions relevant for collective action are also highly correlated with confidence
in the national government (figure 6.5).
The link between trust in national and international institutions implies that perceptions of the legitimacy of national institutions predict the perceived
legitimacy of international institutions.110 There isalso evidence that communication by national institutions (governments or civil society organizations)on the performance of international organizations

has more impact on the perceived legitimacy of international institutions than direct communication
by international organizations themselves.111 To theextent that political polarization both undermines
confidence in institutions (national and international) and is associated with perceptions of insecurity
that also undermine interpersonal trust, addressing
it could be a lever to enhance trust in both national
and international institutions, as well as interpersonal trust.

Figure 6.5 Confidence in several institutions is highly correlated with confidence in the national government
Confidence injustice system/courts

Confidence inparliament

1

1

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

0

0
0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

0

Confidence in national government
Confidence inthe press

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Confidence in national government
Confidence inmajor companies

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

0

0
0

0.2

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Confidence in national government

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Confidence in national government

Note: Confidence in institutions (national government, justice system/courts, parliament, the press, major companies) implies reporting “a great deal”
or “quite a lot” of confidence (other options: “not very much” or “none at all”).
Source: Human Development Report Office based on data from the World Values Survey (Inglehart and others 2022).

Chapter 6 — B reaking the gridlock to enhance collective action

185

Polarization intensifies ingroup trust while eroding outgroup trust. While high ingroup trust is not inherently a problem, its combination with an erosion
in generalized trust can impair cooperation between
groups. Polarization and declines in generalized trust
can be mutually reinforcing.112 Thus, tackling polarization could enhance intergroup cooperation.113

Tackling polarization directly
This chapter has argued that polarization hinders
collective action across social groups and that there
are ways to address it indirectly, as discussed up to
now. But there are also ways to tackle it directly, threeof which are explored here­—­by acting on people’s
misperceptions about issues and about the groups
that they do not affiliate with, by enhancing cross-­cutting social ties that transcend group divisions andby addressing perceptions of insecurity.
Addressing misperceptions about
issues and about other groups
At the individual level the belief that climate change
is human-caused is widespread.114 But individual beliefs alone do not determine collective action­—­whatpeople believe others think about climate change
also matters.115 For example, while 69 percent of people around the world report being willing to sac­rificesome of their income to contribute to climate change
mitigation, only 43 percent perceive others believing the same (a 26 percentage point misper­ceptiongap).116 A recent survey in the United States foundthat 80–90 percent of respondents understand thechallenge of climate change. And while 66–80 percent of all respondents support action to mitigate
climate change, respondents estimated that the prevalence of that support in the rest of the population
was only 37–43 percent.117 Around the world many
people experience a “false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support.” 118 In otherwords people agree on more than they think theydo. These misperceptions are pervasive and extend
to other concerns that require collective action.119
Misperceiving others’ beliefs can lead to the persistence of pluralistic ignorance,120 which sustains policies or political arrangements that are inconsistent186

with prevailing individual beliefs.121 In contrast, motivating societywide responses to collective action
challenges can be enhanced if these misperceptions
are addressed.122
Misperceptions imply biased beliefs about what
others think about actual events and facts and can bepolarizing when people hold misperceptions about
what outgroups think of them (spotlight 6.4).123 They
can also emerge not only within societies but also
across countries and can lead to misunderstandings
and even conflict.124 Such misperceptions can drive
people to hold more extreme beliefs than they would
otherwise­—­people evaluate others’ positions whenforming their own opinions and are therefore led toadopt more extreme positions.125
Misperceptions in the general population affectthe positions of political leaders, who often vastly
overestimate the animosity among different groups,
leading to further misperceptions and related polarization, as well as the erosion of democratic norms.126
People often hold (incorrect) beliefs about others thatreinforce their own beliefs.127 Misperceptions can befurther compounded because people tend to interact more often with those who share their own views
and consume information that confirms their biases about others.128 Polarized societies also tend to bevulnerable to misinformation, given that affectively
biased people are more likely to engage in forms of
motivated reasoning,129 with misinformation, evenon otherwise neutral issues, potentially further entrenching misperceptions. The media environment(including social media) and leaders’ messaging
often play central roles in the emergence and persistence of misperceptions.130

People agree on more than they think they“do. Misperceiving others’ beliefs can lead tothe persistence of pluralistic ignorance, whichsustains policies or political arrangements thatare inconsistent with prevailing individual beliefs
Misperceptions can shape public support acrossa range of issues. This includes support for income
redistribution, which is sensitive to misperceptions
about the extent of income inequality in society,about beliefs of the fairness of the origin of inequality and beliefs about where a person sits on the income distribution.131 It also includes misperceptions

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

about immigration­—­in several high-income countries the share of immigrants in the population is perceived to be two to three times higher than the actual
share—with the misperception gap hovering around20 percentage points, independent of education, income, gender, political affiliation and other factors(figure 6.6).132
The focus in this chapter is how incorrect beliefs
about others can exaggerate perceived differences
between groups and hamper action on shared challenges.133 Misperceptions of what different groups
within countries deem fair and appropriate, as withcountries, can lead to misunderstandings and evenconflict.134 While the underlying cognitive and social
processes that lead to misperceptions are common
across the population, misperceiving others’ beliefs
can lead to alienation and hostility across groups­—­and even to dehumanization.135 Misperceptions about
polarization can operate as a self-­fulfilling prophecy, deepening and entrenching polarization.136 They
obscure the true distributions of beliefs about political issues, which can result in gaps between people’s
preferences and the actual terms of policy debates.137
Correcting people’s misperceptions about others
can have a positive impact on intergroup cooperation(spotlight 6.4).138 People update their political views
when they have information about their political

opponents.139 Providing accurate information about
the proportion of immigrants living in a country alsochanges people’s beliefs.140 Exposing people to thetrue distribution of others’ support for “pro-­climate”
policies increases support for those policies.141 Correcting people’s perceptions about polarization canstem polarization, leading polarized groups to moderate their opinions of their political opponents.142
Less clear is whether these information-­based
interventions can lead to long-­lasting behavioural change. If the links between group identities andmisperceptions persist, information-­based interventions might not be long-­lasting­—­particularly if groupleaders and segments of the media continue to feed
narratives that foster misperceptions.143 The beliefs
and convictions among people in highly polarized societies are cognitively and affectively loaded, which
can make them resistant to change.144 Indeed, polarization often contributes to cognitive rigidity (a reluctance to update beliefs in light of new information).145
In a highly complex information environment, people are commonly exposed to competing information, and ingroup biases can lead people to discredit
or distrust information that conflicts with their existing beliefs.146 So, efforts that address the cognitive
and affective bases of misperceptions can help. Interventions that facilitate more deliberative processing

Figure 6.6 The misperception of the share of immigrants in the population is high and widely shared across society
Perceived(mean)

ActualUnitedKingdom

Not working in a high-immigrant sector
Working in a high-immigrant sector and no college
Working in a high-immigrant sector and college
No college
College

SwedenLow income
High income

Italy

No immigrant parent
Immigrant parent

UnitedStatesYoung
Old

Germany

Male
FemaleFranceRight wing
Left wing
0

10

20

30

Share of immigrants(percent)

40

0

10

20

30

Misperception(percentage points)

Source: Stantcheva, Alesina and Miano 2019.

Chapter 6 — B reaking the gridlock to enhance collective action187

of information can work against people’s tendency
to arrive at oversimplified beliefs.147 For example, incontexts of intergroup conflict, presenting information in a frame that induces sadness rather than provoking anger has been found to be depolarizing.148
Interventions that rely on qualitative and narrative-­based approaches, such as storytelling and vignettes,
have been particularly effective in shifting misperceptions.149 Recent evidence suggests that correcting misperceptions about climate change of the sortwith which this section started is an effective way ofchanging people’s behaviour to act to mitigate climate change (but not necessarily changing beliefs).150
Creating space to bridge divides
Emphasizing overlapping identities can be a powerfulantidote to intergroup hostility.151 Polarization often
leads people to underestimate their commonalities
with others. Recognizing that people hold multifaceted identities can mitigate against categorizing others
as less deserving of concern, humanizing those otherwise perceived as adversaries.152 A sense of shared
identity need not be built on a superordinate category­—­such as national identity­—­which comes with thepotential risk of creating other outgroups. Rather
than depend on a single overarching similarity, emphasizing the diversity in people’s identities allows
for multiple cross-­cutting ties to be built, countering the likelihood of any one cleavage dominating.153
Identifying points of similarity allows groups to discover shared values and concerns, diminishing theotherness often associated with strong biases against
outgroups and perceived political opponents.

“

Identifying points of similarity allows
groups to discover shared values and concerns,
diminishing the otherness often associatedwith strong biases against outgroups
and perceived political opponents
A complementary approach for bridging differences emphasizes encouraging intergroup contact.154
This is often the basis of proposals for more deliberative decisionmaking structures, such as citizen assemblies, which bring representative groups together
to collectively debate issues (see also chapter 5 on theimportance of public reasoning and deliberation).
188

Deliberation is distinct from simple discussion of differences; it involves structured engagements that aresubstantive, inclusive and even-­handed in considering diverse perspectives.155 Deliberative structures
have been found to mitigate political polarization.156
Suggested mechanisms for this effect include that deliberative structures allow people to practice empathy(by taking the perspective of those they perceive tobe opponents) or experience others as equals working towards a shared goal.157 Deliberative processes
can enhance people’s understanding of the issues athand, increase confidence in cooperative approaches
and encourage respect and tolerance for those withdifferent views.
That said, the effectiveness of deliberation in tackling polarization depends on certain conditions.158
Perhaps most important is relative equality between
participants­—­structures where some groups or interests dominate others clearly work against the equaland fair consideration of all perspectives.159 Enhancing equality in this respect might rely on efforts to address inequalities beyond the interpersonal dynamics
of small deliberative groups.160 Deliberation is also
unlikely to overcome divides if the goals of participating groups are (or are perceived to be) fundamentally
incompatible. So, arriving at some shared goals thatall participants can agree on can be a precondition
for a deliberative process to overcome divides.161 This
is not to say that depolarizing interventions basedon deliberation depend on first achieving full equality; instead, working towards relative equality and ashared sense of purpose deserves additional attention in this strategy for tackling polarization.
Addressing perceptions of insecurity
Polarization and mistrust draw on real and perceived
insecurities felt by strongly identified groups.162 Easing narratives of insecurity can help in allaying theunderlying fear and anxieties that might make people
more receptive to polarizing messages about othergroups. Social policies that tackle insecurities areclearly important in this respect, particularly thosethat build solidarity between groups facing common
threats.163
An agenda of providing global public goods can
expand the possibilities for navigating insecurity together, offering people and societies a greater sense

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

of agency and control in a turbulent world.164 Such anagenda presents an opportunity for building a new
narrative of possibility and hope rather than anxiety, as well as a strategy for getting there. In this way,
pursuing the provision of global public goods­—­a goal­—­can also be a means towards having a beneficial impact on stemming polarization.

Frames associated with providing global“
public goods could power collective action

on urgent challenges, given that the evidence
on the political effects of emergency frames
alone in advancing action on climate andbroader sustainability challenges is mixed
In fact, the use of frames to address collective
action is pervasive in the current debate on global challenges, given strong evidence that they affecthow people interpret reality, form beliefs and develop value orientations about their needs and aspirations.165 It has been argued that shifts in frames areassociated with major changes in culture, society andthe economy. For example, a key cultural change associated with the Enlightenment was the convictionthat science and technology could improve living
standards.166 Today, action to address global challenges often draws on emergency frames, supported
by science but also strategically deployed to stimulate collective action, as for climate change.167 Frames
associated with providing global public goods could
power collective action on urgent challenges, giventhat the evidence on the political effects of emergency frames alone in advancing action on climate andbroader sustainability challenges is mixed.168
Moreover, as discussed in chapter 4, cooperation can collapse if there is uncertainty about where
the dangerous threshold often invoked in emergency frames lies. This feature of uncertainty has been
mobilized by powerful opponents of regulation on

challenges from tobacco to fossil fuels to hinder public support for collective action.169 In addition, those
who strongly oppose climate action tend not only touse uncertainty as an argument but also to emphasize purported negative impacts of climate action on
consumers.170
However, the collapse of cooperation under uncertainty thresholds, discussed in chapter 4, can happen
even without the strategic mobilization of uncertainty
by opponents of climate action. If emergency frames
engender fear when used exclusively, they can motivate people to retreat even more to their ingroup,particularly in contexts of uncertainty.171 When thishappens, it can exacerbate political polarization within countries: while fear is a powerful driver of ingroupcooperation, more entrenched and polarized groups
are less likely to find common ground.172 If people feelthat they have little agency to affect climate change,
relying on emergency frames alone can spur anxiety
and distress, particularly in young people.173
In contrast, the most common way for people tohave agency in addressing climate change­—­how they
perceive capacities to act to mitigate climate change­—­is through being part of a process of collective action(a sense that individual actions are meaningfully embedded in a broader social process).174 People tend tosupport climate change action if they believe policies
will be effective and fair.175 Moreover, there is less polarization over concrete ways of acting (for instance,
less polarization on advancing renewable energy thanon how much one should be concerned about climate change).176 The urgency to act on climate change
and other global challenges cannot be underemphasized,177 particularly because many people do respondto new information about climate challenges in updating their beliefs.178 Supplementing emergency frameswith an articulation of the aspiration to provide global
public goods could foster international collective action and ease political polarization.179

Chapter 6 — B reaking the gridlock to enhance collective action

189

SPOT L IG HT 6 .1

Identity, polarization and their societal
and political consequences
Robert Böhm, University of Vienna and University of Copenhagen; Philipp Sprengholz, University of Bamberg and Bernhard
Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine; Luca Henkel, University of Chicago and University of CEMA; Cornelia Betsch, Universityof Erfurt and Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine

Polarization is a growing concern, affecting societies
worldwide. It signifies a deepening divide between
groups holding contrasting viewpoints on politicalmatters and on approaches to addressing complex
societal issues.1 This polarization becomes evident
in uncompromising stances on critical topics suchas mitigating climate change,2 controlling infectious
disease3 and combating misinformation.4 To illustrate, discussions surrounding the adequacy of climate policies have intensified in recent years, with
one faction advocating for more stringent measuresand another insisting on less restrictive ones. These
opinion-­based groups are increasingly drifting apart,making reconciliation challenging. Nevertheless, as
the global climate crisis and numerous other societal
challenges require extensive and large-­scale humancooperation transcending group boundaries,5 polarization itself emerges as a significant societal obstacle,

hindering our ability to address pressing issues of ourtime.
To effectively mitigate polarization and the danger
it poses to addressing societal challenges, we must
understand the nature of polarization and its consequences in the first place. Specifically, what are thefacilitating and diminishing factors of polarization in
response to societal challenges, and what are its consequences for attitudes towards behaviours?
A wide range of literature has shown that polarization is driven partly by people incorporating opinion-­based groups into their self-­concept6­—­in their beliefs
about who they are and how they relate to others. We
suggest that strong identification with one’s group(ingroup) can pave the way for biased attitudes anddiscriminatory behaviours towards people with opposing viewpoints (outgroup). In addition, polarization results in strongly identified minorities who hold

Figure S6.1.1 How group identification might increase polarization
Facets of polarization
Perception of ingroup disadvantages
and discrimination

Identification
with ingroup

Discriminatory behaviour against
outgroup members
Support for extreme actions ofingroup members
Animosity towards politicians and scientists,
desire to dismantle the political order

Source: Authors’ creation based on Henkel and others (2023) and Sprengholz and others (2023a).

190

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Negativeintergroupexperiences andreinforcementof opinions

attitudes likely to undermine societal cohesion anddemocracy (figure S6.1.1). The rest of this spotlightreports evidence for these relations from studies on
the Covid-­19 pandemic and climate change.

From individual attitudes to opinion-­based groups
Polarization frequently arises in discussions of topics central to individuals’ identities when there is
uncertainty surrounding available information. Consider climate change: both the adverse effects of climate change and the strategies to mitigate it holdmajor implications for people’s lives. But predicting
the exact consequences and outcomes is challenging given their inherently uncertain and multicausal
nature. In social and information-­rich environmentscharacterized by such uncertainty, individuals tend
to come together and form bonds. A key aspect of
this shift from individual attitudes to social categorization is that people tend to identify with other people who share their beliefs, opinions and attributes,
often leading to similar behaviours among them. Thisphenomenon of group formation and identificationreflects how people seek common ground and solidarity when grappling with complex, uncertain issuesof personal significance.
A large body of literature in psychology has shownthat people’s degree of group identification can bereliably measured using surveys.7 Building on established group identification scales,8 we developed afive-­item survey to assess identification with opinion-­based groups (for example, “I have a lot in common
with people who are vaccinated” or “I have a lot incommon with people who think the federal government’s climate policy has gone too far”). Participants
were asked to indicate their level of agreement witheach item on a seven-­point scale from 0, “do notagree at all,” to 7, “very much agree.” The items capture different dimensions of group identification.
With both Covid-­19 vaccination9 and climate policies,10 many individuals hold high group identification (with an average level of group identification
greater than 4). A December 2021 study in Germany
found that 56 percent of unvaccinated participants
and 67 percent of vaccinated participants reported
strongly identifying with their own vaccination status. In a similar vein, a study in Germany on climate

policies found that 53 percent of people who demanded stricter climate policies and 63 percent of those
who wanted policies to do less reported high group
identification. About 61 percent of people who considered current climate policies about all right strongly identified with their climate policy opinion group,compared with only 35 percent of people who did notcare about climate policy.
So, not only is there a considerable prevalence ofindividuals with strong identification across different(opposite-­minded) groups, but there is also substantial variation in the degree of identification between
these groups. These differences could lead to differences in perceptions, attitudes and behaviours, explored next.

Perceived and actual discrimination
between opinion-­based groups
Being a part of and identifying with opinion-­based
groups is not inherently negative; in fact, it can serve
as a source of connection and support, particularly
during uncertain and crisis-­ridden periods.11 Group
formation may benefit both groups and their individual members. For example, in the context of healthdecisions, people who identify as active and sportive
may find groups of likeminded people that help them
maintain their physical activity plans.12 But the process of social categorization, grounded in attitudes,
opinions and attributes, can also have unintended
consequences. It might lead to distorted perceptions
and discriminatory behaviours that reinforce one’s
own identity by establishing a sense of superiority
over others.13 This dual nature of group categorizationand identification­— ­support and cooperation within but discrimination and conflict between groups­—­underscores the importance of understanding its
dynamics in response to societal challenges to mitigate potential harms.
In the Covid-­19 vaccination study mentioned above,
82 percent of unvaccinated respondents perceived
public discourse around vaccination as unfair, moralistic and patronizing, compared with only 23 percent
of vaccinated respondents.14 Importantly, this perception was moderated by respondents’ vaccination status identification. That is, higher group identification
was associated with perceiving the public discourse as

Chapter 6 — B reaking the gridlock to enhance collective action191slightly more positive among vaccinated respondents
but with perceiving it as considerably more negative
among unvaccinated respondents.
But how do such discriminatory perceptions relate to factual discrimination between opinion-­based
groups? To answer this question, participants had to
distribute 100 euros between themselves and anotherperson in a series of tasks. The other person was presented either as a member of the same group (samevaccination status or climate policy position­—­ingroup)or as a member of a different group (different vaccination status or climate policy position­— ­outgroup).
Intergroup discrimination was calculated by subtracting the amount allocated to an ingroup member
in one task from the amount allocated to an outgroupmember in the other task. In the vaccination study15
vaccinated respondents showed larger intergroup discrimination (an average of 18.40 euros) than unvaccinated respondents (7.37 euros). That is, vaccinatedrespondents gave smaller amounts to unvaccinatedrespondents than unvaccinated respondents gave to
vaccinated respondents, while the amount given to ingroup members was similar for both groups.
In the climate policy study,16 there was also substantial intergroup discrimination, which varied according to the ingroup and outgroup. While people
from the two extreme groups, who wanted either
more or fewer climate protection policies, were mostdiscriminatory toward each other, they discriminatedequally against those who did not care about climate
policy. Interestingly, those who found climate policies all right were more discriminated against by people who wanted less climate protection than by those
who wanted more.
In both studies, discrimination against people
in other-­minded groups was strongly related to respondents’ level of group identification. Specifically,
the more that people identified with their ingroup,
the stronger they discriminated against outgroups.
These results provide support for our assumption thatgroup identification undermines cooperative solutions across group boundaries.

Societal and political consequences
In the vaccination study, unvaccinated respondents
were asked whether they would demonstrate or sign
1 92

a petition against mandatory vaccination in December 2021.17 This intention was used to predict whether they had attended a demonstration or signed apetition when they were surveyed again in February
2022. Respondents’ behavioural intention predicted
actual behaviour. Importantly, the effect was moderated by self-­reported group identification, witha stronger intention–behaviour link between those
who reported higher identification with the unvaccinated group. In another survey, vaccination status
identification related to the perceived appropriateness of political action during the Covid-­19 pandemic.18 Vaccinated and unvaccinated respondents who
had low identification with their vaccination status rated the political actions taken during the pandemic as similarly appropriate. In contrast, having ahigher identification with vaccination status was associated with a larger perceived appropriateness for
vaccinated respondents, whereas appropriatenessratings decreased for highly identified unvaccinatedrespondents.
Moreover, data collected from 10 countries showedthat those who found past Covid-­19 pandemic measures inappropriate had a stronger desire to punish
politicians and scientists for their handling of thepandemic and were less willing to vote, instead favouring dismantling the entire political order. Thissuggests that identification with opinion-­b asedgroups is associated with several societal and political consequences that go beyond the specific opinion-­based context and the interactions between these
opinion-­based groups.
Similar effects were observed for climate policy
opinion groups.19 Given that societies have seen extreme forms of protest for both more and less climate
protection, we investigated whether identification
played a role in how extreme protests are accepted.
German participants who wanted less climate protection read a short text about a hypothetical subgroupcalled the freedom fighters, seeking the continued
use of fossil fuels and demanding that citizens beable to freely decide how they travel, heat or eat. Participants who wanted more climate protection readabout the climate fighters, advocating for immediatephaseout of fossil fuel use and demanding environmentally friendly travel, heating and eating.
Both subgroups drew attention to their causes byorganizing demonstrations in many cities, damaging

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

political party buildings and blocking roads to the parliament. About 17 percent of those wanting more climate protection and 22 percent of those wanting lessshowed increased support for the presented subgroup,
8 percent of those wanting more climate protection
and 11 percent of those wanting less were willing tojoin a demonstration organized by the subgroup and
8 percent of those wanting more climate protection
and 10 percent of those wanting less were willing to
donate money for the defence of a subgroup member
who was recently arrested and charged with criminal
damage. Support for the respective subgroup increased
with higher group identification, providing further evidence for the important role of group identification.

are continually reinforced, resulting in groups thatare unwilling to engage in peaceful interactions or
seek common ground. In essence, identifying with
opinion-­based groups undermines the very cooperation that is crucial for addressing societal challenges
on a universal scale.
Our understanding of the intricate interplay amongindividual attitudes, group identification and polarization is still in its early stages. Future researchendeavours are essential to delve deeper into the various causal pathways at play and to pinpoint effective
interventions for mitigating polarization. Social andbehavioural scientists have proposed various interventions to reduce group-­based discrimination andconflict­—­for example, through decategorization (emphasizing the unique individual characteristics ofoutgroup members) and recategorization (integrating ingroup and outgroup members within a common
group). Some of these might be helpful in reducing
polarization of opinions, but they remain to be critically tested in these domains. Another promisingavenue involves participatory approaches, where individuals from opposing opinion-­based groups areactively engaged in collaborative efforts to discovercommon ground. These approaches hold potential
for bridging divides and fostering constructive dialogue among stakeholders.

Potential implications
The question of how to tackle pressing societal challenges, such as climate change or global health crises,
often gives rise to opposite opinions, which can leadto the formation of opposing opinion-­based groups
and societal polarization. Our argument, supported
by evidence, suggests that as individuals increasingly identify with these groups, their attitudes and behaviours are more likely to be polarized. This createsa troubling cycle (see figure S6.1.1) where opinions

N OT E S
1.

Pew Research Center 2014.

11.

Hogg 2007.

2.

Falkenberg and others 2022.

12.

Eys, Bruner and Martin 2019.

3.

Bor, Jørgensen and Petersen 2023; Flores and others 2022.

13.

Tajfel and others 1979.

4.

Lazer and others 2018.

14.

Henkel and others 2023.

5.

Van Lange and Rand 2022.

15.

Henkel and others 2023.

6.

Ellemers, Spears and Doosje 2002.

16.

Sprengholz and others 2023a.

7.

Stets and Serpe 2013.

17.

Henkel and others 2023.

8.

Doosje, Ellemers and Spears 1995; Roth and Mazziotta 2015.

18.

Sprengholz and others 2023b.

9.

Henkel and others 2023.

19.

Sprengholz and others 2023a.

10.

Sprengholz and others 2023a.

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193

SPOT L IG HT 6 . 2

International collective action in a timeof geopolitical upheaval
To characterize the geopolitical context, it is useful todraw from different views to explain (and sometimes
to predict) the behaviour of states (or, with greater
generality, politically autonomous units) in the international arena.
Realism­—­power is ever changing
The field of international relations considers how
states interact internationally when there is no
overarching authority. The field has multiple perspectives,1 dating back at least to Thucydides, who
inspired the realist disposition in international relations.2 This perspective emphasizes how anarchy inworld politics (due to the lack of an overarching authority) drives constant instability, given that states
all struggle to advance their security and power (tocompel others to act on one’s behalf).3 The distribution of power across countries, and its change overtime, informs the security threats that states face­— ­orbelieve they face­—­as a result of, for instance, the security dilemma, also known as the Thucydides trap.4
The distribution of power is ever-­changing. Morethan whether the world is bipolar, unipolar or multipolar,
what matters are the continually changing dynamics ofpower among states, which tend to be destabilizing. And
human behaviour remains the same­— ­driving states tobe ever-­more ambitious rather than sated. So, there isno endpoint of stability. Once a disagreement is settled,
a new one is bound to emerge because of the changing
dynamics of power between states, so that “disputes inworld politics are less problems to be solved than relations to be managed.”5 Although not inevitably, thesedisputes can culminate in violent conflict.6
Liberalism­—­realizing aggregated preferences
The liberal perspective on international relations
shares the realists’ view that the international arena isanarchic but has a different disposition on state behaviour that makes the implications of anarchy less troubling. States are not agents as such but are assumed to194

represent the aggregate preferences of what emerges
from domestic economic and political processes whereindividuals and groups (the ultimate agents here) exchange and interact to promote their diverse interests.7
State behaviour is then determined by how each statepursues the realization of the preferences it represents,
given the constraints imposed by the preferences that
other states present. When preferences are mutuallycompatible, states coexist peacefully and cooperatively. When they are mixed (compatible in part, but withscope for mutual gains), states can negotiate some accommodation (more easily through coordination), perhaps facilitated by international institutions.8 Whenthey are incompatible and zero-­sum (if one wins, theother loses), there is tension and potentially conflict.
Constructivism­—­recognizing thatmuch is socially constructed
Some researchers have argued that social constructs,
which can include norms, may constrain state behaviour and make “the world hang together.”9 Norms are
sometimes supported by, and codified in, multilateralagreements and institutions.10 In the more assertive
elaborations of these constructive perspectives oninternational relations, even the notion of anarchy ispresumed to be socially constructed­—­and what states
make of it11­—­and thus to represent an entirely different disposition from realism and liberalism. But whileconstructivism is sometimes presented as an alternative to both realism and idealism, it is perhaps better
understood as an approach (thus compatible with atleast some theories in both realism and liberalism)that recognizes that shared beliefs and norms shapestate behaviour, whether they seek to enhance theirsecurity and power (realists) or fulfil the preferencesof their populations (liberals).12
Different dispositions
A crucial question is whether there is more to the interests of states than security in the realist perspective or

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

more than the aggregation of individual preferences inaggregated state preferences in liberalism. Many theories under either disposition say no.13 Others allow forinterests or preferences to be determined not only by
objective material conditions but also by the social context that shapes states’ understanding of their interests
or preferences.14 For instance, some realists hold thatstates seek both power and purpose (resulting fromnotions of national identity, a set of widely shared beliefs within a country that are not reducible to the aggregation of individual views) and that these two goals
together shape the interests of states. And the liberal
theory of democratic peace holds that countries that
self-­identify, and identify others, as liberal democracies tend not to go to war, premised on a socially constructed notion of shared identity and values.15
The salience of the different dispositions ebbs andflows depending on what is actually happening in theworld.16 The realist disposition provided a helpful
framework during the Cold War but was less successful in explaining its (for the most part) peaceful end,
with some authors declaring that we had reached theend of history by the early 1990s17­—­anathema forany realist. The great strides in international cooperation even during the Cold War­—­for instance, theeradication of smallpox or the Montreal Protocol, as
discussed in chapter 4­— ­can be better understood
through a liberal view. With the ongoing geopolitical
upheaval and heightened geopolitical tensions, therealist disposition is acquiring more salience, withnot just the possibility but the reality of violent conflict across countries very much present.
It may appear that models of country behaviour
dominated by interests and competition are the mostappropriate to characterize the current context. Although different theories in international relations
may also offer plausible accounts, staying with thisview would suggest that the international order
built in the aftermath of World War II­— ­centred on
multilateralism, economic openness and security
cooperation­—­appears to be fraying amid a new cascade of wars,18 as well as the greater protectionism
and surge in populist politics around the world.19 By
this account, the potential fragmentation in the international system that appears to emerge today would
derive from structural shifts as new countries and coalitions seek to gain power and influence, as well as
to respond to perceived threats to their security.20 In

addition, the scale and complexity of today’s global
challenges might be creating new pressures on international institutions that were built for an altogether
different era.
The current geopolitical context is thus characterized by uncertainty, insecurity and potential for
greater fragmentation and disorder. This is further
compounded by the fact that many people live incountries whose governments experience unconstitutional changes in power, internationally contested
elections or are under major sanctions (figure S6.2.1).
The behaviour of some of these countries in the international context may be harder to predict or interpret,with the potential for greater regional instability oreven violent conflict. Moreover, in addition to states,
new agents play a role in providing global public
goods, not just multilateral organizations but otherentities, from multinational firms to civil society andphilanthropic organizations. While the establishment of new international organizations has declined
sharply in the 21st century, transnational public–private governance initiatives have exploded.21
Figure S6.2.1 Half a billion people live in politically
estranged situations, about five times more than in 2010
Population(millions)
1,000
800
600
400
200
0

2010

2015

2020

2022

Politically estranged population
Population in other fragile andconflict-affected situations
Note: Politically estranged situations refer to countries where relations between donors of official aid and national authorities are frayed or broken because of unconstitutional changes in government, internationally contested
elections or major sanctions.
Source: Cliffe and others 2023.

Chapter 6 — B reaking the gridlock to enhance collective action

195

N OT E S
1.

2.

3.

4.

A recent international relations textbook, Dunne, Kurki and Smith (2021),
includes chapters on classical realism, structural realism, liberalism, neoliberalism, the English School, Marxism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, normative international relations theory and green theory.

8.

Katzenstein, Keohane and Krasner 1998.

9.

Ruggie 1998.

10.

Ruggie 1992.

For a recent articulation of this perspective in its classical form, and its
relevance in today’s world in contrast with other perspectives, see Kirshner (2022), from which the description of the realism disposition in thisspotlight is drawn.

11.

Wendt 1992.

12.

Finnemore and Sikkink 2001.

13.

That is why the word “disposition” is used, given the multiple theories andvariations that fit under each, in line with Kirshner (2022).

14.

Checkel 1998.

15.

Both examples are from Kirshner (2022).

16.

Keohane 2020.

17.

Fukuyama 1992.

18.

Poast 2023.

19.

Ikenberry 2018.

20.

See Colgan and Keohane (2017), Ikenberry (2018), Jones and Malcorra(2020) and Shidore (2023).

21.

Reinsberg and Westerwinter 2021, p. 73.

This is the traditional definition of power proposed by Weber (2016), rearticulated by Dahl (1957, pp. 202–203): “my intuitive idea of power, then,is something like this: A has power over B to the extent that he can bet
B to do something that B would not otherwise do.” For a review of otherapproaches to defining and conceptualizing power, see Guinote (2017).
This occurs when efforts taken by a state to increase its security areperceived by others as making them less secure, even if there is no aggressive intention on the part of the state enhancing its security.

5.

Kirshner 2022, p. 16.

6.

Acemoglu and Wolitzky 2023.

7.

Moravcsik (1997), which forms the basis of the description of the liberal
disposition in this paragraph.

196

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S POT L IGH T 6 . 3

Geopolitics and the early history of the United Nations:
Friend or foe?
Andrew Thompson, Oxford University“The United Nations was not formed because nations
were united.” This is one way of explaining how thedifferent countries of the world came together in San
Francisco, California, in 1945 to discuss their common problems. Or, in the bleaker words of the second
UN Secretary-­General, the Swedish diplomat Dag
Hammarskjöld, “the United Nations was not createdin order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us
from hell.” 1
In truth, the United Nations has always been defined by geopolitics, not because it is simply or
straightforwardly a creature of such but rather because geopolitics highlight its dual function sometimes to challenge and sometimes to uphold thegeopolitical regime surrounding it. Put another way,
the United Nations, throughout its history, has taken
on tasks that states are unable or unwilling to; by thesame token its ways of working reflect the rival conceptions of international cooperation latent within aprevailing state system.
What this means in practice is that the fledgling
United Nations was animated as well as constrainedby interstate rivalry and enabled as well as restrictedby geopolitical change. Like many of the international organizations that either emerged from or expanded their remits after World War II, the United Nations
was one of the makers­—­and not just the receivers­—­of the new global orders that sought to re-­civilize Europe and to “make an old world new.”
In a fundamental sense, the United Nations was
unlike the League of Nations, which preceded it.2
The fractured world order that emerged from WorldWar I certainly led to changes in the international
sphere: a raft of new regulatory agencies, an emergent discourse of protection for minority groups, andthe rhetoric and reality of anticolonialism. But although the League of Nations held out the hope of amore international society, sharing liberal and democratic values with the interests of nations locked
together, any such collective guardian of the peacerequired all sovereign states to sign up. This never
happened.
After 1919 the world divided itself into different
geopolitical zones, of which the membership of the
League of Nations­—­anchored in Europe and practically coextensive with the British and French colonial
systems beyond­—­was only one. The geopolitical realignments post-­1945 were distinctive in two respects.
First, the growth of global issues sped up markedly.
Second, in championing a new global order, the United Nations was never to be captured by any single,
major power bloc, however much the breakneck expansion of the United States meant that in this sphere,
as in many others, US influence held a major sway.
The post–World War II global order was considerably more complex than that of the interwar era, notwithstanding the broadly bipolar equilibrium thateventually established itself. Many historians focus
on the year 1945 as a sort of ground zero. Yet the decisive shifts happened later, with the gathering speedof decolonization, an intensifying Cold War and newforms of globalization. Despite attempts by European
powers to retain control of their colonies, the 1950s
demonstrated that old imperial models were fast losing traction. Cold War tensions between the capitalist
and communist worlds were also heating up, and new
regional configurations­—­including the Non-­Aligned
Movement­—­were emerging from a combination of
the tectonics of empire on the one hand and superpower rivalry on the other.
So how do we characterize the state of postwar geopolitics, which the United Nations set about trying totame? Before a breakpoint in about 1960, there wasa US zone encompassing Latin America and muchof the Pacific, except the western fringe and Korea,
which were contested by China. Alongside the US
zone was a UK zone, which extended over much of
the Middle East until 1956; East, South and muchof Central Africa; the Indian Ocean; and part ofSouth East Asia. And there was a Soviet zone, which

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197

included China until the Sino-­S oviet split of 1955–
1956 divided the communist world. Not until after
1960, just as the United Nations was experiencing a
massive increase in membership, particularly of African members, did these geopolitical zones solidify. The US global reach was consolidated, the Soviet
Union became more active in the “Third World” and,beyond that, there was the recovery of Germany andJapan.
This sounds like distinctly unpropitious territory for global governance­—­indeed, by 1970 the vetopower of UN Security Council members had begun
to be exercised more regularly, a sure sign of the economic woes and escalating political tensions thatmarked the rest of that decade. Yet at a time of accelerating globalization, however much the state depended on power, power no longer depended on thestate. International organizations were not passive
bystanders in the face of the geopolitical upheaval of
the 1970s: the oil and debt crises, civil wars and frequent military coups, and the global struggle between
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact. Instead, they possessed power in their own
right: the power to spotlight suffering and to makeindifference a costly posture and the power to recognize new sovereignties and to make those sovereignties more recognizable.
The United Nations especially was coming of age.
Carving out a more activist role for itself and seeking awider meaning in world affairs, it implicitly, if not explicitly, challenged the state domination of the global
political system. By arranging institutions correctly,
UN civil servants­—­many of whom chose international
over national politics­—­believed that they could better
pursue collaborative solutions to the world’s problems
and better manage the consequences of increasing
interdependency. The United Nations was in effectmoving into territory previously occupied by nation-­states; indeed, the weaker the system of interstate
diplomacy, the more postwar international organizations were forced to assume the burdens of its lapses
and failures. In this situation geopolitics was to takeon a double significance­— ­driving the calamities thatput international organizations such as the United Nations in business yet also shaping the priorities for andthe forms of international cooperation.
But to play an active part in world ordering required the United Nations to go far beyond anything198

the League of Nations had envisaged; the amalgamof functions it came to discharge grew to encompass
peace and security, state-­building and development,
the proclamation and protection of basic humanrights and the provision of emergency humanitarianrelief. Different legal and institutional architecturesdeveloped around each of these functions, which
made them seem more distinct than they actually
were. The ways they played off each other can, however, be studied through the first generation of UN
peacekeeping operations.3
In many ways the United Nations came of age, atleast operationally, through its peacekeeping operations. Peacekeeping, as an instrument of conflict
resolution, was closely identified with the United
Nations. Because the United Nations did not haveany of the built-­in assets to act like a superpower,
peacekeeping had a fundamentally self-­restricting
character: it was not intended to enforce the Security
Council’s collective will, which owing to the Cold War
did not exist. Instead, UN peacekeeping, which reliedon member states for personnel, supervised ceasefires, oversaw truces and interposed troops between
warring parties.
Notwithstanding this self-­restricting character,UN peacekeeping could not help but be affected by
the power vacuums created by colonial disengagement. Nor could it sidestep the difficult question of
the meaning of self-­determination, at a time when
the concept was elevated as an international norm,
yet postcolonial states risked fracturing as a result ofsecessionist movements.
The aim of the initial operations was to place abuffer between belligerent parties, while ensuring
host-­state consent, the impartiality of UN forces andthe use of force only as a last resort in self-­defence.
That all changed in Congo in 1960, when the United Nations adopted a far more expansive conceptionof peacekeeping.4 Not only did the Congo crisis, as
it was known at the time, transform the meaning of
decolonization in Africa; it also transformed the fortunes of the United Nations. As the Belgians abruptly withdrew, leaving chaos and catastrophe behind,and East and West competed for African allegiance,
the United Nations embarked on an unprecedented
operation­—­a four-­year mission, deploying a multinational force of almost 20,000 (predominantly African) troops to restore the unity of the country and

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

enable the newly independent government to function. For the first time in UN peacekeeping, Ethiopian, Indian, Irish and Swedish forces, under theorganization’s control, were authorized to use offensive force to bring an end to the secession of theresource-­rich province of Katanga.
What was arguably the most controversial UN
peacekeeping operation­—­prior to those in the 1990s­—­led to multiple tragedies: the death of Hammarskjöld, when his plane crashed in Northern Rhodesia(present-­day Zambia) on a mission to bring peaceto the Congo, in circumstances that some continue
to suspect involved foul play; a major international
human rights controversy about violations committed by UN forces; and the United Nations teeteringon the brink of bankruptcy, with peacekeeping having
cost a staggering $10 million a month (over $100 million in today’s dollars).
Like so many other postwar conflicts that the United Nations had to decide whether to insert itself into,
the Congo crisis was internationalized from the very
start. Paradoxically, peacekeeping had curbed neocolonial and Cold War involvement in Africa while becoming a focus of that involvement. The “muscularaction” mandated by the Security Council prevented
the breakup of Congo and was assessed positively at
the time as a result. Yet the morphing of defensive
peacekeeping into offensive fighting plunged theUnited Nations into crisis, painfully revealing thelimits of the Hammarskjöld model: enforcement
was rapidly abandoned in favour of observation andinterposition.
Despite this negative military verdict, for Hammarskjöld security was never an end in itself but a necessary precondition for providing a structure that mighthold Congo together. If anything, the Secretary-­
General saw the long-­term contribution of the United
Nations as lying more in the civilian field, comprising a complex state-­building programme (setting up
and running a parallel administration) and an equallycomplex relief operation (particularly to prevent the
total collapse of the Congolese health system). Expelling Belgian mercenaries and defeating the Katangese secessionists were simply stepping stones
towards these greater goals.
Understanding postwar peacekeeping operations
is historically instructive: it reveals how the United
Nations struggled to manage decolonization and toserve as a bridge between East and West during theCold War. The legacy of that peacekeeping is also important for how the United Nations conceives of itself today. What postwar peacekeeping shows (evenwhen it backfires) is that the United Nations possesses power­—­not only to declare a crisis but, crucially, todefine the nature of the crisis to which it responds.
In declaring the Congo crisis, the United Nations
positioned itself as the prime responder­—­thereby
providing the institutional matrix into which other international organizations, such as the Red Cross, hadto accommodate themselves. In defining the Congo
crisis, the United Nations went further­—­to set out
exactly what type of response was called for. If those
who recognize a crisis possess the power to intervene,
those who construct a crisis can similarly go a long
way to determine how it should be managed.5
This question of crisis ordering, of what gets linked
to what and why, is no less pertinent to today’s geopolitics, an age of polycrisis in which global shocks
are deeply interconnected. International norms are
increasingly disregarded, not just in Ukraine andGaza but in more than 100 armed conflicts, only
some of which make the headlines. In the 21st century geopolitical rifting is complicated by a global
environmental crisis that is escalating humanitarianneeds and threatening the gains made in world poverty reduction and human development over the lastquarter century.
Our capacity to cope, therefore, rests on recognizing that climate and conflict now often go hand in
hand, with climate change set to become a risk multiplier for tomorrow’s conflicts as well as an additional
complication for existing ones. The greatest complications nevertheless remain geopolitical. However
much human activity is the dominant force shaping
our planet, considerations of territorial security are
repeatedly trumping human security. As extreme
weather events multiply, tackling the negative impacts of climate change will mean creating clearer
pathways to intervention amid a rising tide of populism and intensifying polarization. New paths must
be explored and creative methods given a chance.
Geographical representation and the power of engagement will be key considerations in any reform
process, especially if the fundamental imbalancesand historical injustices in the current global order are
to be addressed. Much will hinge on the ability­—­and

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199

agility­— ­of the United Nations to reinvigorate a postwar institutional architecture, now nearly 80 years
old, and to close the gap between what multilateral institutions are expected to do and what they are capableof doing. Only by closing that gap, and adopting moreradically inclusive approaches to problem-­solving,

will faith in multilateralism be enhanced and effective global cooperation improved. As the early historyof the United Nations reveals, this is emphatically not
the first time the organization has faced a geopoliticalchallenge of this scale, complexity or urgency.

N OT E S
The author is grateful to Mr. Adama Dieng, former Special Adviser to the
UN Secretary-­General for the Prevention of Genocide, for his insightfulcomments on an earlier draft of this spotlight.
1.

Hammarskjöld 1954.

2.

For the comparison, see Darwin (2007).

3.

See, especially, MacQueen (2014).

200

4.

For a new account of the UN Congo operation, relating the military to thecivilian aspects of peacekeeping, see Thompson (forthcoming).

5.

For crisis declaration and definition, and the part each played in constructing new world orders, see the Changing Global Orders project,funded by the Oxford Martin School, of which the author is one of thefour directors https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/changing-­global-orders/(accessed 24 January 2024).

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S POT L IGH T 6 . 4(Mis)perceiving others
Leonardo Bursztyn, University of Chicago

Most people are influenced by others when making
important decisions or when forming opinions. Perceptions about others should play a key role in thesecontexts. Indeed, people are influenced by what they
think others think or do. But what if people misperceive others? If these misperceptions are common,many people might be making decisions based onincorrect information. More than that, important behaviours could then conceivably be changed by simply recalibrating people’s beliefs about others.
This spotlight begins by examining misperceptions
about gender norms. The conclusion is clear: misperceptions about gender norms are globally ubiquitous,
and simple information provision could lead to improvements in women’s labour market participation.
The spotlight then summarizes a meta-­analysis of therecent literature on misperceptions that concludes
that misperceptions about others are widespread,asymmetric and much larger when about outgroupmembers. Moreover, experimental treatments to recalibrate misperceptions generally work as intended
and often lead to important changes in behaviours.
So, interventions correcting misperceptions could
build empathy and cooperation across groups and reduce conflict and hostility.

Misperceived gender norms: Global evidence
A newly designed module from Gallup World Pollexamines actual and perceived gender norms using
nationally representative samples from 60 countries,
which together cover more than 80 percent of theworld population.1 One aspect of gender norms examined is how people view whether women shouldbe allowed to work outside the home and how people
perceive others’ views on the topic. The patterns are
striking: in every single country examined the (often
overwhelming) majority of people support the ideaof women working outside the home. And in every

single country, people underestimate the level of support by others.
The next question that comes to mind is whether
gender norms are themselves the anomaly in terms of
the accuracy of perceptions: perhaps people particularly misperceive others’ opinions in this domain but
not in other contexts. The results from a recent meta-­
analysis of the literature help answer this question.

Misperceptions about others across settings
A detailed review of 81 papers published acrossthe social sciences over the past 20 years measures perceptions about others across a wide range ofcontexts.2 The picture is clear: across societies individuals widely misperceive what others think, what
others do and even who others are. These misperceptions cover a variety of topics, from beliefs about
the size of immigrant populations to perceptions ofpartisans’ political opinions to perceptions of the vaccination behaviours of others in a community. The
analysis yields a few key stylized facts.
• Misperceptions about others prevail in various
domains and are not simply due to measurement
error. Assessing misperceptions requires eliciting
perceptions about others and knowing the corresponding truth. For example, perceptions of a population’s racial composition can be compared withan objective truth­—­that is, the population sharesof each racial group, as reported in census data.
For perceptions of other people’s opinions about a
topic, the truth refers to the relevant population’sreported views (for example, their average level).
• Misperceptions about others tend to be asymmetric, with beliefs leaning heavily to one side
when compared with reality. The asymmetry ofmisperceptions is the ratio of respondents on one
side of the truth to those on the opposite side. In
this definition the higher number always acts as

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201

the numerator, regardless of whether beliefs areunder- or overestimations of reality. Therefore, aratio of 1 signifies a perfect balance, and a higher
ratio indicates a more pronounced imbalance.
Misperceptions about others typically tilt one way,
and the tilt is large.
• Misperceptions about ingroup members are markedly less pronounced than those about outgroupmembers. In more than half the studied areas,
most respondents have more accurate perceptions
about their ingroup than about outgroup members.
Additionally, perceptions about outgroup members
tend to exhibit greater spread across respondents
than those about ingroup members. This indicatesthat views about ingroup members are not only
more precise on average but also more consistentlyaligned with reality. Moreover, perceptions ofingroup members are more symmetrically distributed around the truth than those about outgroupmembers.
• One’s own attitudes and beliefs are strongly, positively correlated with misperceptions about others’
attitudes and beliefs on the same issues. Moreover,
respondents tend to think that other ingroup members share their characteristics, attitudes, beliefs
or behaviours, while those in the outgroups are theopposite of themselves.
Does information provision aimed at correcting
misperceptions work? Does it lead to behaviouralchanges? The answer is that these interventions are
generally effective­—­but there are some nuances in
the findings.3 Interventions that are more qualitative and narrative, such as those that involve anecdotes, vignettes and storytelling, tend to have larger
effects in correcting misperceptions. However, whilesome treatments lead to large changes in behaviours, large changes often occur only in studies thatexamine behavioural adjustments shortly after theinterventions, suggesting a potential rigidity in the
mapping between misperceptions and some behaviours: even though beliefs may have changed, thedeeper underlying drivers of behaviour may not have.
The findings mirror other recent work suggesting that
qualitative and narrative-­driven interventions may
be particularly effective and may have longer lasting
effects.4 Understanding the most effective ways tocorrect misperceptions and generate long-­lasting behavioural changes is an important avenue for future
2 02

research­—­and one that could have meaningful policy
implications.
Another, more conceptual path for future work involves better understanding the general forces thatlead to persistent misperceptions. The origin, rigidity and persistence of misperceptions about others
can in principle be explained by different conceptual frameworks, such as stereotyping,5 motivated reasoning6 and pluralistic ignorance.7 But most existing
study designs cannot disentangle the role of thesedifferent models. Enhancing understanding of therole of these mechanisms would allow for better policy design.
A final area for consideration is how to think of
welfare in contexts of widespread misperceptions.
One such normative consideration­— ­out of the scopeof the existing literature­—­is to examine whether informing people about the true state of the world tocorrect their perceptions is something that is always
desirable. It is understood that many authoritarian regimes may maintain their political control by directly
manipulating citizens’ perceptions of each other.8 In
such contexts, would interventions that correct someperceptions about others expand political rights andfreedom to more people around the world? To the extent that misperception might be self-­fulfilling, canpolicy be designed to engineer misperceptions thatlead to more socially desirable outcomes (as in thecontexts of racial tolerance and gender equality)?

Lessons for building intergroupcooperation and reducing hostility
People tend to have much larger misperceptions
about outgroup members than about ingroup members. In many cases these misperceptions exaggerate
perceived differences across groups, as for Democrats
and Republicans in the United States.9 Such a phenomenon may not be surprising, given the growing
focus on an us versus them mentality by the media
and politicians. One potential implication relates toa long-­standing hypothesis in social psychology thatperceived similarity is a key input for someone to feel
empathy towards outgroups. Information provisionand intergroup contact can lead to an increase in perceived similarity with outgroups, which in turn generates greater altruism and empathy towards those

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

groups.10 Correcting misperceptions about outgroups
thus has the potential to reduce hostility and increasecooperation and altruism­—­an important outcome ina world increasingly divided and polarized.
Across societies and across domains, people widely misperceive what others think, what others do andeven who others are. The body of work reviewed here
indicates that in many important contexts changes inbehaviours and attitudes might be achieved with simple and cost-­effective policy interventions throughinformation provision in the form of statistics, vignettes, anecdotes or narratives.

N OT E S
1.

Bursztyn and others 2023. This work extends findings from Saudi Arabia,
where the vast majority of young married men privately support women
working outside of home but incorrectly believe that the majority of othermen (including their own neighbours) oppose it (Bursztyn, González andYanagizawa-­Drott 2020).

5.

Bordalo and others 2016.

6.

Bénabou and Tirole 2016.

7.

Bursztyn, Egorov and Fiorin 2020; Bursztyn, González and Yanagizawa-­
Drott 2020; Kuran 1997.

2.

Bursztyn and Yang 2022.

8.

Kuran 1997.

3.

Bursztyn and Yang 2022.

9.

Bordalo, Gennaioli and Shleifer 2022; Bordalo, Tabellini and Yang 2020.

4.

Graeber, Roth and Zimmermann 2023.

10.

Andries and others 2024.

Chapter 6 — B reaking the gridlock to enhance collective action

203

Notesandreferences

205

Notes

SN AP SH OT
1See UNDP (2020, 2022a).

2

Watson and others 2022.

3

See the United Nations Development Programme’s Global Dashboard for Vaccine Equity
at https://data.undp.org/insights/vaccine​-­equity.

4

Vaidyanathan 2024. These pledges still fallshort of the annual loss and damages associated with climate change, which have been
estimated to be as high as $400 billion a year.

5

6

https://about.bnef.com/blog/global-­c lean​-energy-­investment-jumps-­17-hits-­1-8-­trillion​-in-­2023-according-­to-bloombergnef-­report/(accessed 31 January 2024).
HDI data up to 2022 are from table 1 in theStatistical Annex. Values for 2023 are projections using the same data sources used forthat table.

7

Msemburi and others 2023.

8

See UNDP (2022a).

9

Some 3 billion people report feeling worried
today, an increase of 687 million people
over the past decade; 2 billion people reportsadness, 540 million people more than a decade ago; and 2.9 billion people experiencestress, an increase of 596 million people
over the past decade (Human Development
Report Office calculations based on datafrom Gallup 2023). Daly and Macchia (2023)
document an increase in the prevalence offeelings of emotional distress between 2009
and 2021.

18

On the mobilization of the future as a politicalidea, see White (2023).

OVERVIEW
1Persson and Bennich 2023.

2

IRC 2023a; UNHCR 2023b, 2023c.

3

Msemburi and others 2023; Wang and others
2022;

4

Bollyky and others 2022; Lenton, Boulton andScheffer 2022.

5

Bollyky and others 2022.

6

Henkel and others 2023.

7

Kumar and others 2022.

8

Druedahl, Minssen and Price 2021.

26

Koczan and others 2021.

27

Engler and others 2020.

28

Stiglitz 1998.

29

See Alcalá and Ciccone (2004), Bartley Johns
and others (2015); Frankel and Romer (2017)
and IMF (2001). See Birdsall and others (1993)
for reflections on the East Asian miracle.
Trade also had differential impacts acrosspopulation groups (Engel and others 2021).

30

White and others 2023.

31

Walter 2021b.

32

Alstadsæter and others 2023.

33

Minerals, energy, key crops, electronics, pharmaceuticals, basic metals, chemicals, financial
services, professional services intellectual
property (Seong and others 2022).

34

Contributions to conceptualizing global public
goods gaining force at the turn of the 20th century (Kanbur, Sandler and Morrison 1999; Kaul,
Grunberg and Stern 1999; Sandler 1997). A firstwave of policy interest in global public goods
is reflected in Kaul and Conceição (2006),
Kaul and others (2003) and Zedillo and others(2006). For a recent review of the increasing
importance of global public goods in today’s
world, see Buchholz and Sandler (2021).

35

Boese and others 2022; Card and others
2022; Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes 2012; McCoy
and Somer 2019; Wagner 2021.

36

Levin, Milner and Perrings 2021.

37

See Van Bavel and others (forthcoming) forthe costs of polarizing a pandemic.

9

Gleeson and others 2023.

10

NASA 2023.

11

UNDP’s Human Climate Horizons is aninteractive visualization platform (https://horizons.hdr.undp.org/) consisting of a dynamic digital public resource that projects
up to the end of the 21st century impacts ofclimate change on people and its implications
for human development.

12

Albrecht 2012, p. 250. See also Clayton andKarazsia (2020), Stanley and others (2021)
and Wullenkord and others (2021).

13

Hickman and others 2021.

14

Funke, Schularick and Trebesch 2016; Guiso
and others 2019; Gyöngyösi and Verner2022; Mian, Sufi and Trebbi 2014.

15

Funke, Schularick and Trebesch 2023.

38

Schimmelpfennig and others 2022.
As argued in Bednar (2021).

10

See Kurlantzick (2022), Nichols (2021) and
UNDP (2023b).

11

Funke, Schularick and Trebesch 2023.

16

Cerra, Fatás and Saxena 2023.

39

12

Andre and others 2024.

17

Aiyar and others 2023.

40

Bednar 2021.

13

Fernbach and Van Boven 2022.

18

Hobolt, Leeper and Tilley 2021.

14

Gur, Ayal and Halperin 2021.

Aiyar and others 2023; Xing, Gentile and Dollar 2021.

41
42

Henkel and others 2023.

15

Graeber, Roth and Zimmerman 2023; Vogt
and others 2016.

19

Ganapati and Wong 2023.

43

De Vries, Hobolt and Walter 2021.

20

Chen, Mrkaic and Nabar 2019; Lane andMilesi-­Ferretti 2018.

44

Bearce and Jolliff Scott 2019.

21

Holland and Pazarbasioglu 2024.

45

Deitelhoff 2020; Dellmuth and Tallberg 2015;
Nye Jr 2001; Schneider 2018.

22

WTO 2023.

46

23

As of 2023, based on data from the International Telecommunication Union (https://www​.itu.int/en/ITU-­D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default​.aspx, accessed 16 November 2023).

See Conceição and Mendoza (2006) andchapter 3.

47

Sparkman, Geiger and Weber 2022.

48

Graeber, Roth and Zimmerman 2023.

24

IOM 2022.

49

25

UNDP 2009.

The notion of agency linked with collective
outcomes has been referred to as “collective
agency.” See, for instance, Ibrahim (2006),

16

17

Demeritt and Hoff 2023. Expanding agency isabout enhancing the ability of people to beagents of change. Policies have not stressedenough the central role of agency as a key
pillar of human development. Narrowing
agency gaps allows people to participate inpublic reasoning and decisionmaking throughinstitutions they have confidence in.
On the importance of co-ownership for political institutions, see Allen (2023).

Notes

207

Leßmann (2022), Pelenc, Bazile and Ceruti(2015) and Rauschmayer and others (2018).

17

Least Developed Countries have low levels
of income and face vulnerabilities that makethem “the poorest and weakest segment” ofthe international community (https://www​.un​.org/ohrlls/content/about-least-developed​-countries).

50

See also Prados de la Escosura (2022).

51

O’Madagain and Tomasello 2022; Tomasello
2022.

52

UNDP 2023a.

18

See discussions in UNDP (2022a, 2022b).

53

UNDP 2023a.

19

See, for instance, Cerra, Fatás and Saxena(2023) and Göcke (2002).

20

Cerra, Fatás and Saxena 2023.

21

See, for instance, Yagan (2019) on employment hysteresis in the United States after the
2007–2008 global financial crisis.

54

UNDP 2023a.

55

UN 2023b.

56

For instance, the Stiglitz Commission for the
Reform of the International Financial andMonetary System (convened in 2008, in the
middle of the 2007–2008 global financial
crisis) suggested establishing a Global Economic Coordination Council as an option(Stiglitz Commission 2009).

57

Through the 171 members of the Global Forumon Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes. In 2022 information on
almost EUR 12 trillion in assets was automatically exchanged. See OECD (2024b).

58

United Nations Secretary-General 2023.

59

Alstadsæter and others 2023.

60

Sen 1999, p. 18.

22

See, for instance, Anzoategui and others(2019).

23

For instance, Schwandt and Von Wachter(2020) analyse the effects of recessions on
health of those cohorts entering the labour
market during a large recession.

24

25

PART ICH AP T E R 1
1

HDI data up to 2022 are from table 1 in theStatistical Annex. Values for 2023 are projections using the same data sources used forthat table.

2

See also Independent Panel for Pandemic
Preparedness and Response (2021).

3

UNDP 2022a.

4

Rockström and others 2024; UNDP 2020b.

5

NOAA National Centers for Environmental
Information 2023.

6

Ebi and others 2021.

7

NASA Earth Obervatory 2023.

8

Oatis 2023.

For instance, in the context of thepost–2007–2008 global financial crisis, Ball(2014) studies 23 OECD countries and finds
evidence of both a loss in potential output
and a reduction in the growth rate of potential
output, which compounds over time.
See, for instance, Conceição and Kim (2014),
Conceição, Kim and Zhang (2010), Conceição,Mukherjee and Nayyar (2011) and Molina andothers (2014). See also the estimated effect onhuman development of political business cycles in Africa, studied by Iddrisu and Mohammed (2019) for 38 African countries from 1990
to 2015. See the effects of global shocks on aset of national human development indicators
across 29 countries in West-­Central Europe
and Commonwealth of Independent States in
Horváth, Ivanov and Peleah (2012). Additionally, global economic fluctuations have beenfound to affect HDI values through different
components of the balance of payments in
Egypt (see Emara and Mohamed 2023). See
Kim and Conceição (2010) on the effects ofconflict shocks on human development.

26

Molina and others 2014.

27

For instance, Camarena and others (2022)
analyse the trend and cyclical component ofsocial indicators such as the unemployment
rate, income poverty and HDI value for 15
Latin American countries. They find that while
the cyclical component explains 72.1 percentof the variance in the unemployment rate and32.1 percent of the variance in monetary poverty, it explains only 3.3 percent of the variance in HDI value. Leite and Ferreira (2023),
using within-­country data for five regions in
Brazil, find that HDI value is the social indicator with the lowest cyclical component among
those analysed.

9

Mlaba 2023.

10

Obermeier and Rustad 2023.

11

If the war in Yemen continues until 2030, human development will be reversed by 40 years­—­or by one and a half generations (Moyer andothers 2019.; UNDP and ESCWA 2023).

12

UN 2023d.

13

UN 2023d.

14

Sen (1999) argues that development is theprocess of expanding human freedoms in a variety of dimensions, including political freedom(such as freedom from tyranny and oppression),
economic freedom (such as freedom from poverty and hunger), social opportunities (such as
ability to access social services), transparency(such as freedom of expression) and security.

28

29

UNDP 2022a.

15

WEF 2023c.

30

16

Msemburi and others 2023.

PISA is an OECD assessment that compares basic education attainment among
15-­year-olds around the world by measuring

208

For instance, the origin of the modern use of
economic cycles dates back to one century
ago, when they were seen as alternating periods of crisis and prosperity in the studies of
the National Bureau of Economic Research(Cerra, Fatás and Saxena 2023).

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

abilities in basic mathematics, reading andscience.
31

Johnson 2019.

32

Msemburi and others 2023. This figure isbased on excess mortality computations. The
number recorded by national authorities wasmuch lower. See Johns Hopkins University(2023).

33

Rosenwald 2021.

34

Al Amin and others 2021; Lau and others
2022; Pujolar and others 2022.

35

Kaczorowski and Del Grande 2021; Ziedan,
Simon and Wing 2022.

36

Keynejad 2023.

37

WHO 2022b.

38

Santomauro and others 2021.

39

UNICEF 2021.

40

Lee 2020.

41

Patel and others 2022, p. 2.

42

See Ravens-­Sieberer and others (2023). For
instance, anxiety prevalence increased from15 percent before the pandemic to 30 percent in December 2020–January 2021 thenfell to 25 percent in September–October
2022.

43

Schady and others 2023.

44

Schady and others 2023.

45

OECD 2023.

46

Dorn and others 2021.

47

Dorn and others 2021.

48

Bryant and others 2022.

49

Bryant and others 2022.

50

IMF 2021c.

51

IMF 2021c.

52

ILO 2023.

53

Alon and others 2022.

54

Alon and others 2022.

55

UNDP 2023a.

56

Flor and others 2022; Goldin 2022.

57

Gross national income in real purchasing power
parity terms (Human Development Report Officecalculations based on projections by the International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook database, October 2023, https://www.imf.
org/en/Publications/WEO​/weo​-­database/2023/
October, accessed 1 Decem­ber 2023).

58

Arellano, Bai and Mihalache 2020.

59

UN Global Crisis Response Group 2023.

60

UN Global Crisis Response Group 2023, p. 4.

61

Ecker and others 2023.

62

Molina and Jensen 2023. Somalia is excluded
because an HDI value was not calculated for
2019.

63

Guterres 2023a.

64

Aas Rustad 2023; Arasmith, Østby and Aas
Rustad 2022.

65

Institute for Economics & Peace 2023.

66

Buhaug and Gleditsch 2008.

67

Institute for Economics & Peace 2023.

68

De Maio 2010.

69

Hyndle-­Hussein 2015.

70

SIPRI 2023.

71

The number of deaths in battle grew substantially in 2022. An estimate released in mid2023 placed the number at 177,000–303,000(Davies, Pettersson and Öberg 2023). The
number of deaths is likely to be closer to theupper bound, based on reports of higherthan-anticipated estimates for the main
conflicts that year (Cooper and others 2023;
Pilling and Schipani 2023). Although uncertain, these estimates indicate that deaths inbattle are reaching levels not seen since theend of World War II. This is consistent with thefact that in 2022 the world recorded the highest level of state-based armed con­flicts since1945. See Obermeier and Rustad (2023) for
long-term conflict trends.

72

Persson and Bennich 2023.

73

Persson and Bennich 2023; Uppsala Conflict
Data Program 2023.

74

Food and humanitarian aid often fail to reachaffected population on time due to politicalobstacles, increasing civilian death tolls, asseen in Ethiopia, Gaza, Syrian Arab Republic,
Sudan and Yemen.

75Internationalized conflicts are civil conflicts
with at least one or more third-­party governments involved in the conflict through the contributing or deploying of combat personnel.

76

Obermeier and Rustad 2023.

77

IISS 2023.

78

Regan 2002.

79

Obermeier and Rustad 2023.

80

IRC 2023a; UNHCR 2023b; UNHCR 2023c.

81

OCHA 2023.

82

Nisbet, Lestrat and Vatanparast 2022.

83

UNHCR 2023a.

84

IOM 2022.

85

UNHCR 2023b.

86

OCHA 2023.

87

International Rescue Committee 2023.

88

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
2023.

89

and others 2017; Redvers and others 2022;
Richardson and others 2022).
95

He and Silliman 2019; Reimann, Vafeidis andHonsel 2023.

96

UNDP 2024. For example, Human Climate
Horizons platform projections show thatthe share of population living in 1-­in 20-­year
floodplains in Kiribati could increase from
2.27 percent in the coming decades to
9.35 percent by the end of the century undera moderate emissions scenario.

97

Persson and Bennich 2023.

98

UN 2023d.

99

Persson and Bennich 2023.

100 World Bank 2022.
101

World Bank 2022

126 Albrecht 2019; Cianconi and others 2023.
127

Crabtree 2022.

128 There is a question of how abstract climatechange is. As stated at one level, the disasters literature overlaps with the eco-­emotions
literature, as disasters may have alreadyaffected certain people. Other issues might
include people’s worry about climate change
affecting them directly (perhaps they live in aflood zone) or how good people are at putting
themselves in another person’s place. “Worry,”for example, about climate change may mean
very different things to different people.
129 Hickman and others 2021.
130 Klinenberg, Araos and Koslov 2020.
131

UNDP 2022b.

102 UN 2023c.

132 Rovenskaya, Gomez Echeverri and Patil
2023, p. 2.

103 World Bank 2022.

133

Otto and others 2020.

104 UN 2023c.

134

UNDP 2022a.

105 World Bank 2022.

135 Marquardt 2017; Rovenskaya, Gomez Echeverri and Patil 2023.

106 Global income inequality, as measured by
the ratio of the average income of the richest
10 percent to the average income of the poorest 50 percent (Chancel and others 2022).
107 Chancel and others 2022.

136 Marion Suiseeya, Elhard and Paul 2021; Otto
and others 2020; Pattberg and Stripple 2008.
137

108 Persson and Bennich 2023.
109 Chancel and others 2022. These patterns
have important links to the process of globalization itself. Evidence suggests that from1980 to 2010 between-­country inequality fell
as emerging economies were growing andcatching up to high-income economies. During the same time global integration shifted
low-­skilled jobs to labour-­abundant countries,
the lower income earners in advanced countries lost income while the lower and middle-­
income earners in labour-­abundant countries
gained. This simultaneously drove an increasein within-­country inequality in high-income
economies. Within-­country inequality alsorose in low- and middle-income countries as
the gains for the rich became disproportionately larger than those for the poor.

Around 2005, AIDS-­related deaths reachednearly 2 million a year, which moderated to
1 million a year following advancements inantiretroviral therapy that make it possible forpeople to survive and live with AIDS, even as
the prevalence of infection continues to behigh (Roser and Ritchie 2023). Life expectancy jumped back up in many countries inAfrica where it had fallen by 10–20 years in
the mid-­2000s.

138 Consider the largest-­ever stimulus package of€2 trillion by the European Union to support
recovery from the pandemic (European Commission 2023; Matina 2020). A centrepiece ofthe package was grants dedicated to assisting the hardest-­hit member nations.

C HAP TER 2
1

Helleiner 2021; WEF 2022.

110

Chancel and others 2022.

2

Stiglitz 2002.

111

UNDP 2023a.

3

Georgieva, Loayza and Mendez Ramos 2018.

112

UN 2022.

4

113

Olaberria 2022.

See, for example, Escande (2023), Fink (2022)
and Helleiner (2021).

114

Coppedge and others 2022.

5

McBride and Siripurapu 2022.

Aichele and Felbermayr 2015.

115

Persson and Bennich 2023.

690

Jakob and others 2022.

116

Papada and others 2023.

Altman and Bastian 2022; Seong and others
2022; Seong and others 2024.

UNESCO 2022.

Balsa-Barreiro and others 2020.

NASA 2023.

117

7

91

Dance 2023.

118

Sen 1999.

8

92
93

UNDP 2022b.

119

Papada and others 2023.

94

While the focus of the discussion is betweencountry interdependence and inequalities,
there is also interdependence between
people and planet that is being mismanaged, resulting not only in climate change
but also in other environmental challenges,
such as declines in biodiversity (see Caillon

120 UNESCO 2022.

See, for example, Frankel and Romer (1999,2017) on the relationship between economic
interdependence (as proxied by international
trade) and economic growth. Also consider how
trade in medical equipment, personal protective
equipment and vaccines was key to savinglives
during the Covid-19 pandemic (OECD 2021);
mRNA vaccine development relied heavily on
cross-border, cross-regional partnerships forsourcing components (Kumar and others 2022),
clinical development and trials, and manufacturing (Druedahl, Minssen and Price 2021). With

121

UNDP 2022a.

122 Scheidel and others 2023.
123 UNDESA n.d.
124 McIver and others 2014.
125 Roy 2019.

Notes

209

more equitable access and distribution, evenmore lives might have been saved and theduration of the pandemic shortened.
9

The recent Covid-19 pandemic and the
2007–2008 global financial crisis are illustrations of this.

10

Coyle 2023; Rodrik 2023; Stiglitz 2007,
2002b; White and others 2023.

11

Goldberg 2023.

12

Rodrik 2018, 2021.

13

As elaborated later in the chapter.

14

Mondliwa, Roberts and Ponte 2021.

15

And the “neat coloured boxes of nation statesin political maps of the world belie the complexity of … interconnections” (Dalby 2020. p. 7).

16

While many people still live in small communities, more than half the world’s population
now lives in cities, and both the number ofcities and the world’s urban population is expected to increase—especially in low-income
countries (UN-Habitat 2022).

17

18

In fact, recent archaelogical findings suggestthat long-distance transportation of materials
such as obsidian emerged very early in human evolution. Blegen (2017) reports finding
obsidian that originated about 166 kilometresaway from archaeological sites dated to about
200,000 years ago. Brooks and others (2018)and Deino and others (2018) show that social
exchange over large distances may have started even earlier, as early as 320,000 years ago.
Of course, in historical times there are multiple
records of exchanges taking place over vastdistances. A more recent well-known example
is the so-called Silk Road, which dates backto the 1st century BCE and connected Central
Asia, China, India, Persia, Arabia and Europe.
Beckwith (2009) argues that the “road” in “Silk
Road” downplays the engagements with peoples of Central Asia, as if the exchanges weremerely a conduit from China to Europe, when
in fact there were deep interactions acrossall of Eurasia, with pervasive and long-lasting
economic and cultural exchanges
For example, Ganapati and Wong (2023)
show that global transport costs for goods
have declined substantially; the cost to transport 1 tonne of goods 1 kilometre has fallen
approximately 35 percent since 1970, and thecost to transport $1 worth of goods 1 kilometre
has fallen more than 50 percent.

19

Rodrik 2018.

20

Rodrik 2011; Stiglitz and Greenwald 2014.

21

A large body of literature maps the links
among trade, economic growth and poverty
reduction (see, for example, Dollar and Kraay
2004; Frankel and Romer 2017; Sala-i-Martin2007). However, the literature also points tosome nuance. For example, Dollar and Kraay(2003) find that both institutions and trade
openness matter for economic growth andthat countries with “better” institutions trademore. Furthermore, researchers have foundthat in the long run institutions matter morethan trade for economic growth (see, forexample, Rodrik, Subramanian and Trebbi
2004). Even the success of the so-called
Asian Tigers has been ascribed to a mix of210

export-led growth strategies and industrial
policies (Stiglitz 1996).
22

Nolan, Richiardi and Valenzuela 2019.

23

Hirte, Lessmann and Seidel 2020; RodríguezPose 2012.

24

Autor, Dorn and Hanson 2013, 2016; DixCarneiro and others 2023.

25

Stiglitz and Greenwald 2014.

26

IMF 2023c.

27

WEF 2023b.

28

Goldberg and Reed 2023.

29

Aiyar and others 2023. While there are multiple definitions and measures of globalization,
including the KOF Index of Globalisation, whichmeasures globalization along economic, socialand political dimensions (Gygli and others2019), and the DHL Global Connectedness
Index, which measures trade, capital, people
and information flows (Altman and Bastian2022), globalization in the economics literature
is commonly referred to as international tradeand finance openness and is measured by thesum of exports and imports as a share of global
GDP (Aiyar and others 2023; Cevik 2023).
Using this latter metric, Cevik (2023) finds no
structural retreat of globalization. Furthermore,
the indices mentioned above also show highglobalization after a temporary downturn during the Covid-19 pandemic (Altman and Bastian2022). That said, some researchers argue thatthe current trends of increasing trade barriers
and other inward-looking policy measures
examined in this chapter have yet to have a full
effect on the level of globalization (Goldberg
and Reed 2023).

30

Wolf 2024.

31

Lane and Milesi-Ferretti 2018. Their researchfinds that international financial integration,
understood as as cross-border holdings ofassets and liabilities, remains high, eventhough the pace of integration has declined
since 2007/2008. Emerging and developing
economies are playing an increasingly important role, offsetting some of the declines
in cross-border banking among advanced
economies.

32

33

34

Minerals, energy, key crops, electronics, pharmaceuticals, basic metals, chemicals, financial
services, professional services and intellectual property (Seong and others 2022).

38

Engler and others 2020.

39

Bond 2022; Esses 2018; Koczan and others
2021.

40

For a review, see Koczan and others (2021),
who, among many things, show that immigration has no significant effect on unemployment in the receiving country. Or consider
Engler and others (2020), who find that a 1
percentage point increase in immigration inadvanced economies increases economic
output by almost 1 percent within five years.

41

Altman and Bastian 2022; UNCTAD 2022.

42

González and Ferencz 2018.

43

Gopalan, Reddy and Sasidharan 2022; Xing,
Gentile and Dollar 2021.

44

ITU 2023.

45

Balsa-Barreiro and others 2020.

46

The trade blocs of the European Union, North
America and the 10 nations of the Associationof Southeast Asian Nations account for almost
70 percent of global trade (Broom 2023;
Sytsma 2020).

47

For example, Sub-Saharan Africa, home
to many countries heavily dependent oninternational trade for income, accounts fora minuscule share of global trade (around 3
percent; Coulibaly 2022).

48

Kamin, Arteta and Ruch 2023.

49

Iacoviello and Navarro (2019) show that anincrease in the US interest rate by 100 basis
points reduces foreign GDP by 0.5 percent
in advanced economies and 0.8 percent
in emerging economies after three years,
amounts that are similar to the domestic effects of a monetary shock (found to reduce
GDP in the United States by 0.7 percent after
two years).

50

Iacoviello and Navarro 2019. See also IMF(2014).

51

See, for example, Stiglitz and Greenwald(2014).

52

Cortinovis, Crescenzi and Van Oort 2020;
Crescenzi, Dyèvre and Neffke 2022; Xing,
Gentile and Dollar 2021.

53

Narula and Pineli 2019.

54

Autor and others 2020b; De Loecker andEeckhout 2018; De Loecker, Eeckhout andUnger 2020; Karabarbounis 2023; Karabarbounis and Neiman 2013; UNCTAD 2023.

Xing, Gentile and Dollar 2021. Services­—­
including finance, logistics, communication and,55
increasingly, digital services—enable global
value chains and are playing an even more
56
important role for global trade. In fact, trade inintermediate goods now slightly exceeds trade57
in final goods (Aiyar and others 2023).
Transport use for goods, whether counted byweight or by value, has more than doubled
between 1965 and 2020 as emerging economies increasingly established themselves on
the international market (Ganapati and Wong2023).

35

IOM 2022.

36

IOM 2022.

37

UNDP 2009.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Howard 2021.
J. Clapp 2021, 2023; Lianos and others 2022;
Palazzo and Vollero 2022.
Wallach 2021. By way of illustration, in 2021
the market capitalization—the total value ofa company’s shares in the stock market—of
Apple was larger than the GDP of Brazil,
Canada, Italy, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and many more.

58

White and others 2023.

59

Lund and others 2020.

60

Coyle (2023, p. 8) suggests that globalization
forces and technological advancements, notleast in the reorganization of production andtrade processes, have led to such strong
specialization patterns that “the scope of themarket seems to have reached a limit thatmeans there is a trade-off between continouing division of labour and the rigour of competition.” In other words markets of “too big tofail” are now also accompanied by markets of“too few to fail.”
61

White and others 2023.

62

Birshan 2023; Seong and others 2024.

63

WEF 2023a.

64

WEF 2023a.

65

Autor, Dorn and Hanson 2016.

66

Evidence from the 1980s and early 1990s
showed a positive relationship between
government spending and trade openness ina majority of countries. However, this relationship no longer seem to hold true (Trubowitz
and Burgoon 2023; see also Anderson andObeng 2021).

67

68

and that offshoring did not increase the likelihood of voting for nationalist parties on theright.
81

Naoi 2020; Walter 2021b.

82

Bardhan 2022; Mutz 2018. More broadly,
researchers link feelings of ontological(in)security­—­
security of one’s being andplace in the world (as opposed to security ofsurvival)—to nationalistic sentiment and support for white supremacy. See, for example,
Kinnvall and Kisić Merino (2023) and Stenner
and Andreouli (2023).

83

84

85

Autor and others (2020a) link political polarization in the United States with the implications of globalization, while Fetzer (2019)argues that it was the incidence of austerity
policies in the United Kingdom that was theproximate causal factor.
Guriev and Papaioannou 2022; Trubowitz
and Burgoon 2023. In 2002 Joseph Stiglitz’s
groundbreaking book Globalization and its
Discontents (Stiglitz 2002) argued that the prevailing economic policies of globalization at thetime—market liberalization, privatization andausterity policies—had failed to deliver on theirpromises of growth, stability and poverty reduction and had instead led to adverse outcomessuch as loss of jobs and income, increased
inequalities and stifled development for many
countries. We build on this work but focus on
how feelings of discontent and antiglobalization sentiment have seemingly globalized.

69

Guriev and Papaioannou 2022.

70

Guriev and Papaioannou 2022.

71

Walter (2021b) finds that antiglobalization
sentiment has not increased among thegeneral public but that antiglobalization narratives have become increasingly common inpartisan discource.

72

Altomonte, Gennaro and Passarelli 2019; De
Vries, Hobolt and Walter 2021.

73

Rodrik 2021.

74

See, for example, Bonomi, Gennaioli andTabellini (2021) and Noury and Roland (2020);
see also Funke, Schularick and Trebesch(2023) on the economic costs of populism.

75

Gyöngyösi and Verner 2022; Mian, Sufi and
Trebbi 2014.

76

Tooze 2023.

77

Jordà and Taylor 2016.

78

Naoi 2020.

79

Autor and others 2024.

80

For example, in the European context Rommel
and Walter (2018) show that those exposed tooffshoring of jobs tend to favor parties that
promote redistribution and social protection

Wolf 2023; see also Rodríguez-Pose (2018,2022) and Rodríguez-Pose, Terrero-Davila
and Lee (2023).
Algan and others 2021; Guiso and others
forthcoming; Rodríguez-Pose, Terrero-Davila
and Lee 2023.
UNDP (2022b) opened space for new metrics
on subjective wellbeing, using data from theWorld Values Survey. It introduced the Index
of Perceived Human Insecurity, which measures how secure people felt in their everyday life alongside a number of dimensions.
The report found that six out of seven people
worldwide reported feeling insecure about
many aspects of their lives. UNDP (2022a)
explored mental wellbeing by surveying dataon feelings of stress, worry and sadness andexploring the connections between mental
wellbeing and human development.

102 UN and World Bank 2018.
103 UNDP 2022b.
104 UN 2021.
105 Muriuki and others 2023.
106 Melin 2023.
107 Sklair 2020. Available at https://iiraorg.
com/2021/01/22/globalization-and-the​-challenge-of-the-anthropocene/ accessed 5
August 2023
108 Degroot 2022; Degroot and others 2021.
109 IPCC 2021b.
110

Vitousek and others 1997.

111

UCMP 2023.

112

Allan and others 2020.

113

IPCC 2021a.

114

UNDP 2020b.

115

Espagne and others 2023.

116

Dalby 2020.

117

Wu and Wan 2023.

118

For example Gourdel, Monasterolo and Gallagher (2023) find that introducing carbon
pricing in China may decrease demand forIndonesian coal, reducing GDP by 4.4 percent
and increasing public debt to 9.6 percent of
GDP.

119

For example, Chepeliev, Osorio-Rodarte andvan der Mensbrugghe (2021) find that regional and global collaboration around nationallydetermined contributions of greenhouse gas
emissions reductions will reduce the burdenof the climate transition on people living inpoverty. Conversely, a scenario where countries meet their nationally determined contributions without regional cooperation resultin a 0.45 percent increase in the number ofpeople living in severe poverty.

86

Some 3 billion people report feeling worried
today, an increase of 687 million over the past
decade; 2 billion people report sadness, 540
million more than a decade ago; and 2.9 billion people experience stress, an increase of
596 million over the past decade (Human Development Report Office calculations basedon data from Gallup 2023).

87

Blanchflower 2023.

88

Daly and Macchia 2023; Yonzan, Gerszon
Mahler and Lakner 2023.

120 Liu and others 2015.

89

De Vries, Hobolt and Walter 2021.

121

90

Altomonte, Gennaro and Passarelli 2019.

91

Ajzenman, Cavalcanti and Da Mata 2023;
Guriev and Treisman 2019.

122 Marin and others 2022. That said, soybean production has also been linked to sustainability
challenges (Song and others 2021).

92

Alstadsæter and others 2023.

93

De Vries, Hobolt and Walter 2021.

94

Walter 2021b.

95

Bonomi, Gennaioli and Tabellini 2021.

96

Autor and others (2024) find that increases in
US import tariffs in 2018–2019 led to retaliatory foreign tariffs that resulted in concentrated
job loss in certain US regions and sectors.
Despite the negative economic outcomes,
voters in regions that were more exposed totariffs were more likely to re-elect candidates
that supported import tariffs.

97

McConnell and others 2018.

98

Ajzenman, Cavalcanti and Da Mata 2023.

99

Funke, Schularick and Trebesch 2023.

100 Funke, Schularick and Trebesch 2023.
101

Aas Rustad and Østby 2023; Arasmith, Østby
and Aas Rustad 2022.

Notes

Guerrero and others 2021; Pacheco 2012.

123 Williams and others 2019.
124 Hughes and others 2018.
125 Keys and others 2019; Martín-López and others 2019; Pellowe and others 2023.
126 Williams and others 2019.
127

Dalby 2020, p. 8.

128 Wu and Wan 2023.
129 Feng, Li and Wang 2023.
130 Feng, Li and Wang 2023.
131

Kinnunen and others 2020.

132 OECD 2018.
133

Howard and Hendrickson 2020.

134

Degroot 2022.

135 Kinnunen and others 2020; Monterrosa andothers 2020
136 UNCTAD 2023.

211

137

Anderson and others 2019.

138 FAO and others 2023.
139 IOM 2022.
140 Black and others 2011; McLeman and others
2021.
141

Lenton and others 2023. See also Xu andothers (2020).

161

162 Frank 2021. See also Cornelli, Frost and
Mishra (2023) and UNDP (2020b, 2022a).
163 Cornelli, Frost and Mishra 2023; UNDP 2020b.

C HAP TER 3
1

A global public goods lens can help countries
understand better ways to focus their contributions towards addressing shared global
challenges. For instance, mitigating climatechange requires all countries to reducegreenhouse gas emissions, but eradicatinga disease depends on its being eliminatedin the last country where the disease is still
endemic. Particularly at a time when the international community is engaged in designing
new treaties or improving existing ones tocontrol pandemics or deal with global environmental challenges, it matters to know hownational contributions aggregate to provide
global public goods.

2

Such as the United Nations Secretary-General High-Level Advisory Board on Effective
Multilateralism(https://highlevel​advisory​board.org/).

3

As proposed in G20 (2023a).

4

It states that the lengths of two sides of aright triangle (a and b), when squared, equal
the length of the hypotenuse (c) squared(a2 + b2 = c2).

5This means that the Pythagorean theorem
is globally nonrival in consumption and production. The nonrivalry of ideas such as thetheorem was captured by Thomas Jefferson’sanalogy of the flame of a candle, which is not
extinguished if it is used to light another candle (as quoted in Bryan and Williams 2021).

142 https://horizons.hdr.undp.org/.
143

Clement and others 2021; Rigaud and others
2018.

144

ITU 2023.

145 In 2020 the number of internet users reached
4.9 billion people, and more than half of the
global population were active social media
users (ITU 2022).
146 Consider the international implications of
the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, where uncertainty and panic spread throughout the
global tech and banking system, potentiallyaccelerating the well-known contagion of
behaviour at the heart of bank runs. Althoughmanagement decisions were at the heart ofthe crisis, social media played an integral
role, as information and rumors related to thebank’s solvency quickly spread and may havecontributed to the bank run (Cookson andothers 2023).
147

For example, a recent Amnesty International
Report found that the horrific persecutionsand violence against the Rohingya people in
Myanmar in 2017 were predated by flourishing hate speech and misinformation about
the Rohingya on major social media platforms,
aggravating an already atrocious situation forthe minority (Amnesty International 2022).
The violence forced thousands of people
to flee, spreading the conflict cross national
borders. Almost 1 million people reachedneighbouring Bangladesh, where they to thisday continue to face extremely challenging
circumstances in the world’s largest refugee
camp (USA for UNHCR 2023).

148 Michaelsen 2020. This may have provided
opportunities to restrict freedoms throughpersuasion and control of information as
opposed to relying on violence (Guriev andTreisman 2019).

6

Although its use depends on other complementary factors, including the ability to understand it.

7This means that the Pythagorean theorem is
globally nonexcludable.

8“Good” suggests social desirability but does
not imply a moral assessment—there aremany things that can be considered morally
good under different ethical frameworks thatare not global public goods. Global public
goods have the two distinctive characteristics
of being nonrival and nonexcludable in consumption or production. Full nonrivalry meansthat someone benefiting from a global public
good does not take away from what is available for everyone else to enjoy. Full excludability means that the benefits are available toeveryone without the possibility of excluding
anyone.

149 Altman and Bastian 2022.
150 González and Ferencz (2018) find that a 10
percent increase in bilateral digital connectivity
leads to a 2 percent increase in trade in goods.
151

See chapter 6 in Xing, Gentile and Dollar(2021).

152 Buckley 2018.
153 Espagne and others 2023.

9

Stiglitz 1999.

154 WTO 2023.

10

As elaborated also in Buchholz and Sandler(2021), which inspires and informs much ofthis paragraph.

11

This argument draws from Cornes andSandler (1996). What matters is the incentive
structure that shapes production and consumption. For instance, while a loaf of breadis fully rival and excludable, a collective that
produces bread and distributes it equally
among the members of the collective has

155 Creutzig and others 2022.
156 Cowls and others 2021; Creutzig and others
2022.
157

Creutzig and others 2022.

158 Creutzig and others 2022.
159 ITU 2023.
160 ITU 2022.

212

an incentive structure equivalent to that ofproviding a public good (Cornes and Sandler
1996). Many countries decide to provide
public services that could also be provided
privately (from health and education to waterand sanitation) (Cornes and Sandler 1996).
And while ideas in the public domain areglobal public goods, if their use is restrictedby exploiting monopoly power or intellectual
property rights, some can be excluded. There
are many reasons why these choices are justified. For example, while making knowledge
excludable tends to be inefficient—because,
given nonrivalry, there is no cost to enablingan additional person anywhere in the world toaccess knowledge once it has been created(remember the candle that is not extinguishedby lighting another)—the incentives to generate new knowledge could be weakened if
the artist writing a novel or mathematician
researching a new theorem had no way toearn a living from the knowledge that would
be eventually produced. At the same time, it
is not necessary to make knowledge excludable in order to provide incentives to generate new ideas, since other institutions—from
public funding of science, in which scientists
are institutionally rewarded by claiming
priority to a scientific discovery, to prizes forscientific or artistic breakthroughs (potentially
funded by philanthropic organizations)—also
encourage the creation of new knowledge(Dasgupta and David 1994).

Cornelli, Frost and Mishra 2023.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

12

See also Liang and others (2023). Still, there isa wide gap between the potential for information and communications technologies to enable this sharing of knowledge and its reality,
given price and other barriers to access, aspresciently envisioned in (Stiglitz 1999).

13

Social choices can often determine whether
and how something is a global public goodby shaping the incentive structures that therelevant agents face in contributing to theglobal public good, including how financing
is structured. Some goods can have somecharacteristics that are—and others that are
not—global public goods. Take money, andconsider the three economic functions that it
performs: store of value, unit of account andmedium of exchange. While far from beinga public good as a store of value, money isfully public as a unit of account. This point wasmade by Kindleberger (1986).

14

The advantages of a lens that reduces complexity has a cost in simplifying, for instance,interconnections between global challenges(for a perspective on these links, see Newell,
Goldstein and Foster 2019) and being lessrelevant for global challenges that are notstrictly linked with cross-border spillovers.
But this lens brings analytical clarity andmakes it easier to discern common features
across global challenges that may seem notrelated and to clarify what lessons from whatkind of successful efforts to address global
challenges can be extrapolated to others.
For example, finding commonalities between
mitigating climate change and tackling theCovid-19 pandemic (as in Ringsmuth and others 2022) is disciplined with a global public
goods approach by recognizing that they areprovided in different ways, as explored in thechapter.

15

16

Externalities reflect uncompensated interdependence among agents (meaning that one
agent makes decisions without regard to theimpacts that the decision might have on otheragents). International externalities reflect
uncompensated interdependence between
two or more countries and can be negative(as in a disease that spreads) or positive (as indisseminating knowledge about how to curb
the spread of the disease). While not all externalities are related to public goods, global
public goods always involve international
externalities. We are grateful to Todd Sandler
for suggesting this formulation. Cornes andSandler (1996, p. 7) argue that in the analysis
of public goods, “the concept of an externality is the basic one.” Taking James Meade’s
approach, an externality can be seen as “anevent which confers an appreciable benefit(inflicts an appreciable damage) on some person or persons who were not fully consenting
parties in reaching the decision or decisions
which led directly or indirectly to the eventin question.” As cited in Cornes and Sandler(1996, p. 39). This is only one of many ways
to define an externality. For example, Kenneth
Arrow defines an externality in the context
of deviations from the axioms underpinning
the Pareto efficiency of competitive markets(Arrow 1969), which Cornes and Sandler(1996) use to present a theory of externalities.
For multiple examples and instances of therelationship between border-transgressing
externalities and the provision of global public
goods, see Kaul and Conceição (2006a) and
Kaul and others (2003).
This reality is inspiring fresh perspectives on
earth system governance (Biermann 2014,
2021; Biermann and Kalfagianni 2020; Burchand others 2019), polycentric governance forresilience (Folke and others 2019; Keys andothers 2019a; Galaz 2022; Rockström andothers 2021; Rockström and others 2023)
and multilevel governance in climate change(Bulkeley 2005; Bulkeley and Newell 2023;
Newell and Simms 2020; Stoddard and others 2021). A global public goods lens can also
further inform and enrich these perspectives,as opposed to replacing or substituting for
them.

17

They are rival in consumption.

18

For an early, and still canonical, presentation on
managing local, regional and global environmental challenges as global public goods, see
Barrett (2003a). For a more focused discussion
on global commons, see Barrett (2006b).

19

As argued in Buchholz and Sandler (2021).

20

For instance, songbirds protect crops in North
America during the spring and summer by
feeding on insects but migrate to Central
and South America for the winter. Degrading
ecosystems in meridional regions can reduce
the population of songbirds in North America,
hurting crops there (Myers 1992, as cited in
Buchholz and Sandler 2021). The negative
effects on the bird population can be exacerbated by climate change (Youngflesh andothers 2023).

21

Barrett (2003a) provides a list with dates ofsignature, ratification and other information
about international environmental treaties

up to about the turn to the 21st century. For a
more comprehensive database going further
in time and up to the present, see Mitchell andothers (2020).
22

Additional illustrative examples related towater: on the impact of ocean acidification on
marine ecosystems, see Doney and others(2020); on the importance of incorporating
human activity in depictions of the global
water cycle, see Abbott and others (2019);
and on advances in the understanding ofthat relationship, see Allan and others (2020);
on quantum sensing for gravity cartographythat has applications for monitoring temporalvariations in aquifers and geodesy, see Strayand others (2022); on the use of satellite data
to identify hotspots of changes in river flows,
see Wu and others (2023); and on improvements in understanding atmospheric ice
nucleation (which is important for understanding global precipitation and the structure
and reflectivity of clouds, which has crucial
bearing on climate change), see Knopf andAlpert (2023). Changes in vegetation anddust patterns appear to have been critical in
the abrupt end of the Green Sahara (which
persisted for thousands of years, up to approximately 5,000 years ago), an insight thatis now critical to understanding the implications of climate change in the Sahara and theSahel going forward. On the Green Sahara,see Tierney, Pausata and deMenocal (2017),
Tierney and others (2020a) and Tierney andothers (2020b), and on the importance ofunderstanding the past to inform the future ofclimate change and its interaction with society, see Degroot and others (2022).

23

Keys and others 2017.

24

Keys and others 2019b.

25

Keys and others 2012. For example, 89 percent of the rainfall over the Nile basin originates outside the basin itself (te Wierik andothers 2021).

26

There is an extensive literature documenting the “great acceleration” in human-drivenchanges to planetary processes (see, forinstance, Steffen and others 2015).

27

See Head and others (2022a) and Headand others (2022b) for evidence supportingthe case for a new epoch. Crawford Lake, in
Canada, was proposed by the Anthropocene
Working Group as a “golden spike” (formally, a
global boundary stratotype section and point)of the Anthropocene (McCarthy and others2023). This designation is being consideredby the broader community of geologists
before a formal decision is made. The concept of the Anthropocene has transcended
geology (see Malhi 2017 for a review), leadingsome to argue that rather than a formal new
epoch in the geological time scale, it should
instead be seen as a “emergent, unfolding,intensifying event” (Edgeworth and others
2023, p. 1; see also Bauer and others 2021,
Gibbard and others 2022a and Gibbard andothers 2022b). For a response to this view,
see Waters and others (2023). Whether the
Anthropocene is ultimately characterized
as a formal unit in the geological timescaleor a geological event does not detract fromthe widely accepted notion that humans are

Notes

fundamentally transforming the planet in
unprecedented ways, and it is in that spiritthat the term is used in this Report, following
UNDP (2020b).
28

On the depletion of the ozone layer, see Barrett(2003a). The global public goods literature on
climate is extensive; see Buchholz and Sandler(2021), Keohane and Victor (2016) and Stiglitz(2015). For a recent take on preserving global
diversity as a global public good, see Barrett(2022) and Buchholz and Sandler (2021).

29

Folke and others 2021.

30

Schell (1982, pp. 166–167), in his meditation of
the implications of a nuclear war in the early
1980s, already echoed an intuition for the
relevance of planetary public goods: “…[T]heearth’s environment is seen not merely as asurrounding element in which it is more orless pleasant to live but as the foundation ofhuman as other life. The oneness of the earth
as a system of support for life is already visible around us. Today, no matter how strenuously statesmen may assert the ‘sovereign’
power of their nations, the fact is that they
are all caught in an increasingly fine mesh of
global life, in which the survival of each nation
depends on the survival of all.”31

We are grateful to Belinda Reyers for thesesuggestions and for the further elaboration inthis note. The biosphere as a planetary public
good could be seen as playing two key roles,
adapting the formulation in Mace and others(2014). First, is the role as a global source ofdiversity of organisms’ functional traits. Organisms with different functional traits can differentially affect important global and regional
ecosystem properties, such as primary production, decomposition or detoxification, andreact differently to changes in the environment.
When certain combinations of functional traits
are lost in the face of environmental change,these key global and regional functions could
be at risk. Second is the role as the library oflife—in other words, the evolutionary potential
to help us adapt, change and stay resilient as
the world and human societies change. In thelong term—over centuries to millennia—human wellbeing will depend on the biosphere’s
continued ability to support desired ecosystemservices and processes in the face of often
rapidly changing selective pressures.

32

A planetary public goods lens does not imply
some sort of naturalistically determined imperative to provide these goods. Ultimately,
the reality of the Anthropocene, which resultsfrom human agency, and the disruption toplanetary processes with implications that do
not stop, and cannot be stopped, at borders
justify the potential usefulness of this lens. A
planetary public goods lens also does notmean that there will not be any contestation,in part because the benefits of planetarypublic goods (like those for any global publicgood) accrue differently to different people
across the globe, in part because the processof providing these goods is not neutral.

33

Knuth 1972; Maor 2019. Even though there
are hundreds of different ways to prove thetheorem, Pythagoras was perhaps the first to
codify a rigorous proof—or, at least, his proof
corresponds to the most ancient record found213

to date (Loomis 1968). For a list of more than
100 proofs, see https://www.cut-the-knot.org​/pythagoras/index.shtml (accessed 15 December 2023).
34

35

36

37

38

39

214

a country’s population (Boadway and Hayashi
1999) and wealth inequalities within countries(Bardhan, Ghatak and Karaivanov 2007). In
addition, as Murdoch, Sandler and Sargent(1997) show, the unitary model of countries asdecisionmakers does not perform well whenmany agents in the country are engaged indetermining the provision status of the public
good in question. For instance, there areenvironmental agreements that mandate reductions in the emissions of both sulphur andnitrogen oxides for 25 countries in Europe.
But while sulphur emissions tend to originate
in a few industries, nitrogen oxide emissions
are generated across a range of sectors andeconomic activities. Thus, through the 1980s,
sulphur emissions in these countries declinedby the treaty-mandated 30 percent or more,
but the same countries had trouble reducing
emissions of nitrogen oxides.

Ideas and knowledge are created and diffused in culturally contingent and evolving
contexts, but individuals can still be central
players, in the form of what Joel Mokyr called“cultural entrepreneurs” (Mokyr 2013, 2016).
Sen (2009b) also describes the importanceof Mary Wollstonecraft’s writings in the 18th
century advocating for the rights of womenand the abolishment of slavery.
Global public goods can be provided bydifferent agents at multiple scales—undermultiple incentive structures that can motivate
agents to contribute to their provision. For
the multitude of agents involved in several
aspects of transnational policymaking, see
Pouliot and Thérien (2023) and Stone andMoloney (2019).

40

Many people depend on knowing and using
the Pythagorean theorem for their livelihoods;
others can go through life without even knowing what it states (not only not using it, but also
not relishing its beauty).
In fact, some theories of economic development attribute to ideas the fundamental rolein driving progress precisely because of
their nonrivalry and because they are thefoundation of even more and newer ideas(in this sense, they have important positive
externalities), including on how to make more
efficient, equitable and sustainable use of thelimited physical resources on our (materiallylimited) planet (Jones 2023). The formal economic analysis of ideas as distinct from other(rival) goods was pioneered by Arrow (1962).
That pathbreaking analysis established theimplications of the nonrivalry of ideas (andthe uncertainty associated with their potential
impact) for both production and demand.
Formal models of economic growth in which
the generation of ideas is endogenous were
pioneered by Romer (1986, 1990, 1993). Jones(2019) explains how the nonrivalry of ideas
sits at the core of these endogenous growthmodels. Enhancing incentives to produce anduse ideas drives these growth models, andgiven that ideas need to come from people(Jones 1995, 2020), other factors contribute,
including enhancing the allocation of talent—
namely by reducing gender or racial discrimination (Hsieh and others 2019; Jones 2022).
Although how far the idea is disseminateddepends on multiple variables, from how it
is stored to people’s ability to make sense of
it and use it. Many ideas may have emerged
and never been disseminated. Rather than astatement on the nature of idea creation anddissemination, the intention here is to illustrate the features of a global public good forwhich the level of provision depends on theactions of the single agent that contributes
the most.
To simplify, agents are countries producing
and benefiting from a global public good.
This crude simplification ignores the many
interactions between the domestic context
and countries’ international actions. These
include, for instance, the impact of the size of

Until Hirshleifer (1983), all public goods (global
or not) were implicitly assumed to follow
a summation aggregation, so much of theoriginal analysis of public goods and policy
discourse (including on global public goods)
continues to implicitly carry that assumption.
The discussion of how global public good
provision depends on different types of aggregations of country contributions is done
discursively in this chapter, drawing on examples. For formal and more comprehensive
treatments of aggregation “technologies,” notonly for global public goods but also for otherpublic goods, see Kanbur, Sandler and Morrison (1999) and Sandler and Arce M. (2002).
The relevance of distinguishing different aggregation technologies for international cooperation was explored in the final report of
the International Task Force on Global Public
Goods (Zedillo and others 2006), as well assome of the background material produced
for the task force (in particular, Barrett 2006b).
For a recent summary of the literature, see
Buchholz and Rübbelke (2017). For instance,
for airborne pollutants that, unlike greenhouse gas emissions, dissipate quickly inthe atmosphere, the location of the countries
originating and being affected by those pollutants, matters, along with prevailing winds.
The reach may, therefore, not be global—inthat case, one confronts the provision oftransnational public goods that may be regional or subregional, as explored in Arce M.
and Sandler (2002), Kanbur, Sandler and Morrison (1999), Sandler (1998) and Sandler andArce M. (2002). There is no perfect substitutability, as with greenhouse gas emissions,because some countries may have a larger
impact than others, and some countries may
also be more affected. Thus, the provision isstill determined by summing the contributionsof the relevant countries, but with those that
contribute more weighing more in the aggregate than those that contribute less—in aweighted summation.

41

Sandler 1997.

42

Rao 2022.

43

That same country, the United States, established a system to monitor tropical cyclones
in the Western Hemisphere because the net
national gains from that effort justified theinvestment, even though the benefits also

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

accrue to many other countries and, potentially, the world (Sandler 1997). Through the
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it also monitors disease outbreaks andseeks to isolate new pathogens around theworld. Both are presumably motivated by adesire to protect US citizens, but they also
bring global benefits (Sandler 2015).
44

One implication of best-shot global public
goods is that their provision is enhanced
when countries coordinate their efforts basedon their resources and capabilities. There issome evidence that countries recognize this.
For instance, Kyle, Ridley and Zhang (2017)
report that a 10 percent increase in US government funding for medical research for a
specific disease is associated with a 2–3 percent reduction in funding for research on thatdisease by governments and foundations in
41 other countries as those countries presumably adjust funding to focus on their researchstrengths. Coordination could enhance theoverall allocation of resources.

45

The concentration of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere is determined by the total
level of emissions, net of the capacity of thebiosphere to “absorb” them—that is, the sumof the emissions from each country.

46

For summation global public goods, eachcountry’s contribution adds equally (at themargin) to the overall provision.

47

Smith and others 2004.

48

To improve the provision of weakest-link
global public goods, allocating resources beyond the country, or countries, with the leastcapacity to contribute makes little difference
because that will make little difference in theoverall provision. In contrast, it is imperative
to enhance the ability to contribute for thoseleast able to do so, because their contribution
determines the overall level of provision of
the global public good.

49

The discussion assumes that the provision of
global public goods is driven by how countries interact in a world where states seek toadvance their self-interest and have different
levels of resources and capabilities (see box
3.2).

50

Sandler (2016, p. 42) says, “Averting a regional
financial crisis through an infusion of funds isa best-shot public good.”

51

There are efforts to coordinate, and evencooperate, on several scientific endeavours,
such as nuclear fusion, for which ITER (https://​www.iter.org/) brings together 35 countries,
and particle physics, for which the European
Organization for Nuclear Research (better
known as CERN) brings together 23 countries(https://www.home.cern/).

52

For example, in codifying rules and poolingof resources to provide liquidity to countries
facing balance of payments crisis, as with thecreation of the International Monetary Fundafter World War II.

53

For descriptions and analysis of multilayered
and multiagent governance, see Slaughter(2004) and Stiglitz and Kaldor (2013).

54

This situation parallels the outcome of theprisoner’s dilemma, when the sum of theindividual contributions is lower than what
would be collectively desirable and feasible.
Chen and Zeckhauser (2018) provide evidence that some countries “cheap ride” whenit comes to contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
55

A country committing to contributions would
be expected to change the incentives forothers to do so in the future. Some models
suggest that this might be the case (as in
Boadway, Song and Tremblay 2007), but thequestion remains: what would make a country
commit in the first place?

56

Beyond the possibility of countries having
altruistic preferences (Goussebaïle and others 2023), fairness is required when there is astrong need for reciprocity (Fehr and Gächter
2000; Fehr and Schmidt 1999).

57

Since several greenhouse gases can stay inthe atmosphere for decades (IPCC 2007).

58

For a discussion of the different dimensionsof climate justice, see Dolšak and Prakash(2022). On the importance of reciprocity andperceptions of fairness in climate change
mitigation, see Buchholz and Peters (2005),
Buchholz, Peters and Ufert (2018), Buchholz
and Rübbelke (2019), Carattini, Levin andTavoni (2019) and Cairney, Timonina andStephan (2023). For an argument as to whycurrent financial flows to support mitigation
are unfair, see Pachauri and others (2022).
On the debate over whether the size of eachcountry’s economy should be accounted forusing purchasing power parity or market exchange rates, see Pachauri and others (2023)
and Semieniuk, Ghosh and Folbre (2023).

59

For a discussion about the importance of side
payments in enhancing cooperation for environmental global public goods, see Barrett(2003a), who argues that in a side payment
game, concerns with fairness do not drive
individual country decisions, but an outcomethat is seen as fair will still be especiallycompelling.

60

In the formal literature on providing public
goods, this is the well-known “Warr neutrality result” (Warr 1983), which establishes thattransfers of resources from richer to poorer
agents do not affect the level of provision of(summation) public goods. The intuition is thatwhile the agent receiving income contributes
more (increases in income result in higher
contributions to a public good), that contribution is offset by a proportional reduction in thecontribution of the agent for which income is
reduced. An implication of this result is thatfor (summation) global public goods, “newmoney” is typically required to enhance theprovision level—other than the implications
that income transfers may have for fairness
and reciprocity. In the international context,
philanthropic organizations have often played
this role of providing new and additional income. In the end, any allocation of burdensof contributing to climate change is irreducibly normative and needs to be supported
through ethical reasoning (Dooley and others2021).

61

Because if any country does not contribute,there is no provision of the global public
good at all. This is a very different situationfrom summation global public goods, where
even with equal preferences and resources,
countries face incentives to not contribute.

69

See Arhin-Tenkorang and Conceição (2003)
and Sonntag (2010) for a global public goods
perspective on health challenges.

62

Sandler (1997) discusses how equity acrosscountries can enhance prospects for theprovision of weakest-link global public goods.
This is also shown in Jayaraman and Kanbur(1999).

70

63

Whether the support is in income or in kindalso matters, as does the relative efficiency
that rich countries have in delivering in-kind
support; see Vicary and Sandler (2002).

For a discussion of the context of uncertainty
in shaping the Covid-19 response, see Collins, Florin and Renn (2020), Kreps and Kriner(2020) and Leach and others (2022). For ageneral analysis of responses to epidemics
under uncertainty see Barnett, Buchak andYannelis (2023).

71

For a further elaboration on the need for multiscale approaches to pandemic preparedness, see Wilkinson and others (2023).

72

Some estimates indicate that the economic
burden in 2019 was $1.115–$3.346 trillion (in2017 purchasing power parity international
dollars) for tuberculosis, $678–$2,035 billion
for AIDS and $564–$1,693 billion for malaria(Bloom, Kuhn and Prettner 2022).

73

When the eradication effort started in 1967,
smallpox was endemic in 31 countries andcaused as many as 15 million cases and about
2 million deaths a year (Fenner 1993).

74

Barrett (2007) For further analysis of diseaseeradication as a global public good, see Barrett (2003b, 2013b).

75

Sandler 2015.

76

For instance, those having nonhuman hosts
may be very difficult or impossible to eradicate (Arhin-Tenkorang and Conceição 2003).

77

For a discussion of the conditions for diseaseeradication and the evolution of the initial efforts to eradicate polio, see Arhin-Tenkorang
and Conceição (2003). A key person in theeradication of smallpox, D. A. Henderson,
reported being sceptical about the feasibilityof eradicating polio (Henderson and Klepac2013). Because many of the difficulties
envisioned by Henderson came to pass,
the accumulation of costs in the eradication
effort made the effort seem less attractive,
but the benefits are so high that estimatessuggest that eradicating polio would stillbring net benefits even if it occurred in 2029
(Thompson and Kalkowska 2021), although
the cost-effectiveness would be lower thanearlier estimates (Thompson and Tebbens
2007). In addition, eradication efforts brought
benefits in and of themselves (Badizadegan, Kalkowska and Thompson 2022). The
analysis of the “polio endgame” continues
to inform ongoing efforts to eradicate polio(Thompson, Kalkowska and Badizadegan2022). However, the Covid-19 pandemic
substantially disrupted eradication efforts(Burkholder and others 2023; Kalkowska andothers 2023; Thompson 2022).

78

WHO 2019.

79

Barrett 2011; Cohen 2023.

80

While the analysis emphasizes the usefulness of having a conceptual framework forunderstanding global public good provision
informed in part by different ways of aggregating individual country contributions,multiple other factors shape the provision of
global public goods. For example, addressing
the thinning of the ozone layer and mitigating climate change share many properties as
global public goods, but the effectiveness of64

For a recent discussion of the prospects forproviding weakest-link public goods, emphasizing the importance of transfers, see Caparrós and Finus (2020b).

65

Olson (1971) emphasized the general pointthat as the number of agents engaged in a
prisoner dilemma situation increases, thelikelihood of cooperation declines. For recent
evidence on the limit of group sizes enabling
cooperation at the local level, see Casari and
Tagliapietra (2018). For a specific discussion in
the case of weakest-link global public goods
and how free-riding concerns related to international transfers to shore up weakest links
are magnified the more rich countries there
are, see Sandler (2016).

66

Sandler 2016.

67

This approach complements other efforts thatsought to draw lessons from the Covid-19
pandemic for managing global challenges—
for instance, from a systemic risk perspective(Ringsmuth and others 2022) and informed byapproaches based on integrated social, economic and ecological systems on a changing
planet (Crona, Folke and Galaz 2021; Galaz
2022; Galaz and others 2021; Keys and others 2019a). It is not meant to be a comprehensive review or assessment of a multifacetedand complex period, still beset by many unknowns, though some assessments take theform of official commissions of inquire (such as
Clark 2022, Response 2022 and Sirleaf and
Clark 2021), while others are informal (suchas Cable and others 2022, Frenk and others
2022, Sachs and others 2022 and Williamson
and others 2022). For a review and analysisof the legitimacy and impact of these assessments, see Becker and Nouwen (2019), Stoneand Schmider (2023) and Weible and others(2020). For a “constructivist” critique on how
these assessments are framed, see Shiffman
and Shawar (2022). Assessments are likely
to be dynamic and evolving, as the threats
to global health in the 21st century multiply,
and a commission has been established toanalyse just that (Kanem, Murray and Horton2023). A global public goods lens could bringan analytic frame to support these efforts. The
analysis draws selectively from some of theevents and choices that unfolded during theCovid-19 pandemic to further illustrate theanalytical insights on providing global public
goods discussed thus far. It is inspired byother attempts to use a global public goods
lens to analyse the Covid-19 pandemic, suchas Brown and Susskind (2020) and Sandler(2020, 2023).

68

As argued early in the Covid-19 pandemic by
Caparrós and Finus (2020a).

Notes

215

the response to each has been markedly different. Sandler (2017) explores in detail how
contextual factors have contributed to the different outcomes for global public goods thatshare many characteristics.
81

Assessments conducted since the outbreakof the Covid-19 pandemic have establishedthat countries with more generic public healthcapacities were better able to control thedisease, highlighting the importance not onlyof an emergency response but also of building surveillance and public health capacities(Neill and others 2023).

82

Usher 2020.

83

Laxminarayan, Reif and Malani 2014.

84

Saak and Hennessy 2018.

85

Suzman 2023.

86

An aspiration that emerged from the lessonsof dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic (Savilleand others 2022).

87

Gouglas, Christodoulou and Hatchett 2023.

88

African Centres for Disease Control and Prevention 2022.

89

WHO 2021.

90

The initial context of limited supply of vaccines may have provided incentives, even if
not a justification, for countries to share little,
but after this constraint was released, selfinterested countries would have been betteroff sharing vaccines (Lampert and others2022). As of 20 May 2022, when global vaccine supply was no longer a constraint (supply
constraints for COVAX were heightened overthe course of 2021; Gouglas, Christodoulou
and Hatchett 2023), 80 percent of people
in high-income countries had received asingle dose, compared with 16 percent in lowincome countries (WHO 2022a).

did not hinge on the WHO’s ability to enforce
the agreement to eradicate but on countries
coordinating their actions (Barrett 2007).
94

Rogers and Mandavili 2020.

95

Emanuel and others 2020.

96

That rich countries had violated reciprocity
norms. On the relationship between fairness
and reciprocity, see Fehr and Gächter (2000),
who refer to retaliatory actions or words
to perceived violation of fairness norms as“negative reciprocity.” Suzman (2023) offers
an interpretation as to how these reciprocity violations were perceived by low- andmiddle-income countries, given the inequities
in vaccine access.

97

Hu and others 2021; Wu and others 2020;
Zhu and others 2020.

98

Haynes and others 2020; Jiang and others
2012.

99

Kiszewski and others 2021. When it comes
specifically to mRNA vaccines, the US
government invested at least $337 million
between 1985 and 2019 into research anddevelopment that directly contributed to key
innovations in the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine(Lalani and others 2023).

100 As argued in Brown and Susskind (2020).
101

Kim and others 2021.

102 Dyer 2020.
103 https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline​/covid19.html (accessed 15 December 2023).
104 Le and others 2020.
105 Hanney and others 2020.
106 DiMasi and others 2020; Excler and others
2023.
107 Kim and others 2021.

Alliance) and charitable foundations (such as
the Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation) have also been increasingly active in contributing to the provision of
global public goods.
115

Following the discussion in Buchholz andSandler (2021).

116

The establishment of multilateral arrangements is tightly linked with the assumptionthat states are the key agents in providing
global public good, as recognized in early
contributions, going back to Stiglitz (1995).

117

Hoffman and others 2022.

118

On the determinants of environmental treaty
effectiveness, see Finus, Cooper and Almer(2017) and Libecap (2014). For empirical evidence on treaty effectiveness, see Hoffman
and others (2022).

119

As argued by Barrett (2006a).

120 WHO 2021.
121

To be precise, this goes beyond global public
goods, because the nonexcludability property is not present and benefits are partiallynonrival (for instance, because of congestionin the use of the club).

122 Axelrod and Keohane 1985. Clubs include theIntelsat communication network, the global air
traffic control system and the internet. Partial
nonrivalry implies that it is not necessarily
wasteful to exclude countries, while excludability encourages countries to reveal theirpreferences for the good and to contribute
accordingly (for instance, in the form of access fees). There have been proposals toadvance climate change mitigation by establishing climate clubs, (Nordhaus 2015, 2020,2021), but these proposals do not correspondto the definition of clubs used here.
123 Pecetta and others 2022; Shanmugaratnamand others 2021.

91

https://www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator​/covax.

108 https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline​/covid19.html (accessed 15 December 2023).

92

Usher 2021.

109 Excler and others 2023.

124 Athey and others 2022; Glennerster, Snyder
and Tan 2022.

93

A similar challenge almost derailed the eradication of smallpox. Despite very strong incentives for each individual rich country to financethe eradication effort (and even for the UnitedStates to shoulder the cost alone), each country would have rather had others contribute instead (Barrett 2007; Fenner and others 1988).
Smallpox was successfully eradicated during
the Cold War largely because it eventually
received strong support from both the Soviet
Union and the United States. In 1958, the Soviet Union aligned its position in the WHOwith a control effort focused on vaccinationand surveillance (Fenner 1993). The UnitedStates breathed new life into the effort in the
mid-1960s with a unilateral decision to support
eradication in African countries. Interestingly,that decision appears to have been made forpolitical expediency, not out of self-interest or
for strategic reasons (Barrett 2007). But the
WHO appears to have made a strategic moveby proposing mandatory contributions that fell
far short of the total international assistanceneeded. This made an agreement on mandatory contributions possible and unlockedenough voluntary contributions to successfully
finance the eradication effort. Thus, success

110

Lalani and others 2023.

125 Pecetta and others 2023.

111

Kremer, Levin and Snyder 2020. For a proposal on how to improve on the ad hoc approachand deploy a more structured advanced market commitment that also ensures equitable
access, see Towse and others (2021).

112

Sampat and Shadlen 2021. For an argument
proposing ethical obligations to pharmaceuticalcompanies during a global health emergency,
see Emanuel and others (2021).

216

113

Countries are not the only relevant players,
given the increasing complexity of international cooperation (Alter and Raustiala 2018). For
example, Hale (2020) documented in 2018
more than 190 transnational initiatives aimed
at addressing climate change with more than
12,000 substate and nonstate actors participating. Still, countries remain primarily players
in the provision of global public goods.

114

For instance, national institutions (such as the
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Pasteur Institute), networks (suchas CGIAR), multistakeholder partnerships(such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and Gavi, the Vaccine

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

PART IIC HAP TER 4
1

Mantel 2009, p. 305.

2

As does any public policy set of measuresand interventions, as argued in Shafir (2013).
Merz and others (2023) call for identifying
the behavioural drivers behind the planetarypressures of the Anthropocene. Davidson
and others (2024) argue that standard models used in sustainability science (such as
integrated assessment models for climatechange, engineering–economic optimization
approaches and agent-based models) need
to be enhanced by incorporating institutionaland behaviour elements.

3

Following Elster (2015b), collective action canarise out of horizontal interactions between
decisionmakers within a group or throughvertical measures that compel or oblige
members of the group to contribute to thecollective. Collective action implies multiscaleinteractions across members of a collective
and feedback from the properties of the collectives that influence members’ behaviour,
resulting in behaviour that can be analysed
as a complex adaptive system, as argued in
Bak-Coleman and others (2021).
4

5

6

7

In the broadest sense, collective action“can be defined as decentralized action by
the members of a group to eliminate publicbads that affect all of them or to create public
goods that benefit all of them” (Elster 2015b,
p. 382). The tight connection between collective action and public goods was articulated
long ago by Olson (1971, 2012), inspiring alarge literature in economics (put in context
in his original contribution in Sandler 2015).
Ostrom (1998) recognized the limitations ofstandard economic analysis of collective action and advocated for a richer descriptionof human behaviour. Beyond economics
collective action has been the subject ofmany formulations and approaches in fields
such as sociology (Oliver 1993; Van Zomeren,
Postmes and Spears 2008), political science(Medina 2013) and anthropology (DeMarrais
and Earle 2017), among others.
This echoes Schill and others (2019) and
Schlüter and others (2017) in the need toconsider a broad range of human behaviouralassumptions to address the challenges of the
Anthropocene.
That is, beliefs are not only driven by an effort
to be accurate; they can also be motivated ina self-serving way to make people feel better
about themselves or about convictions theyhold (Bénabou and Tirole 2016; Zimmermann2020). There is evidence that people gain affection for their beliefs and have a hard timeletting them go (Litovsky and others 2022).
This can generate belief traps (Scheffer andothers 2022), with negative social implications when the beliefs are harmful. For instance, if people feel threatened, regardlessof whether there is an objective threat, they
act accordingly: “[…] a fundamental fact abouthuman beings: we are belief-driven creatures,
but we are epistemically fallible – prone toserious errors in the formation and preservation of our beliefs. What we believe makes adifference in how we act and sometimes evenfully determines how we act, but we can be
and often are mistaken in our beliefs. If wefalsely believe that the Other poses a threat,
we react just as strongly and negatively as wewould if our belief were true. The beliefs, notthe facts, are what matter” (Buchanan 2020,
p. 181).
Through social norms people conform withbehaviour for the sake of seeing themselves
and being seen by others as upstanding members of a community. In a widely cited casethe introduction of fines by a school to punish
parents who were late picking up their children
led to an increase in parents being late, because what sustained cooperative behaviour
before the fines were introduced (perhaps asocial norm or an intrinsic commitment) was
undermined by a financial incentive (Gneezy
and Rustichini 2000). For a review of a broader
set of cases, see Gneezy, Meier and Rey-Biel(2011). Bénabou and Tirole (2003) provide an
early contribution to the analysis of when andhow incentives can undermine intrinsic motivation. Incentives and other motivations are notalways in opposition; they can also reinforce
each other (see Rajapaksa and others 2019 foran example of a combination of approaches
that enhanced water conservation).
8

We are grateful to Melissa Leach for this formulation. Anthropologists, sociologists, structural
linguists and historians look at the interplay
between structures of power and action invarious ways.

9

We are grateful to Karla Hoff for this formulation. Kotchen, Rising and Wagner (2023)
argue for the need to involve more insightsfrom behavioural science to address climatechange. Bastini and others (2023), Bergquist
and others (2023) and Vlasceanu and others(2023) provide reviews and experimental
results for possible behavioural interventions
to mitigate climate change. Taberna and others (2023) show that behavioural uncertainty
mediates the importance of physical factors in
responding to changes in incentives to adapt
to environmental shocks. Bergstrom and Hanage (2024) and Saad-Roy and Traulsen (2023)
argue for the importance of a richer description of human behaviour to understand disease dynamics.

10

This corresponds to what Demeritt and Hoff(2018) and Hoff and Demeritt (2023) called
the second wave of behavioural economics,
while the behavioural choice corresponds towhat they called the first wave. For a review
of applications of the first wave of behavioural
economics to development, see Kremer, Raoand Schilbach (2019), and for the second
wave, see Hoff and Demeritt (2023).

11

12

13

One example is the endowment effect, where
people demand more money to give up
something they own than they are willing to
pay to acquire it. Apicella and others (2014)
showed that this was not universal but prevalent in groups exposed to notions and practices of ownership and market exchanges ofgoods and labour. For a broader review, see
Apicella, Norenzayan and Henrich (2020).
On the instrumental power of hope and optimism to improve wellbeing and how different
contexts shape them, see, for instance, Grahamand Pinto (2019) and Lybbert and Wydick (2018).
On aspirations, see Fruttero, Muller and CalvoGonzalez (2021) and Genicot and Ray (2017,2020). For a discussion on aspirations and human development interventions, see Conradie
and Robeyns (2013). On the relationship amongaspirations, social norms and development
outcomes, see La Ferrara (2019).
Evidence suggests that people see vaccines
not only as self-protection but also as part of asocial contract with their community to reduce
the spread of infections (Böhm and Betsch2022; Korn and others 2020).

14

A social contract between people and a national government can be struck on the basisof which national public goods are provided,
rules are enforced and fiscal resources fromindividuals are mobilized to finance thosepublic goods.

15

With some arguing that globalization, if anything, has strengthened the desire of more

Notes

states to preserve sovereignty and autonomy(Krasner 1999).
16

The reality of the Anthropocene has stimulated debate on how enhancing global governance affects international law (see, forinstance Kotzé 2019, Woolley and Harrington
2022 and Kotzé and Kim 2022). But countries
would still need to voluntarily agree to adopt
these proposed measures, so the analysis
in this section can also be applied to understand the conditions that could make that
discussion advance.

17

This distinction draws from Sen’s (2009b)
contrast between procedures of social
choice to advance justice and Rawlsian approaches on the design of social contracts
based on a theory of justice. Sen goes
further, arguing that the pursuit of social
contracts within each country limits the potential only for an impartial spectator fromother countries to improve processes ofsocial choice. Addressing global challenges
requires systemic interventions, as argued in
Chater and Loewenstein (2022). But giventhat at the global level systemic interventions have to be voluntarily agreed to bycountries, even if a possible intervention canbe specified, that still leaves open the question of how to go about getting sovereigncountries to agree on it.

18

As Kirshner (2022. p. 15) argued, “Individuals are the ultimate actors in world politics;
therefore assumptions about human behavior
are inherent to (and consequential for) any
paradigm, even if they remain implicit.” Thatis the spirit under which the discussion in thischapter unfolds, trying to make explicit different human behavioural assumptions.

19

Sen 2009b. See also the discussion in chapter 3 of UNDP (2022b).

20

Burgio, Gómez and Arenas 2023; HébertDufresne and others 2022.

21

Dannenberg and Gallier 2020.

22

For a discussion of the implications of thesebehavioural assumptions in international law,see van Aaken and Broude (2020) and Fikfak,
Peat and van der Zee (2022).

23

This is sometimes designated homo economicus (Persky 1995).

24

It is also typically the baseline for expected
human behaviour, against which several deviations (or biases) are established in the fields
of behavioural economics and behaviouralscience more broadly.

25

Centola and Baronchelli 2015; Centola andothers 2018.

26

Efferson 2021b.

27

For instance, in a context where countries
have yet to coordinate and all must move in acertain direction, a country that does not trustthat others will move in that direction (one thateveryone desires) may decide to “play it safe”
and stick to the status quo, so coordination
can fail. This can be interpreted as the Dag
Hammarskjöld quote, “It is when we all playsafe that we create a world of utmost insecurity” (as cited recently by UN Secretary-General
António Guterres (2023b).

217

28

29

30

Thomas Schelling argued that focal points canperform this coordination function (Schelling
1965, 1978). There is an extensive literature
on interventions to overcome coordination
failures, including results from experiments(reviewed in Devetag and Ortmann 2007, but
see Avoyan and Ramos 2023 and Kendall
2022 for more recent reviews).

48

Barrett 2013a; Barrett and Dannenberg 2012.

49

If there is uncertainty about where the threshold lies, but there is a known upper bound,countries would need to cooperate to staycollectively below the upper bound. If theuncertainty is large, each country would knowthat being just a little bit below its individual
contribution to the upper bound is unlikely
to make the world go over the threshold. So,
the situation resembles that of a summation
global public good, in which each country faces an incentive to individually contribute justunder what needs to happen to avoid goingover the threshold—behaviour confirmed inexperiments (Barrett and Dannenberg 2012,2017). Schill and Rocha (2023) report that thisuncertainty does not preclude cooperation tosustain local commons, but Ahsanuzzaman,
Palm-Forster and Suter (2022) condition thisresult on the possibility of having effective
communication at the local level.

Although alternative analyses reject thatthese correspond to examples of mutually
beneficial equilibria, pointing instead to thepervasive role of power and interests insetting these standards only in some cases(Krasner 1991).
Keohane and Victor 2016.

31

Buchholz and Sandler 2021.

32

While much is made of the fact that thenon–legally binding nature of many international agreements makes them ineffective
in supporting the provision of global public
goods, just making a treaty legally binding is
not a guarantee that states pursuing their selfinterest will change their behaviour. Countries
may choose to not enter into the agreement
to begin with or to withdraw from it, as theexit of the United Kingdom from the European
Union demonstrated (Barrett 2016).

33

Barrett 2016.

34

This can thus be modelled as an assurance(or stag hunt) game (Sandler 2016).

35

For a detailed description, see Barrett (2003a).

36

Barrett and Dannenberg 2022.

37

For the treaty to succeed, enough countries
need to sign to make it in everyone’s interest
to be a party.

38

See Barrett (2003a) for a historical accountof the negotiations informed by an analysisof the incentive structures put in place by thetreaty that compelled high-income countries
first, through trade incentives, and then lowand middle-income countries, through side
payments, to sign and ratify the treaty.

39

Although other uncertainties can makecommunicable disease control difficult, as
explored in Leach and others (2022).

40

Armstrong McKay and others 2022; Rockström and others 2009; Rockström and others 2021; Rockström and others 2023; Steffen
and others 2015.

41

Brovkin and others 2021; Lenton 2013; Lenton
and Williams 2013; Lenton and others 2008;
Steffen and others 2018.

42

Kemp and others 2022a.

43

Barrett 2016.

44

These conditions are akin to the incentives
countries face in providing a weakest-link
global public good.

45

No such threshold was defined in the Montreal Protocol. For a different perspective on
how uncertainty can make agreements on
international environmental agreements difficult, see Ulph, Pintassilgo and Finus (2019).

46

Barrett 2016.

47

Burgess, Pielke and Ritchie 2022; Keen andothers 2022; Kemp and others 2022b. And

218

differences in damages across countries
may foster cooperation (Waichman and others 2021). At the same time inequalities inresources may create a countervailing effect(Brown and Kroll 2021).

50

54

As argued in Boon-Falleur and others (2022)
for the global public good of climate change
mitigation and in Van Bavel and others (2020)
for the global public good of Covid-19 control.
See Van Bavel and others (2022) for a reviewof the interplay between cognition, norms,
and institutions in shaping group cooperation.

55

Fehr and Schmidt (1999) documented that respondents in experiments exhibited inequality aversion, valuing others’ payoffs positively
if the others were worse off than the respondents and negatively if the others were better
off. Another expression of social preferenceis pure altruism, where payoffs of others arenever valued negatively (Andreoni 1989; Andreoni and Miller 2002; Charness and Rabin
2002). We are grateful to Wolfgang Buchholz
for pointing out that Kantian optimization is analternative to purely selfish utility maximization (Roemer 2019; Van Long 2020). Prosocial
motives can sometimes be in tension, or evenconflict, presenting cognitive challenges on
how to resolve them in decisionmaking (Liand others 2022; Sinnott-Armstrong and
McKee 2022). Other approaches to nonstandard preferences include Frank (1987) on
endogenous preferences and Akerlof andKranton (2000) on the role of identity.

56

Axelrod and Hamilton 1981. Recent advancesin genetic, microbiological and analytical approaches have revolutionized our understanding of cooperation across all forms of life andall levels of biological organization (West, Griffin
and Gardner 2007a; West and others 2021),
from genes, to cells—and even viruses (Leeks,West and Ghoul 2021). For instance, bacteria
depend on the excretion of products fromindividuals that benefit the bacterial group to
enable scavenging for nutrients or for communication (Belcher and others 2022; West, Griffin
and Gardner 2007a). Biologists have provided
a unified theory that explains the emergenceand maintenance of cooperation across thenatural world based on the notion that an individual gains inclusive fitness (reproduction ofits genes) through the impact on direct fitness(their own reproduction) or on indirect fitness(reproduction of related individuals due tothe behaviour of the individual). Evolutionarily
stable strategies describe interactions where
cooperation evolves and is maintained (see Alger 2023 for a recent review), and longstanding
debates on kin versus group selection are now
mostly clarified (Birch 2019). Social preferencesor their equivalent are not required. While thisis also the case for humans in many instances(thus, the enduring relevance of the selfish
choice model), human cooperation has distinct
features, given in part the ability of humans to
evolve culturally (Apicella and Silk 2019) and toengage in social learning (although that does
not always imply cooperation; Burton-Chellew,
El Mouden and West 2017, and cooperation
does not always imply positive societal outcomes, as when it involves firms colluding or
illicit networks). Still, there is debate on whether
cultural evolution, discussed in spotlight 4.3,
fits with these broader findings of cooperation

Dannenberg and Barrett 2018; Dannenberg
and Gallier 2020. On existential risks, see Ord(2020).

51

Barrett and Dannenberg 2014.

52

For an early review of deviations from therational choice model in actual collective action behaviour, see Ostrom (1998), which also
provides a set of ideas on how to expand
behavioural assumptions to account for thoseobservations. For recent reviews, see Dijk
and Dreu (2021) and Van Lange and Rand
2022.

53

experimental evidence appeared, much of it
reviewed here, Amartya Sen had already undertaken a critique of some of the behaviouralassumptions of the selfish choice models (asin Sen 1973, 1977, 1997).

These departures should not assume thatthe standard selfish choice model gives amore accurate account of human behaviour
but rather that a model of choices provides
a reference against which to structure deviations. Thus, expressions such as cognitive
biases and nonstandard preferences are notnecessarily deviations from rationality but
rather deviations from the standard selfish
choice model. Attempts to empirically measure economic rationality have been shown
to be unreliable (Nitsch and others 2022). The
discussion of behavioural insights adopted
here follows the language proposed by DellaVigna (2009), who grouped deviations fromthe standard selfish choice model in three
categories: nonstandard preferences, nonstandard beliefs and nonstandard decisionmaking. Care must be taken in extrapolating
insights from theory and experiments basedon individual choices to group choices, given
some early suggestive evidence that groups
or teams may be less subject to behaviouralbiases (see Ambrus, Greiner and Pathak 2015;
Charness and Sutter 2012; Feri, Irlenbuschand Sutter 2010; Kugler, Kausel and Kocher
2012.). However, more recent analysis suggests that behavioural insights are also relevant for group and team behaviour (Charness
and Chen 2020). See Bechtoldt and others(2021) for a specific mobilization of insightsfrom psychology to understand underinvestment in climate change adaptation. Before

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

in the natural world, driven in part by issues oflanguage and meaning attributed to the sameterms (Micheletti, Brandl and Mace 2022; West,
Griffin and Gardner 2007b).
57

Herrmann, Thöni and Gächter (2008) showthat antisocial punishments also exist andthat they can be socially beneficial when supported by strong norms of cooperation. The
motivations for punishment and reward often
go beyond what would be required to simply
sustain self-interest in reciprocal relationships(Fehr and Gächter 2000, 2002). It has beenargued that social preferences rather thanselfish preferences are the rule (Bruhin, Fehrand Schunk 2018). Burton-Chellew (2022)
argues that what has been interpreted as
altruism in experiments may result from confusion over the rules and that humans are thus
self-interested. Still, there is strong evidence
that people often behave as if having otherregarding preferences. For instance, recent
evidence from neural correlates of social
preferences, which have been mobilized
to inform economic behaviour in multiple
perspectives (Camerer, Loewenstein andPrelec 2005), suggests that while strategic
deliberation in how to advance self-interest
may also play a role, emotional processing isa key mechanism. Pioneering studies include
Corradi-Dell’Acqua and others (2013), CorradiDell’Acqua and others (2016), Gabay andothers (2014) and Sanfey and others (2003).
Wang and others (2020) find evidence that
altruistic behaviours relieve physical pain.
For a recent meta-analysis confirming thefindings that emotional processing is key forsocial preferences, see Cutler and CampbellMeiklejohn (2019). Rhoads, Cutler and Marsh(2021) establish that prosocial behaviour canbe associated with strategic intent but may
also be motivated purely by altruistic reasons.
Much of this literature relies on functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). For caution on how to interpret fMRI results in light oflack of knowledge about how the brain functions, see Bellucci and others (2020). Further,
deviations from fairness are more aversive forindividuals with more prosocial preferences(Liu and others 2019), and exceptionallyaltruistic behaviour (for instance, by kidney
donors) cannot be accounted for by utilitarianreasoning (Amormino, Ploe and Marsh 2022;
Rhoads and others 2023a; Rhoads and others 2023b).

61

The share of the population with inequality
aversion social preferences ranges from 23
percent to 68 percent, and the share of altruists is between 12 percent and 47 percent.
Student samples, often used in experiments,
deviate from these populationwide distribution of preferences (for instance, the share ofselfish preferences in student samples ranges from 29 percent to 58 percent; Fehr andCharness forthcoming). It also appears thatprosocial preferences are more consistentand less context dependent than the choices
people make that involve moral reasoning,such as when weighing ends-versus-means
tradeoffs (Bénabou, Falk and Henkel 2024).

62

Iwasaki 2023.

63

As established in Thielmann, Spadaro andBalliet (2020), a recent meta-analysis of 770
studies reporting on 3,523 effects of a rangeof prosocial behaviours in interdependentsituations modelled in six commonly studied
economic games (dictator game, ultimatum
game, trust game, prisoner’s dilemma, public
goods game and commons dilemma). Whenpeople mix private and social motivations(for example, a vaccine provides individual
protection but also advances herd immunity),
the social motivation often is a more powerful driver of behaviour (Böhm and Betsch2022; Korn and others 2020; Pfattheicher,Petersen and Böhm 2022). Chang and others(2023) show that reminders, but not monetary
incentives, increased the uptake of Covid-19
boosters in California in the United States. Fora discussion of the conditions in which prosocial preferences support cooperation beyond
groups, see Tilman, Dixit and Levin (2019).

64

See Fehr and Charness (forthcoming) for thetheoretical implications of inequality aversion
for cooperation and a review of confirmatory
evidence.

65

Brekke and Johansson-Stenman 2008; Buchholz and Sandler 2017.

66

Elster 1989.

67

Legros and Cislaghi 2020; Tverskoi and others 2023.

68

Van Lange and Rand 2022.

69

Fehr and Charness (forthcoming) provide a
discussion of the theory and a review of theevidence on how social image concerns
can drive prosocial behaviour. Self-image
concerns (how one sees oneself) also matterbut appear to be less important than otherregarding motives (Vu and others 2023).

58

Some of which may be associated with heritability (Benjamin and others 2012; Cesarini andothers 2008).

59

Fehr and Charness forthcoming.

70

Lergetporer and others 2014.

60

A different explanation for the experimental
results interpreted as revealing social preferences is that participants were confused
about the experiments, and as they started
to understand what was at stake and learned,
they behaved in a way consistent with theselfish choice model (see Burton-Chellew
2022, Burton-Chellew and West 2021, Burton-­
Chellew, El Mouden and West 2016 andBurton-Chellew, Nax and West 2015). There isalso the possibility that nonselfish behaviour
derives from personal norms rather than fromsocial preferences (Capraro and Perc 2021;
Capraro and others 2019).

71

Overly strict social norms across countries
can trigger more violations, according to thefindings of Aycinena and others (2022).

72

Some evidence suggests that rewards outperform punishment in promoting cooperation to provide public goods (Rand and others2009).

73

Elster 1998, 2015b. Sociologists going backto Goffman (1959) have emphasized how
guilt and stigma contribute to norm compliance. Social norm compliance and related
emotions such as stigma have also beenshown to affect economic outcomes—for

Notes

example, unemployment (Lindbeck, Nyberg
and Weibull 1999). Social norms can be somuch part of people’s mindset that they
become embedded (Granovetter 1985).
Basu (2010) argues that the “invisible hand”
of Adam Smith would not be able to deliver if
not for certain norms guiding behaviour. For
further elaborations and implications of thisreasoning, see Basu (2022, 2024).
74

Fehr and Schurtenberger 2018. Ohtsuki andIwasa (2006) identify eight social norms ofindirect reciprocity that can maintain evolutionarily stable strategies of cooperationin evolutionary models, but the number isreduced when assessments of who are good
cooperators are private and noisy (Fujimotoand Ohtsuki 2023).

75

The evolutionary and psychological processes underpinning the norm of conditional
cooperation (or social norms more widely)remain an area of active research (Gross andVostroknutov 2022). There is evidence that
norm psychology is universal but that different norms can emerge in different historicaland cultural contexts (House and others
2020; Kanngiesser and others 2022), but see
Heyes (2023) for a different view. There isevidence of universality in the positive moral
valence of cooperation (documented for a setof cooperative behaviours observed in the
ethnographic record of 60 societies across all
regions of the world (Curry, Mullins and Whitehouse 2019; see also Rossi and others 2023
and Van Bavel and others 2022, who identify
shared cross-cultural principles of prosocial
behaviour). Compliance with cooperative
behaviour can be explained as an internalization of social norms through cultural evolution (Gavrilets and Richerson 2017; but see
Akdeniz and van Veelen 2021 for a different
perspective and Bar-On and Lamm 2023 forthe potential role of social identity). Tverskoi
and others (2023) show that conformity withpersonal and social norms has more impact indecisionmaking than material benefits.

76

Due in part to processes of social comparison.
See Bergquist and others (2023), Frank (2021)
and Helferich, Thøgersen and Bergquist(2023) for applications to behaviours to mitigate climate change.

77

Constantino and others (2022) discuss theopportunities and challenges of harnessing
social norms to address climate change.

78

Gelfand and others 2011; Jackson, Gelfand
and Ember 2020.

79

Choi and others 2022; Jackson and others
2019.

80

Gelfand 2021. The threat can be either realor perceived, because, as Buchanan (2020,
p. 181) put it, “[…] a fundamental fact about human beings: we are belief-driven creatures,
but we are epistemically fallible—prone toserious errors in the formation and preservation of our beliefs. What we believe makes adifference in how we act and sometimes evenfully determines how we act, but we can be
and often are mistaken in our beliefs. If wefalsely believe that the Other poses a threat,
we react just as strongly and negatively as wewould if our belief were true. The beliefs, notthe facts, are what matter.”

219

81

Gelfand 2021; Gelfand and others 2021.

82

Gelfand and others 2020.

83

Giuliano and Nunn 2020; Gelfand, Gavrilets
and Nunn 2024; Nunn 2022.

84

Meyer 2010.

85

Pierotti 2013. On the mechanisms for this diffusion of norms (including the roles of media
and international organizations) in a specificcountry, see Swindle (2023).

86

On the politics of backlash, see Alter andZürn (2020a, 2020b). On the link with politicalpolarization, see Röllicke (2023).

87

Sandler 2017; Schwerhoff 2016.

88

These insights have been characterized as
opening a golden age for social science (Buyalskaya, Gallo and Camerer 2021).

89

Sometimes called nudge units.

90

Aumann (2019) argues that many of the cognitive biases emerge from contrived situations
that are not what most people confront intheir day-to-day life.

91

More precisely, choices reflecting a larger
aversion to potential losses than the appealof an equal-size gain relative to some pointof reference (Kahneman and Tversky 1979;
Tversky and Kahneman 1992). For a review
of empirical estimates and efforts to quantify
the strength of loss aversion, see Brown andothers (forthcoming). However, there arealso circumstances under which it does notappear to hold (Rakow, Cheung and Restelli
2020; Zeif and Yechiam 2022).

92

Camerer and others 1997.

93

Alesina and Passarelli 2019.

94

Litovsky and others 2022.

95

Olitsky and Cosgrove 2023.

96

Following the taxonomy proposed in Chetty(2015).

97

Allcott and Kessler 2019. Reck and Seibold(2023) provide a theoretical elaboration with
an application to the design of retirement
policies.

98

As advocated by Sunstein (2022).

99

See Milkman and others (2021) for successful
reminders that increased vaccination uptake.

100 Van Bavel and others 2020.
101

Muthukrishna and Henrich 2019. The heterogeneity of experimental designs is also a barrier
to the generalization of findings from experiments, as shown in Huber and others (2023).

102 Following Davis (2023), who makes this argument to improve international relations theory.
103 See Hecht and others (2023) for an accountof how contextual factors affect behaviouralinterventions.
104 As argued in Stiglitz (2021).
105 We are grateful to Melissa Leach for thisobservation.
106 For the metrics of these cultural packages,
Muthukrishna and Schaller (2020) and White,
Muthukrishna and Norenzayan (2021) draw
on a metric of cultural distance from the220

United States. Obradovich and others (2022)
draw on social media behaviour of 2 billion
people to create metrics for different culturaldimensions.
107 Brooks and others 2018; Kaaronen, Mulder
and Waring 2023; Lawson and Gibson forthcoming; Richerson and others 2016; Waring,
Goff and Smaldino 2017; Waring and others
2015.

in five different populations across threecontinents and found that the results did not
generalize, in part because of differences inbanking culture in different jurisdictions. An
analysis of intrinsic honesty across 23 countries provides evidence consistent with the
hypothesis that behaviours and institutions/culture coevolve (Gächter and Schulz 2016).
121

108 Bar-On and Lamm 2023.
109 As defined in North (1990) comprising bothformal and informal institutions that shapepeople’s behaviour. Following Schimmelpfennig and Muthukrishna (2023), formal institutions
can be considered “hardened culture,” written
down to allow for easier coordination and application but still underpinned by cultural norms.
110

Kaushik Basu (2018) argued that there is an “ifand only if” condition.

111

One of the greatest impacts of international
treaties is making salient in domestic constituencies an issue immediately after a treaty isadopted rather than as a result of the often
long and drawn-out process of ratification andentering into force—that is, ideas seem to be
more powerful than legal obligations (Hoffman and others 2022).

Henrich and others 2001. These exceptions
are often observed in small-scale societies, and there is some evidence suggesting
that, at least when it comes to cooperation,
there might be greater similarity in behaviour
across large-scale societies (Spadaro andothers 2022)—that is, even though overtime there were differences across cultures(some of which remain small scale and where
those behaviours persist), there may be someconvergence of behaviour when it comes tolarge-scale societies, but the evidence is still
not conclusive.

122 Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan 2010b.
123 Apicella, Norenzayan and Henrich 2020;
Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan 2010a.
124 Schäfer, Haun and Tomasello 2015. On theimportance of cultural similarities across andbetween countries, see White, Muthukrishna
and Norenzayan (2021).

112

The discussion in this chapter is not meant tosuggest that collective action can always be
reduced to the atomistic behaviour of individual agents interacting to shape institutions.
As noted at the beginning of the chapter,collective action can also be described as an
emergent outcome in complex adaptive systems, with agents interacting at multiple levelsof aggregation under constraints imposed byformal institutions.

113

See also Bednar (2023) and Bednar and Page
(2018).

114

Efferson, Vogt and von Flüe forthcoming.

115

Otto and others 2020; Sparkman, Howe andWalton 2021; Winkelmann and others 2022.

116

Rode and Weber 2016.

128 Almås and others 2017.

117

Centola and others 2018; Centola and Baronchelli 2015.

129 Almås and others 2010.

118

Efferson (2021a) shows that this is particularly
challenging outside of social coordination
norms, which are often assumed to be inplace (Szaszi and others 2018).

119

125 This corresponds to a type of social preference that takes as a reference point notequality in incomes, as in the inequality aversion social preferences (Fehr and Schmidt
1999) considered earlier in the chapter,but the type of equality that is consideredfair, which is different for different people,
depending on their views of fairness. For
an implication of this perspective for how tomeasure inequality without having absoluteequality as a reference, see, for instance,
Hufe, Kanbur and Peichl (2022).
126 As in Fleurbaey (1995), as noted in Almås,Cappelen and Tungodden (2020).
127

130 See Almås and others (2022) for documentation of the variation in the belief that the richare selfish across and within countries.
131

A replication of the study mentioned in box
4.3 on whether people return wallets failed
to confirm the results when the reporting of
the missing wallet was done physically rather
than by e-mail (Yang and others 2023). But
see Tannenbaum, Maréchal and Cohn (2023)
and Zhang and others (2023).

120 Cohn, Fehr and Maréchal (2014) found that
although Swiss bankers in general werehonest, when their profession was madesalient through priming, they behaved lesshonestly. In contrast, when people with otherprofessions also had their professions madesalient through priming, there was no change
in behaviour. However, the results could not
be replicated in other cultural contexts (Cohn,
Fehr and Maréchal 2019). Rahwan, Yoeli and
Fasolo (2019) conducted the same study

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024Almås, Cappelen and Tungodden 2020.

Almas and others (2022) show that plotting
country-level responses to the question fromthe World Values Survey, “Should the national
government aim to reduce the economic
differences between rich and poor?” against
inequality in disposable income shows nocorrelation, but when the answer to the question is plotted against “Inequality is unfair,”
there is a strong positive correlation between
beliefs that inequality is unfair and support forredistribution. However, there are other determinants of preferences for redistribution;see, for instance, Charité and others (2022).

132 See Thomas and Markus (2023).
133

This recognition can provide guidance on
whom to target, how and for what. Is the
purpose to simply change behaviour, or is
it to enhance welfare—goals that may notalways be aligned. We are grateful to Charles
Efferson for these insights. See also Berger,

Efferson and Vogt (2023), Efferson, Vogt andFehr (2020), Efferson, Vogt and von Flüe
(forthcoming), Richerson, Boyd and Efferson(2024) and von Flüe, Efferson and Vogt
(2024).
134

Brooks, Hoff and Pandey 2018.

135 Carlson and others 2022.
136 Balliet and Lindström 2023; Colnaghi and others 2023; Fiedler and others forthcoming.
137

Halevy 2017, 2023; Halevy, Chou and Murnighan 2012.

138 Halevy and Halali 2015; Halevy and others
2006.
139 Shiller (2017) describes how narratives shapemacroeconomic outcomes. Levy (2022) explains the social processes that lead people
to hold beliefs, often shaped by the context
of the group with which they are affiliated,
and the limits of assumptions that beliefs will
be formed on the basis of individual rational
processing of information. De Vries (2023)
explores how four different foundational narratives about the European Union continue
to shape political, economic and legal outcomes. For a recent review on the literatureon the psychology of poverty, see Haushofer
and Salicath (2023).
140 Gelfand, Gavrilets and Nunn 2024; Nunn
2022.
141

study of 43 countries confirmed an isomorphism in zero-sum beliefs that scales from theindividual to the country level (Różycka-Tran
and others 2018).
149 Davidai and Ongis 2019.
150 As reflected in reductions in helping others(Chernyak-Hai and Davidai 2022) or countries
agreeing to host refugees (Piotrowski andothers 2019).
151

153 O’Madagain and Tomasello 2022. In otherwords, it is the essence of what can be termed
cultural cognition, as argued in Tomasello andVaish (2013) and Tomasello and others (2005).
154 Gross and others 2020.
155 Melis and Raihani 2023, p. 532.
156 For instance, there is evidence that the caremotive leads to higher levels of cooperation,
driven by more optimistic beliefs, and shifts
towards more social preferences than whencooperation is sought by activating an anger
motivation (Ring, Schütt and Snower 2023).
See also Akerlof and Snower (2016) andBartke and others (2019).
157

Ellis 2024; Richerson, Boyd and Efferson
2024; Waring, Wood and Szathmáry 2024.

142 Hoff and Demeritt forthcoming.
143

144

Hoff and Demeritt forthcoming. For a discussion on how these insights can be mobilized to imagine pathways to navigate the
Anthropocene that ease planetary pressuresand advance equitable human development,
see Efferson (2023), Efferson, Vogt and von
Flüe (forthcoming) and Ellis (2024).
Constantino and Weber 2021, p. 151. For
evidence on how socially dominant groups
can harbor biases against other groups, see
Morehouse, Maddox and Banaji (2023).

145 Daley, Newell and Twena 2022; Fleurbaey
and others 2018; Scoones and others 2020;
Stirling 2015; Stoddard and others 2021.
146 As articulated in Amartya Sen’s (Sen 1985,
2009b) notions of agency expressed both asachievements and as freedoms. For more recent articulations of similar ideas, see Bednar(2023) and Carugati and Levi (2021).
147

Shared interests can be conceived as falling
along a spectrum, from none, where there ishigh potential for conflict, to complete, where
there is high potential for cooperation, following West and Ghoul (2019), in an analysis of
how cooperation and conflict coexist in thenatural world. Most situations fall somewhereclose to the endpoints, thus suggesting thepotential for both conflict and cooperation.
The provision of global public goods can beseen as exploring domains of the spectrum
closer to where there are shared interests
and thus where the potential for cooperation
is higher.

148 Davidai and Tepper 2023. While these findings are at the individual level, a multilevel

Carvalho and others 2023.

152 Melis and Raihani 2023, p. 532.

Some evidence suggests that contributions
to public goods and cooperative dynamics
emerge voluntarily when people are given
the choice of which public good to contributeto (Shi and others 2020). If this extends tocountries in the international context, different
countries could take the lead in volunteeringto contribute to trigger cooperative dynamics.

158 Again, there are differences across people,
with traits differing across domains on whether people are more or less likely to affiliate
with groups (Kranton and others 2020). See
also Doğan, Glowacki and Rusch (2022).
159 Romano and others 2017; Romano and others
2021a; Romano and others 2021b. For a description of correlates of people developinga more cosmopolitan orientation, see Zhang
and others (2024).
160 Schimmelpfennig and others 2022.
161

Boeltzig, Johansson and Bramão 2023; Vasconcelos and others 2021.

162 Bechtel, Genovese and Scheve 2019.
163 Chinoy and others 2023.
164 Van Bavel and others forthcoming; Wagnerand others 2020.
165 Bollyky and others 2022a; Bollyky and others
2022b; Bor, Jørgensen and Petersen 2023;
Lenton, Boulton and Scheffer 2022.
166 Henkel and others 2023.
167

Berger, Vogt and Efferson 2022.

168 Berger, Efferson and Vogt 2023.
169 For a review of the social identity theory of collective action, see Van Zomeren, Postmes andSpears (2008). Whitehouse (2018) and Whitehouse and Lanman (2014) describe identity
fusion, the visceral sense of oneness with thegroup, as eliciting cooperation within groups tothe point of potentially leading to extreme selfsacrifice. See also Huettel and Kranton (2012).

Notes

170 Sen 2005, 2006, 2009a. Dulberg and others (2023) show how having multiple selves
could have evolved as a solution to the perennial problem of balancing multiple needsin changing contexts.
171

This implies that the assumption that tipping
can be triggered under what is assumed to bea social coordination norm may not hold andthat interventions can be either ineffective or
counterproductive (Efferson and others 2015).

172

Efferson, Vogt and Fehr 2020; Efferson andothers 2015; Ehret and others 2022.

173

Under the assumption that many people areconditional cooperators (Berger, Efferson andVogt 2023).

174

The ecological macro model places humans
in the context of their relationships with predators and prey (Lehman and others 2021).

175

The period of rapid population growth canbe described as one where humans enteredinto a mutualistic interaction with animals andplants rather than being their predator (seealso Pollan 2002); this followed a first ecological transition when humans were able to outcompete their predators (Lehman and others2021). In both transitions processes of cultural
evolution were determinant. Mutualism is pervasive in many forms across many species in
the natural world and tends to be maintainedby either shared interest or enforcement, but
it is likely to evolve in the first place as a resultof shared interest, with enforcement evolving
later to strengthen the mutualism (West andothers 2021).

176

Colleran 2016.

177

Lehman and others 2021.

178

Lehman and others 2021.

C HAP TER 5
1

Sen 1991; UNDP 2022a. Goal-directedagency (exhibited by reptiles) and evenintention-directed agency (exhibited bymammals) are not exclusive to humans, nor isthe pursuit of self-interest, as in the models
of selfish choices reviewed in chapter 4 (exhibited by great apes, for instance; Jensen,
Call and Tomasello 2007 found evidence
that chimpanzees are rational maximizers inan ultimatum game). Nonhuman animals appear also to follow (descriptive) social norms(based on the need to conform that humans
share with other social, nonhuman animals)(Andrews, Fitzpatrick and Westra 2024; Westra and others forthcoming). But, according
to O’Madagain and Tomasello (2022) andTomasello (2022), humans are different in thatthey evolved the ability to define and pursue
shared intentionality and agency, which havebeen argued to be the basis for the origins
of cultural cognition (Tomasello and others2005). While there are different views on theevolutionary pathways that led humans to beable to evolve injunctive and moral norms(Stanford 2017, 2018), this corresponds to an
expression of human agency that transcends
the pursuit of self-interest. It has also beenargued that humans have a flexible moral
psychology that enables, through processesof public reasoning and deliberation (see221chapter 6), to establish moral norms, and institutions that support them, that are inclusiveof not just all humans but potentially otherbeings (Buchanan 2020, 2021; Buchanan andPowell 2018). For one psychological view onhuman agency, see Bandura (2001, 2006).
2

Sen 2016, p. 7.

3

Based on data from the World Values Survey(see figure 5.3 later in the chapter).

4

The distinction between wellbeing andagency aspects of development follows Sen’s(1985, 1991) framing.

5

Sen 1991.

6“Strategies for human development initially emphasized investing in education andhealth, and promoting equitable economic
growth—the three dimensions of the HDI.
These mobilize the individual agency of people and strengthen their productive capacity
for their own private interest” (Fukuda-Parr
2003, p. 309).

7

Based on Dr. Engel’s biopsychosocial model,
briefly explained in Conti (2022).

8

Folke and others 2021; UNDP 2022a.

9

Following Elster (2015a), collective decisionmaking is the processes through which
decisions emanating from collective belief
formation and collective action get implemented. Those processes include arguing,
voting and bargaining.

10

Turchin 2013.

11

This is equivalent to 47 percent of the global
population. According to reporting on Sustainable Development Goal indicator 1.3.1 (https://​www.social-protection.org/gimi/WSPDB​.action?id=32, accessed 16 November 2023).

12

As of 2022, in preprimary, primary and secondary education. According to the databaseof the United Nations Educational, Scientificand Cultural Organization Institute of Statistics (http://data.uis.unesco.org/, accessed 16
November 2023).

13

Vaidyanathan 2024.

14

For instance, in 2023 the SDG Action Campaign mobilized 150 million actions (EIN
Presswire 2023).

15.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database​/2023/April/weo-report.
23

Vaidyanathan 2024.

24

See Sénit (2020).

25

Tørres 2021.

26

Global Witness 2023.

27

Including the rise of negative experiences,such as anger, stress, sadness, physical pain
and worry (Clifton 2022).

28

For evidence on economic insecurity andsupport for populism (in Europe), see Guiso
and others (2019, forthcoming). While it has also been argued that economic insecurity has
led to fractionalization (that is, the emergenceof more, niche parties beyond those broadly
representing different segments along thepolitical spectrum) of the political system,
there is a distinction between polarizationand fractionalization in electoral systems; see
Norris (forthcoming).

29

Funke, Schularick and Trebesch 2023; Rodrik
2021.

30

Prados de la Escosura 2022.

31

Support for democracy was also found to bestrong and robust in a detailed study of Brazil,
France and the United States (Adserà, Arenasand Boix 2023).

32

See Kurlantzick 2022; Nichols 2021; UNDP
2023b.

33

This question was suggested by the United
Nations Development Programme, contributing towards the pilot of the measure for Sustainable Development Goal indicator 16.7.2.

34

35

As of 2023, based on data from the International Telecommunication Union (https://www​.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default​.aspx, accessed 16 November 2023).

The notion of agency linked with collective
outcomes has been referred to as “collective
agency.” See, for instance, Ibrahim (2006),
Leßmann (2022), Pelenc, Bazile and Ceruti(2015) and Rauschmayer and others (2018).
Confidence in institutions depends on
multiple factors. For instance, Hirai (2020)
presents a framework where confidence ininstitutions is linked to trust in their intentions
and competence. Elster (2015a) also argues
that trust in institutions is often underspecified
in that it can mean different things (integrity,competence or even that the institution isfeared). Another related concept is legitimacy of institutions (see Levi, Sacks and Tyler
2009 and chapter 4). In this and chapter 6,
trust and confidence in institutions are usedinterchangeably to reflect the sense to whichpeople consider that they are delivering whatis expected of them.

16

Carleton and Greenstone 2022; Stiglitz andStern 2017.

17

See Carleton and others (2022).

36

Sen 1991; UNDP 2022a.

18

IEA 2023a.

37

Sen 1977, p. 326.

19Black and others 2023.

38

20

Papada and others 2023.

21

Tørsløv, Wier and Zucman 2022.

22

Based on OECD (2022) The mobilization of
resources reached $83.3 billion in 2020,
which is less than 0.1 percent of the $85
trillion of global GDP in that year. In 2022
global GDP surpassed the $100 trillion mark(International Monetary Fund World Economic
Outlook database, April 2003, https://www​

There are many potential sources for thesecommitments and their relationship to sustaining cooperation, from social norms (seespotlight 4.3 in chapter 4) to inferences aboutother people’s motives (Carlson and others2022) to moral values (Stanford 2018) toindividual and public reasoning about whatshould be the subject of moral concern thatshapes different perspectives on moral progress (Buchanan 2020; Sauer and others 2021;
Sterelny 2019). Commitments can also take222

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

the form of codes of conduct to, for example,
punish actions against agents that defectduring cooperation (even if this punishment
harms the wellbeing of the punisher), which
is a mechanism that sustains cooperation(Ostrom 2000)
39

Leßmann 2022.

40

Advancements in reducing inequality, addressing human insecurity and challenging
biases against cooperation in social norms, aswell as in enhancing spaces for deliberation,
can influence the stressors and facilitators forlarge-scale collective action, as described byJagers and others (2020).

41

For an elaboration on the relationship between agency and poverty, see Rahman(2023).

42

Rasmussen and Reher 2023.

43

For the definition of perceptions of insecurity
and the link with the notion of human security,
see UNDP (2022b).

44

For an elaboration on the connections between human security and constraints on
people’s engagement with collective action,
see UNDP (2022b).

45

UNDP 2022a.

46

UNDP 2022b; Ziervogel, Cowen and Ziniades 2016.

47

Sen 2009, p. vii.

48

UNDP 2023a.

49

See, for instance, Schaeffer (2020).

50

UNDP 2023a.

51

UNDP 2023a.

52

UNDP 2023a.

53

Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab 2020;
UNDP 2023a.

54

UNDP 2023a.

55

UNDP 2022a.

56

Corat and Raimondo 2011.

57

Krause, Krause and Bränfors 2018; Stone
2015; UN Women 2015.

58

Krause, Krause and Bränfors 2018.

59

Stewart, Holdstock and Jarquin 2002; WorldBank 2018.

60

For example, between 1992 and 2019, only
6 percent of peace agreement signatories
were women. See Council on Foreign Relations (2023).

61

Gebhard and others 2020; Huang and others 2021. In part due to higher prevalenceof pre-existing cardiovascular conditions,which were found to increase vulnerability to
Covid-19 (Griffith and others 2020).

62

P. Clapp 2023; Dang and Nguyen 2021.

63

UN Women 2021. Several studies find evidence of increased domestic violence during
the Covid-19 pandemic, in both developing(Agüero 2021; Decker and others 2022; Kifle
and others 2024) and developed countries(Berniell 2021; Piquero and others 2021).

64

Blanchflower and Bryson 2022.

65

Brooks, Hoff and Pandey 2018; Hoff andWalsh 2019.

66

Lloyd’s Register Foundation and Gallup 2022.

67

UNDP 2020b.

68

Jens Beckert has long emphasized theimportance of future framings on enabling institutions to deliver “promisory legitimacy” inaddition to process and outcome legitimacy(Beckert 2013; Beckert 2020; Beckert andBronk 2018; Beckert and Suckert 2021).

69

UNDP 2019.

70

See UNDP (2019) for a review of the literatureon the great divergence.

71

These are called joint products in the literature, and formally, this makes these cases
instances of impure global public goods,
because they also generate (private) countryspecific benefits in recipient countries. See
Cornes and Sandler (1996).

72

Can, because there might also be negative
effects and trade-offs, as discussed in Cohenand others (2021), Finus and Rübbelke (2013)
and Pittel and Rübbelke (2008). For a review
of co-benefits of climate change mitigation,
see Deng and others (2018).

73

Ürge-Vorsatz and others 2014.

74

Karlsson, Alfredsson and Westling 2020; Negev and others 2022.

75

Some of the costs, at least in macroeconomic
terms, of pricing carbon appear to be overstated. See Metcalf and Stock (2020).

76

For details on these initiatives and theshort-term costs of subsidies, see Buchholz,
Dippl and Eichenseer (2017) for Germany andHughes and Podolefsky (2015) for California.

77

Gerarden 2023.

78

Carvalho, Dechezleprêtre and Glachant 2017.

79

Bollinger and Gillingham 2019.

80

Gillingham and Stock 2018.

81

Nussbaum 2013.

82

Bernauer and Gampfer 2015.

83

Brumme and Rübbelke 2023.

84

Kremer 2006; Kremer and Leino 2004.

85

Amin 2016.

86

As explored in Chan (2019).

87

King 2006.

88

Glennerster and Jayachandran 2023.

89

Shiller and others 2018. State-contingent sovereign debt instruments have been supported
by, among others, the International Monetary
Fund (IMF 2017). If state-contingent debt instruments are more expensive than standard
ones, there is a need to either subsidize thiscost or coordinate their deployment, to avoid
arbitrage. International financial institutions
can play a role in this regard. Shiller (2006)
argues that state-contingent debt instruments
have properties that are similar to equity
financing, noting that equity-like financing forsovereigns (unlike for corporates) is typicallynot available.

90

G20 2023a.

91

Haq and Streeten 1995.

92

For discussions related to economic governance in what the works describe as a fractured world, see Brown, El-Arian and Spence(2023) and Tucker (2022).

93

UN 2023b.

94

OPHI and UNDP 2023.

95

UNDP 2022b.

96

For instance, the Stiglitz Commission for the
Reform of the International Financial andMonetary System (convened in 2008, in the
middle of the global financial crisis) suggested
establishing a Global Economic Coordination
Council as an option (Stiglitz Commission2009).

97

Notably, through the 171 members of the
Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange
of Information for Tax Purposes. In 2022 information on almost EUR 12 trillion in assets was
automatically exchanged. See OECD (2024b).

98

OECD 2024a.

99

United Nations Secretary-General 2023.

(Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes 2012). Affective polarization is particularly concerning because
it reinforces ingroup solidarity and outgrouphostility, where interests and other motivations of behaviour become secondary to an
overarching sense of belonging to the group.
Thus, affective polarization has implications
on behaviour that extend beyond differencesin views, affecting many aspects of people’s
lives (where to live, who people choose as
friends or partners). Thus, affective polarization can become a self-sustaining runaway
process as people become more and moresorted and divided, deepening polarizationeven more (the discussion on affective polarization here is based on Baldassarri and Page2021). There is evidence that polarizationeven implies different neurological responses
to different attitudes (Leong and others 2020;
Moore-Berg and others 2020).
4

Kosse and others 2020.

5

Charness and Chen 2020; Charness and Sutter 2012; Doğan, Glowacki and Rusch 2022.

6

Appiah 2019, p. 26. The same applies to thecultural similarity of people that affiliate withthe same religion, even when they live in
different countries (White, Muthukrishna andNorenzayan 2021).

7

Romano and others 2021b.

8

For the analysis of the difference in cooperation within and across countries, see Aaldering and Böhm (2020).

100 Alstadsæter and others 2023.
101

Alstadsæter and others 2023.

102 The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was an important step in that direction.
More recently, the World Bank announced
a new mission statement: “to end extreme
poverty and boost shared prosperity on alivable planet by strengthening inclusion, resilience, and sustainability,” which aligns witha forward-looking and planetary perspective(Development Committee 2023).

9

Buchan and others 2011.

10

Romano and others 2017. Kranton and others(2020) show that “groupy” and “nongroupy”
attitudes by individuals stretch across different domains (from politics to simplified social
contexts). See also the discussion later inthe chapter on differences in attitudes towards global concerns among people withincountries.

11

Baldassarri and Abascal 2020; Buchan andothers 2009.

12

Bai, Ramos and Fiske 2020. Stereotyping in
itself is also a barrier to cooperation, in thatpeople who are perceived as conformingwith one are seen as less trustworthy (Stewart
and Raihani 2023). In a fascinating new study
musical tastes and preferences are shown tobecome more diversified as people visit new
cities and countries (Kim, Askin and Evans2024).

13

Gorman and Seguin 2020.

14

Asking people to make judgements on different goals before coming to a decision­—­appealing to reason and subjecting beliefs toscrutiny—is effective in decreasing polarization and extremism (Kvam and others 2022).

15

Whitehouse 2018; Whitehouse and Lanman
2014.

C HAP TER 6
1

The emergence and management of the
deep interdependence documented inpart I of the Report have been supported byinternational collective action. Many aspectsof this interdependence are associated withpost–World War II international organizations
and regimes (Keohane 1982) and numerous
global public goods (Kaul, Grunberg andStern 1999; Kaul and others 2003).

2

As discussed in chapter 4, coordination
across countries is often easier to achieve
than cooperation.

3

This chapter considers polarization fromdifferent perspectives. The emphasis common to all perspectives is the divisivenessin society across political or identity lines: “Itsignifies a deepening divide between groups
holding contrasting viewpoints on politicalmatters and on approaches to addressing
complex societal issues” (spotlight 6.1). Within
this broad definition political polarization isunderstood as “the extent to which citizens
become ideologically entrenched in theirown values and political beliefs, thereby
increasing the divide with citizens who holddifferent values and political beliefs” (vanProoijen 2021, p. 2). Another related concept
is affective polarization, defined as the tendency to view outgroup members negatively
and ingroup members positively in ways that
often trigger visceral or emotional responses

Notes

16

Oeberst and Imhoff 2023.

17

For instance, users choose to engage withmore partisan news after doing Google
searches, so there is volition-conscious selection, not merely passive exposure to partisan
information in “echo chambers” (Robertson andothers 2023). Still, digital media can also drive223processes of affective polarization by shifting
the focus of intergroup differences from oneof divergence in opinions to one of sorting
people into different groups (Törnberg 2022).
See Tokita, Guess and Tarnita (2021) on howpolarized information systems can reorganizesocial networks in ways that foster polarization.
See also Santos, Lelkes and Levin (2021).
18

Jost, Baldassarri and Druckman 2022. Whileoften discussed in binary terms in two-party
systems, affective political polarization also
happens in multiparty systems (see MartinGutierrez, Losada and Benito 2023) andcan manifest itself beyond party lines whengroups take opposing positions beyond party
lines of issues.

19

Charness and Chen 2020.

20

Baldassarri and Page 2021. See also McCoy,
Rahman and Somer (2018) and McCoy andSomer (2019).

21

Kingzette and others 2021.

22

Dimant 2024.

23

Lelkes 2016; Mason 2015. Theories of affective polarization build on work identifying
the importance of social identity for people’s
self-esteem. Social identity theory posits that
individuals categorize themselves and others
into various social groups based on sharedcharacteristics and that they derive a senseof self-worth from their affiliations with thesegroups. See Tajfel and Turner (2001).

24

This includes online behaviour (van der Doesand others 2022).

25

See Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes (2012) and McCoy, Rahman and Somer (2018).

26

Boese and others 2022; Card and others
2022; Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes 2012; McCoy
and Somer 2019; Wagner 2021.

27

Levin, Milner and Perrings 2021.

28

See Van Bavel and others (forthcoming) on
the costs of polarizing the Covid-19 pandemic.

29

Vasconcelos and others 2021.

30

This draws heavily from Bednar (2021). See
also Kawakatsu and others (2021), who
explore how polarization hinders Madison’s
institutional design to address what he called
the mischiefs of faction: Madison assumed
that people would have different views on
different issues and that they would not sortthemselves into opposing groups on manyor almost all issues (and thus that a greater
diversity of interests in a political system withinstitutions supporting a pluralistic society
would cure the mischief of factions; that is
hindered with polarization). For a review ofthe literature on democratic resilience, see
Holloway and Manwaring (2023).

31

McCoy and Somer 2019.

32

Iyengar and others 2019.

33

McCoy and Somer 2019.

34

Bradley and Chauchard 2022. These rifts
often lend themselves to political mobilization, where political actors and leaders employ narratives of group-based grievances
and us versus them competition in political
campaigns.

2 24

35

Hobolt, Leeper and Tilley 2021.

65

De Vries, Hobolt and Walter 2021.

36

Hobolt, Leeper and Tilley 2021.

66

De Vries and Hoffmann 2019.

37

Henkel and others 2023.

67

More in De Vries, Hobolt and Walter (2021).

38

McCoy, Rahman and Somer 2018.

68

Margalit 2012.

39

Stewart, McCarty and Bryson 2020.

69

Norris and Inglehart 2019.

40

As long argued by Ronald Inglehart (seeInglehart 2020 and Norris and Inglehart 2011).
For a recent formulation of this argumentthat frames values as luxury goods (relative
demand for values relative to material things
increases as income grows) and how that
relates to political polarization, see, Enke,
Polborn and Wu (2022).

70

De Vries, Hobolt and Walter 2021; Walter
2021a.

41

Stewart, Plotkin and McCarty 2021.

42

McCoy and Somer 2019.

43

UNDP 2022a.

44

McCoy, Rahman and Somer 2018.

45

McCoy, Rahman and Somer 2018; McCoy andSomer 2019.

46

McCoy and Somer 2019.

47

De Dreu and Nijstad 2008.

48

UNDP 2022a.

49

McCoy, Rahman and Somer 2018.

50

See Osborne and others (2023) for thepsychological causes of authoritarianism,compounded by worldviews associated withperceptions of threat. Worldviews that see theworld as competitive also yield more violationsof democratic norms and practices that do notnecessarily take the form of authoritarianism.

51

Papada and others 2023.

52

MacKuen and others 2010.

53

For evidence and discussions on how polarization hinders the provision of global public
goods, and international cooperation more
broadly, see Baldassarri and Page (2021),
Levin and Weber (forthcoming) and Perrings,
Hechter and Mamada (2021).

54

De Vries, Hobolt and Walter 2021; EckerEhrhardt 2014.

55

Schneider (2018). Heinrich, Kobayashi and
Lawson (2021) find that the channels run
through nativism and antielitism, often ways inwhich political polarization is expressed.

56

Bechtel, Genovese and Scheve 2019.

57

For instance, Hurd (2022) argues for recognizing that cooperation cannot be consideredunequivocally beneficial; rather, it generates
benefits to some groups over others, and thepolitical responses to this must be understood.

58

De Vries, Hobolt and Walter 2021; Ecker-Ehrhardt 2014; Zürn, Binder and Ecker-Ehrhardt
2012.

59

De Vries, Hobolt and Walter 2021.

60

Bearce and Jolliff Scott 2019.

61

Deitelhoff 2020; Dellmuth and Tallberg 2015;
Schneider 2018.

62

Kertzer and others 2014.

63

Powers and others 2022.

64

Ecker-Ehrhardt 2012.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

71

Walter 2021a.

72

Walter 2021a.

73

In addition to international relations and history,
considered in spotlights 6.2 and 6.3, politicalscience has also provided insights into how toenhance international collective action. See,for example, Cashore and Bernstein (2023),
Colgan and Hinthorn (2023), Guy, Shears andMeckling (2023), Keohane and Victor (2016),
Meckling and Karplus (2023), Meckling andothers (2022), Peng and others (2021) andVictor, Lumkowsky and Dannenberg (2022).

74

Building on the case made in Kaul andConceição (2006a), particularly in Kaul andConceição (2006b).

75

For instance, the international concessional
financing of the incremental cost of an investment that contributes to a global public good,compared with the size of the investment thata country would undertake considering only
the country benefit alone (see King 2006).

76

Davidai and Tepper 2023.

77

Chernyak-Hai and Davidai 2022.

78

Chinoy and others 2023; Davidai and Ongis
2019.

79

Evolutionary approaches to cooperationsuggest that, with mutuality and interdependence, an agent recovers the investment in
the welfare of others with whom the agent isinterdependent because the fitness of thoseothers also contributes to the fitness of thesacrificing agent (Stanford 2017).

80

See also Rockström and others (2024).

81

See also Balliet and Lindström (2023) and
Colnaghi and others (2023).

82

Ostrom 2007, 2009a; Ostrom and others 1999.

83

McEvoy and Cherry 2016.

84

Carattini, Levin and Tavoni 2019; Rinscheid,
Pianta and Weber 2021.

85

Goussebaïle and others 2023.

86

On the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic
on inequalities in power, for example, see
Dávalos and others (2020).

87

Enke 2023b.

88

Enke 2020a; Enke and others 2023. Although
this does not mean that education and income
are irrelevant. For instance, Dechezleprêtre
and others (2022), in a survey of 20 countries
covering the major greenhouse gas emittersin both high- and lower income countries,
show that support for climate change is associated with beliefs about the effectivenessof emissions-reduction policies, their distributional impacts on lower income households
and their impact on respondents’ households.
At the same time, respondents with higher

levels of education and income report stronger support for climate policies, perhaps asa result of the way in which education andincome interact with other factors in shaping
respondents’ beliefs. Also, the extent to which
beliefs, rather than economic variables, matterin the context of protecting the national environment is unclear. Kahn and Matsusaka (1997)
argue that both income and price factors, aswell as beliefs, matter in the national context,
at least in the state of California, United States.
Grandin and others (2022) also find that
economic variables matter, but through therelative position in terms of socioeconomic
status—with higher status tending to be more
supportive of the national environment.
89

Cappelen, Enke and Tungodden 2022; Enkeand others 2023.

90

As argued by Enke (2023b).

91

Becker (2023) find that people in Kenya vastly
underestimate intercountry inequalities andthat when provided with the accurate degreeof inequality, their tolerance for inequality declines, but their demand for international aid
does not increase, suggesting that they would
rather have inequalities addressed throughother means. This is consistent with evidence
across a wide range of countries showingthat poorer people are not more supportiveof redistribution (Hoy and Mager 2021). Thereis evidence that views on inequality and support for redistribution within countries arelinked to beliefs about the extent to which theprocesses that generated those inequalities
are fair (Almås, Cappelen and Tungodden
2020; Almås and others 2022; Andersen andothers 2023; Cohn and others 2023; Reyes
and Gasparini 2022). For a recent review on
preferences towards redistribution, see Mengel and Weidenholzer (2022).

92

93This holds even for people who are vulnerable
and in need of humanitarian aid, as is often
the case for refugees. Bauer, Boemelburg andWalton (2021) report that reframing refugees’
identity as being, by its very nature, a sourceof strength and skills rather than portraying
them with a stigmatized identity as weak andunskilled victims enhanced refugees’ perseverance and boosted their confidence to help
them succeed in the new host country.
Thomas and others (2020) emphasize thatenhancing agency implies looking at a
broader set of interventions beyond income
transfers (see also Bossuroy and others 2022)
and that what enhances agency and confers
dignity is likely to be context specific, which
implies the need to attend to cultural differences (see also Thomas and Markus 2023).
There is evidence from a large study in Chinathat moving out of poverty does not seem tochange preferences towards inequality but
does reduce selfishness (Li and others 2023).

94

Bechtel and Scheve 2013; Beiser-McGrathand Bernauer 2022.

95

Beiser-McGrath and others (2021) find that
support in Japan for domestic carbon taxes tomitigate climate change is higher when people
are told that other countries are also imposing
carbon taxes. Beiser-McGrath and Bernauer(2019b) find that proposals to recycle revenue
from carbon taxes gain popular support inGermany and the United States only when other high-income countries adopt similar carbon
taxes. Beiser-McGrath and Bernauer (2019a)
also find that the more countries participating
in a climate agreement, the more popular thatagreement is in China and the United States
but also that lack of commitment from othercountries to fulfilling the agreement’s obligations does not reduce support for climate action. The effect appears to be heterogeneous
across countries because what other countries
do is more likely to influence the behaviour ofhigh-income countries that already have strong
domestic concerns about climate change andhave made ambitious commitments (Dannenberg and others 2023).
96

Koliev, Page and Tallberg 2022.

97

Doshi, Kelley and Simmons 2019; Kelley andSimmons 2015.

98

Tingley and Tomz 2022.

99

Dellmuth and others 2021.

action (Lacroix and others 2022). So, expecting that highly motivated individuals acting
on climate change and behaving accordingly
would encourage others to do the same is
not likely: second-order beliefs (what people
think others think) appear to matter cruciallyfor collective action (Bouman and Steg 2019).
116

Andre and others 2024.

117

Sparkman, Geiger and Weber 2022.

118

This is the title of Sparkman, Geiger and Weber (2022).

119

Lees and others (2023) show that themisperceptions in the United States extend
to the relative importance of addressing
climate change compared with other policy
priorities. Pearson and others (2018) showthat misperceptions are pervasive in the
United States for environmental concerns.
Mildenberger and Tingley (2019) add
evidence from China on climate change
misperceptions. Duffy (2018) provides evidence of misperceptions across a wide range
of issues in several countries.

100 See Balliet and Van Lange (2013).
101

Falk and others 2018.

102 Nunn, Qian and Wen 2023.
103 Yamagishi and Yamagishi 1994.
104 Rathbun 2011.
105 Because many surveys do not specify themeaning of trust, trust in institutions could beunderstood to mean the integrity, legitimacy
or competence of the institution, which are
not the same things—see the criticism of thenotion of trust in institutions in Elster (2015b).

120 Also known as collective illusion, where
people mistakenly believe others have an
opinion different from their own and go alongwith a view that they do not hold because
they think most other people in the grouphold this belief.
121

106 Fairbrother 2016; Fairbrother, Johansson
Sevä and Kulin 2019.
107 For a review on this, see Kaasa and Andriani(2022).
108 Herreros (2023) identifies this as the firstof four potential mechanisms. The others
include projecting perceptions of trust in
institutions to the whole population (that is,if the state is seen as corrupt, most of the
population is perceived that way), believing in
the effectiveness of the state (for instance, inredressing inequalities) and believing that thestate fosters trust by providing information on
who is trustworthy.
109 Connaughton and Moncus 2020.
110

Dellmuth and Tallberg 2020.

111

Dellmuth and Tallberg 2021.

112

Torcal and Thomson 2023.

113

This relationship likely goes both ways.
In the social trust approach, generalized
trust among people is thought to spill over
into trust in institutions. Alternatively, wellfunctioning institutions can be expected tosupport generalized trust through different
channels—for instance, by dissuading opportunistic behaviour or enhancing social
cohesion and belonging (Herreros 2023).

114

Steg 2023.

115

Mildenberger and Tingley 2019. Particularly
because there is little evidence that personal
climate change behaviour driven by individual beliefs spills over to influence collective

Notes

This includes maladaptive social norms (Smerdon, Offerman and Gneezy 2020). There ismuch literature on how pluralistic ignorance
influences behaviour (Prentice and Miller
1993) and is associated with political regimesthat transition rapidly once misperceptions
are resolved (Elster 2015b; Frank 2021).
Mastroianni and Dana (2022) show how
misperceptions about attitude change candrive policies that are inconsistent withpeople’s actual beliefs and preferences.

122 Bouman and Steg 2019; Welsch 2022.
123 Ahler 2014; Ahler and Sood 2018; Bursztyn
and Yang 2022; Graeber, Roth and Zimmermann 2023; Yudkin, Hawkins and Dixon 2019.
124 Acemoglu and Wolitzky 2023.
125 Ahler 2014, p. 607.
126 Druckman and others 2023; Flores and others
2022; Pereira 2021; Sheffer and others 2023;
Soontjens 2023; Walgrave and others 2023.
127

There is strong evidence that beliefs on
how to act on climate change are shaped byworldviews and affiliation with groups (Bumann 2021; Dietz and Whitley 2018; Hornsey
and others 2016; Krange, Kaltenborn andHultman 2021; Mayer and Smith 2023) andthat motivated reasoning is the mechanismthat leads people to hold their beliefs (Bago,
Rand and Pennycook 2023), though this has
been contested (Bayes and Druckman 2021;
Bowen, Dmitriev and Galperti 2023; Druckman and McGrath 2019). Krishnarajan (2023)
argues that motivated reasoning can explain
perceptions of the acceptability of the violation of democratic norms and practices.

128 Belief polarization can emerge without motivated reasoning if, in a context of abundant
information and some initial misperceptions,people selectively choose what information225

they rely on and share with their groups(Bowen, Dmitriev and Galperti 2023).
129 Hornsey and Lewandowsky 2022.
130 Nyhan 2020. Gustafson and others (2019)show how, in only four months, the policy
proposal for the Green New Deal becamepolarized in the United States and how
partisan media played a role in driving thatpolarization.
131

Fehr, Mollerstrom and Perez-Truglia 2022;
Hvidberg, Kreiner and Stantcheva 2023; Xu
and others 2023.

132 See also Alesina, Miano and Stantcheva(2020).

156 Caluwaerts and others 2023; Fishkin andothers 2021; Strandberg, Himmelroos andGrönlund 2019.
157

161

164 Framings have been shown to affect engagement and behaviour intentions of people onshared challenges such as climate change,
with motivational framings more effective
than sacrifice framings (Gifford 2014; Gifford
and Comeau 2011).

145 Wu and others 2022.

165 Chuang, Manley and Petersen 2020; Cukier,
Mayer-Schönberger and de Véricourt 2022;
Siegrist and Bearth 2021. Judge, Fernando
and Begeny (2022) show that changes inbehaviour extend to collective, not just individual, action. This is premised on the broader
determinants of human behaviour beyond
self-interest motivations discussed in chapter
4. See also Wildavsky (1987). Even language
can have an effect on, for instance, futureoriented economic behaviour: choices madeunder language that does not sharply distinguish between the present and the future are
more future-oriented than those made underlanguage with a sharp distinction (Ayres, Katz
and Regev 2023).

146 For reviews of the implications for the economics of information in a context of disinformation, see Stiglitz and Kosenko (2024a,
2024b).

166 This is the thesis of Joel Mokyr (see Greif and
Mokyr 2017 and Mokyr 2013, 2016). For recent
empirical evidence that supports his hypothesis, see Almelhem and others (2023).

147

167

139 Carlson and Hill 2022.
140 Jørgensen and Osmundsen 2022.
141

Andre and others 2021; Mildenberger andTingley 2019.

142 Ahler and Sood 2018.
143

Nyhan 2021; Nyhan, Porter and Wood 2022.

144

Changing laws, for instance, may or may
not be effective in changing misperceptions(Eisner, Turner-Zwinkels and Spini 2021; Hoffand Walsh 2019).

Fernbach and Van Boven 2022.

148 Gur, Ayal and Halperin 2021.
150 Vlasceanu and others 2024.
151

169 Oreskes 2015.

Dulberg and others 2023; Sen 2005, 2009a.

152 Crisp, Hewstone and Rubin 2001.

170 Cann and Raymond 2018.

153 Sen 2009b.

171

154 Weiss, Ran and Halperin 2023.
155 Luskin and others 2022.

226

Bergquist and others 2022; Dechezleprêtre
and others 2022. An action-oriented dialogue
also opens the space for plural valuations toemerge (Pascual and others 2023; ZafraCalvo and others 2020).

176

Hamilton and others 2018.

177

Sustainable science has clearly articulated
that urgent action is needed but also that tomove forward, it is crucial to have a broader
understanding of human motivations, as explored in chapter 4 (Clark and Harley 2020).
Such understanding is needed when it comesto the estimated cost of reducing greenhousegas emissions (Kotchen, Rising and Wagner
2023), particularly given that addressing climate change involves a portfolio of economic
and other policies (Blanchard, Gollier andTirole 2023).

178

Doran and others 2023. However, evidence
also suggests that updating of beliefs may notoccur in highly polarized contexts, even whenpeople confront actual climate hazards, suchas heatwaves (Anderson and Robinson 2024).

179

Bretter and Schulz (2023) argue that rather
than focusing on combating climate denialism, seeking common ways to address
climate change accounting and respecting
differences in views about how quickly action
should take place could reduce polarization
around climate change.

Cointe and Guillemot forthcoming.

168 Patterson and others 2021. In part becauseof heterogeneity across the population on
predisposition to act (Wiest, Raymond andClawson 2015).

149 Graeber, Roth and Zimmermann 2023.

Toivonen 2022.

175

Powell 2022.

162 Buchanan 2020.
163 UNDP 2022b.

138 Ahler and Sood 2018.

174

160 Powell 2022.

Rojek-Giffin and others 2023.

Mastroianni and Dana 2022.

Adger and others 2022; Biermann and others
2022; Croasdale and others 2023; Hickman
2024; Hickman and others 2021.

159 Or, worse, where hidden agendas and interests shape the deliberation environment
to bias outcomes towards powerful groups(Oreskes and Conway 2011; Supran andOreskes 2021).

134

137

173

158 Caluwaerts and others 2023.

Judge and others 2023; Steg 2023.

136 Ahler 2014; Fernbach and Van Boven 2022.

With cultural threat perceptions even predicting violent extremism (Obaidi and others 2023).
While finding a common enemy or threat
across groups can enhance intergroup cooperation (West and others 2006), that is moredifficult or unlikely when issues such as climatechange polarize (Chinn, Hart and Soroka 2020;
Egan and Mullin 2017). Moreover, individuals
who support slower action on climate change
are grouped with climate change denialists by
those who support stronger action on climatechange, further exacerbating polarization (Bretter and Schulz 2023), particularly given theimportance of social identities and groups indetermining individual beliefs on the need toact on climate change (Hornung 2022). Polarization can also lead to the breakdown of collective action to address long-term challenges,
even when people care a lot about the future,
if beliefs about whether collapse will happen
and how severe it is are polarized (Barfuss andMann 2022; Barfuss and others 2020).

Caluwaerts and others 2023.

133

135 Levy 2022; Morehouse, Maddox and Banaji
2023.

172

Campante, Depetris-Chauvin and Durante
2024; Halevy 2023; Jost and others 2017; Lerner and Keltner 2001; Satici and others 2020;
van Prooijen and others 2015; Wildavsky,
Dake and Darwin 2001.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

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Statisticalannex

Statistical annex
RE A DE RS G UIDE 

26 9

HUMAN DE VE LO P M E NT C O MP O S ITE INDICES	268

1

Human Development Index and its components

274

2

Human Development Index trends, 1990–2022

279

3

Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index

283

4

Gender Development Index

288

5

Gender Inequality Index

293

6Multidimensional Poverty Index: developing countries

298

7Planetary pressures-adjusted Human Development Index

301

D E V E LO P ING RE G IO NS 306

STATISTICAL RE F E RE NC E S 307

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Readers guide

The tables provide an overview of key aspects of human development. The seven tables contain the family of composite human development indices andtheir components estimated by the Human Development Report Office (HDRO). The sixth table, on
multidimensional poverty, is produced in partnershipwith the Oxford Poverty and Human Development
Initiative.
Tables 1–7 are part of the 2023/2024 Human
Development Report. The full set of seven statistical tables is available for download at https://hdr​.undp.org/en/human-­development-report​-­2023-24.
Unless otherwise noted, tables use data available
to the HDRO as of 31 October 2023. All indices andindicators, along with technical notes on the calculation of composite indices and additional source
information, are available at https://hdr.undp.org/data-­center.
Countries and territories are ranked by 2022
Human Development Index (HDI) value. Robustness
and reliability analysis has shown that for most countries differences in HDI are not statistically significant
at the fourth decimal place. For this reason countries
with the same HDI value at three decimal places arelisted with tied ranks.

indices­—­the HDI, the Inequality-­adjusted Human
Development Index (IHDI), the Gender Development Index (GDI), the Gender Inequality Index (GII),
the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and thePlanetary pressures-­adjusted Human Development
Index (PHDI). The methodology used to compute theindices is the same as the one used in the 2021/2022
Human Development Report. For details, see Technical notes 1–6 at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files​/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf.

Comparisons over timeand across editions
Because national and international agencies continually improve their data series, the data­—­including the
HDI values and ranks­—­presented in this report are
not comparable to those published in earlier editions.
For HDI comparability across years and countries,
see table 2, which presents trends using consistent data, or https://hdr.undp.org/data- ­center, which presents interpolated consistent data.

Discrepancies between national
and international estimates

Sources and definitions

National and international data can differ becauseinternational agencies harmonize national data using a consistent methodology and occasionally produce estimates of missing data to allow comparability
across countries. In other cases international agencies might not have access to the most recent national
data. When HDRO becomes aware of discrepancies,
it brings them to the attention of national and international data authorities.

Unless otherwise noted, the HDRO uses data from international data agencies with the mandate, resources and expertise to collect national data on specificindicators.
Definitions of indicators and sources for original
data components are given at the end of each table,with full source details in Statistical references.

Methodology updates

Country groupings and aggregates

The 2023/2024 Report retains all the composite
indices from the family of human development
R EAD ER S GU ID E

The tables present weighted aggregates for several
country groupings. In general, an aggregate is shown269

only when data are available for at least half the countries and represent at least two-­thirds of the population in that grouping. Aggregates for each grouping
cover only the countries for which data are available.

Human development classification
HDI classifications are based on HDI fixed cutoff
points, which are derived from the quartiles of distributions of the component indicators. The cutoff
points are HDI of less than 0.550 for low human development, 0.550–0.699 for medium human development, 0.700–0.799 for high human development and
0.800 or greater for very high human development.

Regional groupings
Regional groupings are based on United Nations Development Programme regional classifications. Least
Developed Countries and Small Island Developing
States are defined according to UN classifications(see https://www.un.org/ohrlls/).

Developing countries
The aggregates for developing countries are based on
information from all developing countries that are included in a regional grouping.

Country notes
Data for China do not include Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region of China, Macao Special Administrative Region of China or Taiwan Province ofChina.
As of 2 May 2016, Czechia is the short name to be
used for the Czech Republic.
As of 1 June 2018, the Kingdom of Eswatini is thename of the country formerly known as Swaziland.
As of 14 February 2019, the Republic of North
Macedonia (short form: North Macedonia) is thename of the country formerly known as the former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
As of 1 June 2022, Türkiye is the name of the country formerly known as Turkey.

Symbols
A dash between two years, as in 2010–2022, indicatesthat the data are from the most recent year available
during the period specified. Growth rates are usually
average annual rates of growth between the first andlast years of the period shown.
The following symbols are used in the tables:..		
Not available
0 or 0.0
Nil or negligible­—­		
Not applicable

Statistical acknowledgements

Organisation for Economic
Co‑operation and Development
Of the 38 Organisation for Economic Co-­operation
and Development members, 33 are considered developed countries and 5 (Costa Rica, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Türkiye) are considered developing
270

countries. Aggregates refer to all countries from thegroup for which data are available.

The Report’s composite indices and other statisticalresources draw on a wide variety of the most respected international data providers in their specialized
fields. HDRO is particularly grateful to Eurostat; theGlobal Carbon Project; ICF Macro; the International
Labour Organization; the International Monetary

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Fund; the Inter-­Parliamentary Union; the Luxembourg Income Study; the Organisation for EconomicCo-­operation and Development; the Socio-­Economic
Database for Latin America and the Caribbean; theUnited Nations Children’s Fund; the United Nations
Department of Economic and Social Affairs; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics; the United Nations
Environment Programme; the United Nations Statistics Division; the World Bank; and the World Inequality Database. The international education databasemaintained by Robert Barro (Harvard University) andJong-­Wha Lee (Korea University) was another invaluable source for the calculation of the Report’s indices.

Statistical tables
The seven tables relate to the six composite humandevelopment indices and their components. Since
the 2010 Human Development Report, four composite human development indices­—­the HDI, the IHDI,
the GII and the MPI for developing countries­—­havebeen calculated. The 2014 Report introduced the
GDI, which compares the HDI calculated separately
for women and men. The 2020 Report introduced the
PHDI, which adjusts the HDI for the excessive human pressure on the planet.
For indicators that are global Sustainable
Development Goals indicators or can be used inmonitoring progress towards specific goals, the table
headers include the relevant goals and targets.
Table 1, Human Development Index and its
components, ranks countries by 2022 HDI value anddetails the values of the three HDI components: longevity, education (with two indicators) and income
per capita. The table also presents the difference inrankings by HDI value and gross national income percapita, as well as the rank on the 2021 HDI, calculatedusing the most recently revised historical data available in 2023.
R EAD ER S GU ID E

Table 2, Human Development Index trends,
1990–2022, provides a time series of HDI values allowing 2022 HDI values to be compared with thosefor previous years. The table uses the most recently revised historical data available in 2023 and thesame methodology applied to compute 2022 HDI values. The table also includes the change in HDI rankover the last seven years and the average annual HDI
growth rate across four time intervals: 1990–2000,
2000–2010, 2010–2022 and 1990–2022.
Table 3, Inequality-­adjusted Human Development Index, contains two related measures ofinequality­—­the IHDI and the overall loss in HDI due
to inequality. The IHDI looks beyond the averageachievements of a country in longevity, educationand income to show how these achievements are distributed among its residents. The IHDI value can beinterpreted as the level of human development wheninequality is accounted for. The relative difference between IHDI and HDI values is the loss due to inequality in distribution of the HDI within the country. The
table presents the coefficient of human inequality,
which is the unweighted average of inequalities in thethree dimensions. In addition, the table shows eachcountry’s difference in rank on the HDI and the IHDI.
A negative value means that taking inequality into account lowers a country’s rank on the HDI. The tablealso presents the income shares of the poorest 40 percent, the richest 10 percent and the richest 1 percentof the population, as well as the Gini coefficient.
Table 4, Gender Development Index, measures disparities on the HDI by gender. The table contains HDI values estimated separately for women andmen, the ratio of which is the GDI value. The closer
the ratio is to 1, the smaller the gap between womenand men. Values for the three HDI components­—­
longevity, education (with two indicators) and income per capita­—­are also presented by gender. The
table includes five country groupings by absolute deviation from gender parity in HDI values.
271

Table 5, Gender Inequality Index, presents acomposite measure of gender inequality using three
dimensions: reproductive health, empowerment andthe labour market. The reproductive health indicators are maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birthrate. The empowerment indicators are the percentage of parliamentary seats held by women and thepercentage of population with at least some secondary education by gender. The labour market indicatoris participation in the labour force by gender. A low
GII value indicates low inequality between womenand men, and vice-­versa.
Table 6, Multidimensional Poverty Index, captures the multiple deprivations that people in developing countries face in their health, education andstandard of living. The MPI shows both the incidenceof nonincome multidimensional poverty (a headcount of those in multidimensional poverty) and its
intensity (the average deprivation score experienced
by multidimensionally poor people). Based on deprivation score thresholds, people are classified as
multidimensionally poor, in severe multidimensional272

poverty or vulnerable to multidimensional poverty.
The table includes the contribution of deprivationin each dimension to overall multidimensional poverty. It also presents measures of income poverty­—­population living below the national poverty line
and population living on less than $2.15 in purchasing
power parity terms per day.
Table 7, Planetary pressures-­adjusted Human
Development Index, adjusts the HDI for planetarypressures in the Anthropocene to reflect a concern forintergenerational inequality, similar to the Inequality-­
adjusted HDI adjustment, which is motivated by aconcern for intragenerational inequality. The PHDI
value can be interpreted as the level of human development adjusted by carbon dioxide emissions perperson (production-­based) and material footprint percapita to account for the excessive human pressure on
the planet. The table presents the relative difference
between PHDI and HDI values as well as each country’s difference in rank on the HDI and the PHDI. A
negative value means that taking planetary pressures
into account lowers a country’s rank on the HDI.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Human development
composite indicesTAB LE 1

Human Development Index and its components

HDI RANK

Very high human development
1 Switzerland
2 Norway
3 Iceland
4 Hong Kong, China (SAR)
5 Denmark
5 Sweden
7 Germany
7 Ireland
9 Singapore
10 Australia
10 Netherlands
12 Belgium
12 Finland
12 Liechtenstein
15 United Kingdom
16 New Zealand
17 United Arab Emirates
18 Canada
19 Korea (Republic of)
20 Luxembourg
20 United States
22 Austria
22 Slovenia
24 Japan
25 Israel
25 Malta
27 Spain
28 France
29 Cyprus
30 Italy
31 Estonia
32 Czechia
33 Greece
34 Bahrain
35 Andorra
36 Poland
37 Latvia
37 Lithuania
39 Croatia
40 Qatar
40 Saudi Arabia
42 Portugal
43 San Marino
44 Chile
45 Slovakia
45 Türkiye
47 Hungary
48 Argentina
49 Kuwait
50 Montenegro
51 Saint Kitts and Nevis
52 Uruguay
53 Romania
54 Antigua and Barbuda
55 Brunei Darussalam
56 Russian Federation
57 Bahamas
57 Panama
59 Oman
60 Georgia
60 Trinidad and Tobago
62 Barbados

Human Development
Index (HDI)
Value
2022

SDG 3
Life expectancy
at birth(years)2022

SDG 4.3
Expected yearsof schooling(years)2022a

SDG 4.4
Mean years ofschooling(years)2022a

SDG 8.5
Gross national income(GNI) per capita(2017 PPP $)
2022

0.967
0.966
0.959
0.956
0.952
0.952
0.950
0.950
0.949
0.946
0.946
0.942
0.942
0.942
0.940
0.939
0.937
0.935
0.929
0.927
0.927
0.926
0.926
0.920
0.915
0.915
0.911
0.910
0.907
0.906
0.899
0.895
0.893
0.888
0.884
0.881
0.879
0.879
0.878
0.875
0.875
0.874
0.867
0.860
0.855
0.855
0.851
0.849
0.847
0.844
0.838
0.830
0.827
0.826
0.823
0.821
0.820
0.820
0.819
0.814
0.814
0.809

84.3
83.4
82.8
84.3
81.9
83.5
81.0
82.7
84.1
83.6
82.5
82.3
82.4
84.7
82.2
83.0
79.2
82.8
84.0
82.6
78.2
82.4
82.1
84.8
82.6
83.7
83.9
83.2
81.9
84.1
79.2
78.1
80.6
79.2
83.6
77.0
75.9
74.3
79.2
81.6
77.9
82.2
83.4
79.5
75.3
78.5
75.0
76.1
80.3
76.8
72.0
78.0
74.1
79.2
74.6
70.1
74.4
76.8
73.9
71.6
74.7
77.7

16.6
18.6 d19.1 d17.8
18.8 d
19.0 d17.3
19.1 d16.9
21.1 d
18.6 d18.9 d19.2 d15.5
17.6
19.7 d
17.2
16.0
16.5
14.2
16.4
16.4
17.4
15.5
15.0
15.9
17.8
16.0
16.2
16.7
15.9
16.3
20.0 d
16.3
12.8
15.9
16.6
16.4
15.6
13.3
15.2 j
16.8
12.4
16.8
14.7
19.7 d15.1
19.0 d15.7 c15.1
18.4 d,m
17.4
14.5
15.5 c13.7
15.7 c11.9 k
13.2 c13.0
16.7
14.1 o16.5 c13.9 c13.1 c
13.8
12.3
13.0
12.7 c14.3
11.7 c
11.9
12.7
12.6
12.5 c12.9 c12.4 f
13.4
12.9
12.8
13.9 c12.6 c13.0 h13.6
12.3 c12.9 c12.7
13.4 c12.2
10.6
11.7 c
12.4
10.7
13.5
12.9 c
11.4
11.0
11.6
13.2
13.3 c13.5
12.3 c10.1 c11.3
9.6
10.5 k
11.1 c13.0 c
8.8 c
12.2
11.1
7.4 c
12.6 c10.8 n9.1 c
11.4 c10.5 j9.2
12.4
12.7 c10.7 c11.9
12.7
11.7 c9.9 p

69,43369,19054,68862,48662,01956,99655,34087,468 e
88,761 e49,25757,27853,64449,522
146,673 e,g46,624
43,665
74,104
48,44446,02678,554 e
65,56556,53041,58743,644
43,58844,46440,04347,37940,13744,28437,152
39,94531,382
48,731
54,233 i
35,151
32,08338,131
34,324
95,944 e
50,62035,31557,687 l
24,431
32,171
32,83434,19622,04856,72922,51328,442
22,20731,641
18,784
59,24626,99232,53532,02932,967
15,952
22,473
14,810

GNI per capita rank
minus HDI rank

HDI
rank

2022b

2021

6
6
16
6
6
10
11
–3
–6
14
4
9
11
–11
13
16
–11
8
10
–15
–11
–5
13
9
9
5
10
–1
7
1
9
6
20
–9
–15
7
13
2
5
–38
–18
0
–30
15
4
2
–2
17
–33
12
3
12
–1
18
–43
1
–9
–6
–13
19
3
24

1
2
4
3
8
5
7
9
10
5
11
13
11
14
17
14
17
16
20
19
21
22
24
22
26
25
28
27
29
30
32
31
33
34
43
35
39
36
37
41
37
39
44
42
45
48
46
47
50
49
51
56
52
54
53
55
67
57
58
59
60
63
Continued →2 74

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 1

HDI RANK

63 Malaysia
64 Costa Rica
65 Serbia
66 Thailand
67 Kazakhstan
67 Seychelles
69 Belarus
High human development
70 Bulgaria
71 Palau
72 Mauritius
73 Grenada
74 Albania
75 China
76 Armenia
77 Mexico
78 Iran (Islamic Republic of)
78 Sri Lanka
80 Bosnia and Herzegovina
81 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
82 Dominican Republic
83 Ecuador
83 North Macedonia
85 Cuba
86 Moldova (Republic of)
87 Maldives
87 Peru
89 Azerbaijan
89 Brazil
91 Colombia
92 Libya
93 Algeria
94 Turkmenistan
95 Guyana
96 Mongolia
97 Dominica
98 Tonga
99 Jordan
100 Ukraine
101 Tunisia
102 Marshall Islands
102 Paraguay
104 Fiji
105 Egypt
106 Uzbekistan
107 Viet Nam
108 Saint Lucia
109 Lebanon
110 South Africa
111 Palestine, State of
112 Indonesia
113 Philippines
114 Botswana
115 Jamaica
116 Samoa
117 Kyrgyzstan
118 Belize
Medium human development
119 Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)120 Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
120 Morocco
122 Nauru
123 Gabon

Human Development
Index (HDI)
Value
2022

SDG 3
Life expectancy
at birth(years)2022

SDG 4.3
Expected yearsof schooling(years)2022a

SDG 4.4
Mean years ofschooling(years)2022a

SDG 8.5
Gross national income(GNI) per capita(2017 PPP $)
2022

0.807
0.806
0.805
0.803
0.802
0.802
0.801

76.3
77.3
74.1
79.7
69.5
71.7
73.2

12.9
16.1 c
14.5
15.6
14.8
13.9
14.0

10.7 c8.8
11.5 c8.8 c12.4 c11.2
12.2 c27,295
20,24819,494
16,887
22,58728,386
18,425

0.799
0.797
0.796
0.793
0.789
0.788
0.786
0.781
0.780
0.780
0.779
0.772
0.766
0.765
0.765
0.764
0.763
0.762
0.762
0.760
0.760
0.758
0.746
0.745
0.744
0.742
0.741
0.740
0.739
0.736
0.734
0.732
0.731
0.731
0.729
0.728
0.727
0.726
0.725
0.723
0.717
0.716
0.713
0.710
0.708
0.706
0.702
0.701
0.700

71.5
65.4
74.0
75.3
76.8
78.6
73.4
74.8
74.6
76.6
75.3
69.0
74.2
77.9
73.9
78.2
68.6
80.8
73.4
73.5
73.4
73.7
72.2
77.1
69.4
66.0
72.7
73.0
71.3
74.2
68.6
74.3
65.1
70.5
68.3
70.2
71.7
74.6
71.3
74.4
61.5
73.4
68.3
72.2
65.9
70.6
72.6
70.5
71.0

13.9
17.2 k
14.6
16.6 c14.5
15.2 c
14.4
14.5
14.1
13.6 c13.3
16.3 c
13.6
14.9
13.0
14.5
14.9
12.2 c14.8 c
12.7
15.6
14.4
14.0 j15.5
13.2
13.0 o14.5 c13.6 c16.3
12.6 c13.3
14.6 c16.4
13.9 s
13.8
12.9
12.0
13.1 t12.7
12.1 u14.3
13.2
14.0 c12.8
11.4
12.5 c
12.4
13.0
12.4

11.4
13.0 k
10.0 p
9.9 j
10.1 p
8.1 c
11.3
9.2
10.7 c11.2
10.5
11.0 k
9.2 c
9.0
10.2
10.5 c11.8 c7.8 c
10.0 c10.6 c
8.3 c
8.9
7.8 r
7.0 c
11.1 c
8.6 p
9.4
9.2 j
10.9 p10.4
11.1 p8.0 c
12.8 k
8.9
10.4
9.8 c
11.9
8.5 c
8.6 c
8.6 k
11.6
9.9
8.6
9.0 c
10.4
9.2 c
11.4 c12.0 c
8.8

0.699
0.698
0.698
0.696
0.693

71.1
64.9
75.0
64.0
65.7

13.5 k
15.0
14.6
12.6 c12.4 c

9.6 k
9.8
6.1
9.2 j
9.6

GNI per capita rank
minus HDI rank

HDI
rank

2022b

2021

–7
2
3
10
–6
–12
5

68
60
60
69
65
71
65

25,921
19,344 l
23,252
13,593
15,29318,025
15,388
19,138
14,77011,89916,571
14,04918,653
10,693
16,396
7,953 q12,964
18,847
11,91615,018
14,61615,01419,752
10,97812,860 l
35,783
10,351
12,4686,360 l9,295
11,416
10,297
6,855
13,161
11,234
12,361
8,056
10,814
14,77812,313 v
13,186
6,936
12,046
9,059
14,842
9,695
4,970
4,782
9,242

–12
–2
–12
18
7
0
4
–7
10
24
–3
9
–9
25
–5
40
8
–16
14
–7
0
–8
–25
13
1
–54
15
–1
34
15
3
11
28
–9
0
–8
16
0
–21
–11
–18
18
–12
5
–29
–2
25
28
–3

70
64
72
73
74
74
79
83
77
76
77
80
84
90
82
92
81
88
86
95
84
89
90
93
93
105
99
97
95
98
86
101
101
99
110
103
105
108
109
104
105
110
113
118
124
114
112
116
115

6,184 w
7,988
7,955
14,939
11,194

14
3
4
–38
–18

120
119
122
117
123
Continued →TA B L E 1 / HUMA N D EVELOP MENT IND EX AND ITS COMP ONENTS

275

TAB LE 1

HDI RANK

124 Suriname
125 Bhutan
126 Tajikistan
127 El Salvador
128 Iraq
129 Bangladesh
130 Nicaragua
131 Cabo Verde132 Tuvalu
133 Equatorial Guinea
134 India
135 Micronesia (Federated States of)
136 Guatemala
137 Kiribati
138 Honduras
139 Lao People’s Democratic Republic
140 Vanuatu
141 Sao Tome and Principe
142 Eswatini (Kingdom of)
142 Namibia
144 Myanmar
145 Ghana
146 Kenya
146 Nepal
148 Cambodia
149 Congo
150 Angola
151 Cameroon
152 Comoros
153 Zambia
154 Papua New Guinea
155 Timor-Leste
156 Solomon Islands
157 Syrian Arab Republic
158 Haiti
159 Uganda
159 Zimbabwe
Low human development
161 Nigeria
161 Rwanda
163 Togo
164 Mauritania
164 Pakistan
166 Côte d’Ivoire
167 Tanzania (United Republic of)
168 Lesotho
169 Senegal
170 Sudan
171 Djibouti
172 Malawi
173 Benin
174 Gambia
175 Eritrea
176 Ethiopia
177 Liberia
177 Madagascar
179 Guinea-Bissau
180 Congo (Democratic Republic of the)181 Guinea
182 Afghanistan
183 Mozambique
184 Sierra Leone
185 Burkina Faso

Human Development
Index (HDI)
Value
2022

SDG 3
Life expectancy
at birth(years)2022

SDG 4.3
Expected yearsof schooling(years)2022a

SDG 4.4
Mean years ofschooling(years)2022a

SDG 8.5
Gross national income(GNI) per capita(2017 PPP $)
2022

0.690
0.681
0.679
0.674
0.673
0.670
0.669
0.661
0.653
0.650
0.644
0.634
0.629
0.628
0.624
0.620
0.614
0.613
0.610
0.610
0.608
0.602
0.601
0.601
0.600
0.593
0.591
0.587
0.586
0.569
0.568
0.566
0.562
0.557
0.552
0.550
0.550

70.3
72.2
71.3
71.5
71.3
73.7
74.6
74.7
64.9
61.2
67.7
70.9
68.7
67.7
70.7
69.0
70.5
68.8
56.4
58.1
67.3
63.9
62.1
70.5
69.9
63.1
61.9
61.0
63.7
61.8
66.0
69.1
70.7
72.3
63.7
63.6
59.4

11.0
13.1 c10.9 c11.9 s12.2 t11.9
12.6 s11.5 c12.1 c12.1 j12.6
12.6 j10.8 c11.8
10.0 s10.2
11.8 c12.7 o14.9 c11.8 x12.1 c11.6
11.4 x12.6
11.6 k
12.4 c12.2
13.4 c13.0 c11.0 y11.1 x13.2 x10.3 c7.4 k
11.1 j11.5 x11.0 c8.4 c
5.8 c
11.3 p
7.2
6.8 p
7.4
7.3
6.1 k
10.6 c
8.3 j
6.6
7.3 j
5.7 c
9.1 k
7.3 c
5.9 p
7.2 j
5.9 c
5.7
7.2 p
6.5 p
6.4 p
7.7
4.5 c
5.2
8.3 p
5.8 x
6.5 p
6.2 y
7.3 p
4.9 p
6.0 x
5.9 j
5.7 k
5.6 p
6.2 c
8.8 c

12,31010,625 v
4,807
8,886
9,092
6,511
5,427
7,601
4,754
10,663
6,951
3,709
8,996
3,440
5,272
7,745
3,244
4,054
8,392
9,200
4,038
5,380
4,808
4,026
4,291
2,903
5,328
3,681
3,261
3,157
3,710
1,629
2,273
3,594 z
2,802
2,241
2,079

0.548
0.548
0.547
0.540
0.540
0.534
0.532
0.521
0.517
0.516
0.515
0.508
0.504
0.495
0.493
0.492
0.487
0.487
0.483
0.481
0.471
0.462
0.461
0.458
0.438

53.6
67.1
61.6
64.7
66.4
58.9
66.8
53.0
67.9
65.6
62.9
62.9
60.0
62.9
66.6
65.6
61.1
65.2
59.9
59.7
59.0
62.9
59.6
60.4
59.8

10.5
11.4
13.0 c
8.1
7.9 c
10.1
8.6
11.1 c
9.1
8.5 c
8.0 c
11.5 c
10.3
9.0 x
7.3 c
9.9 c
10.5
9.2 c
10.5 o9.6 c
10.2 c10.7 c10.7 c
9.0 o
8.1

7.6
4.9
5.6 c
4.8 p
4.4 c
4.2 p
5.6 c
7.5 c
2.9 c
3.9
3.9 k
5.2
3.1 p
4.5
5.1 j
2.4 c
5.3 p
4.6
3.7
7.2 p
2.4 c
2.5
3.9
3.5 c
2.3 c

4,755
2,317
2,214
5,344
5,374
5,376
2,578
2,709
3,464
3,515
4,875
1,432
3,406
2,090
1,957 z
2,369
1,330
1,464
1,880
1,080
2,404
1,335 z
1,219
1,613
2,037

GNI per capita rank
minus HDI rank

HDI
rank

2022b

2021

–25
–15
18
–7
–11
2
4
–4
15
–24
–6
18
–17
21
2
–13
21
8
–21
–26
6
–10
–3
5
0
14
–11
3
8
9
–2
24
14
–2
6
12
15

121
125
125
127
128
130
129
132
131
133
135
134
136
137
138
140
141
143
142
139
145
144
147
149
147
146
150
152
151
154
155
153
155
157
158
160
159

–15
8
9
–26
–27
–30
–1
–3
–12
–14
–29
10
–14
–1
2
–8
8
4
–1
9
–14
2
4
–4
–9

162
163
160
164
165
166
167
168
170
169
170
172
173
174
174
176
177
177
179
180
182
181
183
184
185
Continued →276

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 1

HDI RANK186 Yemen
187 Burundi
188 Mali
189 Chad
189 Niger
191 Central African Republic
192 South Sudan
193 Somalia
Other countries or territories
Korea (Democratic People’s Rep. of)
MonacoHuman development groups
Very high human development
High human development
Medium human development
Low human development
Developing countries
Regions
Arab States
East Asia and the Pacific
Europe and Central Asia
Latin America and the Caribbean
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
Least developed countries
Small island developing states
Organisation for Economic Co‑operation
and Development
World

Human Development
Index (HDI)

SDG 3Life expectancy
at birth

SDG 4.3
Expected yearsof schoolingSDG 4.4
Mean years ofschoolingSDG 8.5
Gross national income(GNI) per capita

GNI per capita rank
minus HDI rank

HDI
rank

Value
2022

(years)2022(years)2022a(years)2022a(2017 PPP $)
2022

2022b

2021

0.424
0.420
0.410
0.394
0.394
0.387
0.381
0.380

63.7
62.0
59.4
53.0
62.1
54.5
55.6
56.1

7.9 k
10.0 c
7.0 c
8.2 c
7.2 c
7.3 c
5.6 c
7.6 j

2.8 r
3.3 c
1.6
2.3 c
1.3 p
4.0 p
5.7 aa1.9

1,106 l
712
2,044
1,389
1,283
869
691 l
1,072

2
5
–13
–6
–3
0
1
–3

186
187
188
189
190
191
192
..

..
..

73.6
86.9 ab..
18.7 c,d

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

0.902
0.764
0.640
0.517
0.694

79.3
75.2
68.0
61.6
70.5

16.6
14.5
12.3
9.3
12.5

12.3
8.6
6.7
4.7
7.6

44,95815,484
6,444
3,186
11,125

—
—
—
—
—

—
—
—
—
—

0.704
0.766
0.802
0.763
0.641
0.549
0.542
0.730

71.3
76.2
73.6
73.7
68.4
60.6
64.9
71.6

11.9
14.5
15.5
14.8
11.9
10.3
10.1
12.6

7.8
8.2
10.6
9.0
6.6
6.0
5.0
8.6

14,391
16,13819,763
15,109
6,972
3,666
3,006
16,379

—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—

—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—

0.906
0.739

80.1
72.0

16.6
13.0

12.2
8.7

46,31817,254————TA B L E 1 / HUMA N D EVELOP MENT IND EX AND ITS COMP ONENTS

27 7

TAB LE 1

Notes

DefinitionsaData refer to 2022 or the most recent year available.

b

Based on countries for which a Human Development
Index value is calculated.

cUpdated by HDRO based on data from UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023).

d

In calculating the HDI value, expected years of schoolingis capped at 18 years.

e

In calculating the HDI value, GNI per capita is capped at$75,000.

f

Updated by HDRO using the mean years of schooling
trend of Austria and data from UNESCO Institute for
Statistics (2023).

g

Estimated using the purchasing power parity (PPP) rate
and projected growth rate of Switzerland.

hUpdated by HDRO based on data from OECD (2023)
and UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023).

i

Estimated using the PPP rate of Spain.

jBased onregression.

k

Updated by HDRO based on data from UNESCO
Institute for Statistics (2023) and estimates using crosscountry regression.

HDRO

estimates

using

HDRO estimate based on data from UNDESA (2023),
United Nations Statistics Division (2023) and World Bank
(2023).

aa

Refers to 2008 based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

ab

In calculating the HDI value, life expectancy is capped at
85 years.

HDRO estimate based on data from IMF (2023), United
Nations Statistics Division (2023) and World Bank (2023).

m

Refers to 2015 based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

nRefers to 2015 based on HDRO estimates using crosscountry regression.

oUpdated by HDRO based on data from UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023) and United Nations Children’s
Fund (UNICEF) Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys forvarious years.

p

Updated by HDRO based on data from Barro and Lee(2018) and UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023).

q

HDRO estimate based on cross-country regression andthe projected growth rate from UNDESA (2023) andUnited Nations Statistics Division (2023).

r

Updated by HDRO based on data from Barro and Lee(2018) and estimates using cross-country regression.

sUpdated by HDRO based on data from CEDLAS andWorld Bank (2023) and UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

t

Updated by HDRO based on data from UNICEF Multiple
Indicator Cluster Surveys for various years.

uUpdated by HDRO based on data from UNICEF Multiple
Indicator Cluster Surveys for various years and estimates using cross-country regression.

v

HDRO estimate based on data from IMF (2023) andWorld Bank (2023).

w

IMF 2023.

x

Updated by HDRO based on data from ICF Macro
Demographic and Health Surveys for various years and
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023).

yUpdated by HDRO based on data from ICF Macro Demographic and Health Surveys for various years.

Human Development Index (HDI): A composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of humandevelopment—a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent
standard of living. See Technical note 1 at http://hdr.undp.org​/sites/default/files/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf for details on
how the HDI is calculated.
Life expectancy at birth: Number of years a newborn infant
could expect to live if prevailing patterns of age-specific mortality rates at the time of birth stay the same throughout the
infant’s life.
Expected years of schooling: Number of years of schoolingthat a child of school entrance age can expect to receive if prevailing patterns of age-specific enrolment rates persist throughout the child’s life.
Mean years of schooling: Average number of years of education received by people ages 25 and older, converted from education attainment levels using official durations of each level.
Gross national income (GNI) per capita: Aggregate income ofan economy generated by its production and its ownership offactors of production, less the incomes paid for the use of factors of production owned by the rest of the world, converted
to international dollars using PPP rates, divided by midyear
population.

cross-country

l

278

z

GNI per capita rank minus HDI rank: Difference in ranking by
GNI per capita and by HDI value. A negative value means thatthe country is better ranked by GNI than by HDI value.
HDI rank for 2021: Ranking by HDI value for 2021, calculatedusing the same most recently revised data available in 2023
that were used to calculate HDI values for 2021.

Main data sources
Columns 1 and 7: HDRO calculations based on data from Barroand Lee (2018), IMF (2023), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO
Institute for Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division(2023) and World Bank (2023).
Column 2: UNDESA 2022.
Column 3: CEDLAS and World Bank 2023, ICF Macro Demographic and Health Surveys, UNESCO Institute for Statistics
2023 and UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys.
Column 4: Barro and Lee 2018, ICF Macro Demographic and
Health Surveys, OECD 2023, UNESCO Institute for Statistics
2023 and UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys.
Column 5: IMF 2023, UNDESA 2023, United Nations Statistics
Division 2023 and World Bank 2023.
Column 6: Calculated based on data in columns 1 and 5.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 2

Human Development Index trends, 1990–2022
Change in
HDI rank

Human Development Index (HDI)

Average annual HDI growth

Value

(%)

HDI RANK

1990

2000

2010

2015

2019

2020

2021

2022

2015–2022a

1990–2000

2000–20102010–2022

1990–2022

Very high human development
1 Switzerland
2 Norway
3 Iceland
4 Hong Kong, China (SAR)
5 Denmark
5 Sweden
7 Germany
7 Ireland
9 Singapore
10 Australia
10 Netherlands
12 Belgium
12 Finland
12 Liechtenstein
15 United Kingdom
16 New Zealand
17 United Arab Emirates
18 Canada
19 Korea (Republic of)
20 Luxembourg
20 United States
22 Austria
22 Slovenia
24 Japan
25 Israel
25 Malta
27 Spain
28 France
29 Cyprus
30 Italy
31 Estonia
32 Czechia
33 Greece
34 Bahrain
35 Andorra
36 Poland
37 Latvia
37 Lithuania
39 Croatia
40 Qatar
40 Saudi Arabia
42 Portugal
43 San Marino
44 Chile
45 Slovakia
45 Türkiye
47 Hungary
48 Argentina
49 Kuwait
50 Montenegro
51 Saint Kitts and Nevis
52 Uruguay
53 Romania
54 Antigua and Barbuda
55 Brunei Darussalam
56 Russian Federation
57 Bahamas
57 Panama
59 Oman
60 Georgia
60 Trinidad and Tobago
62 Barbados

0.850
0.845
0.834
0.739
0.839
0.808
0.828
0.743
0.780
0.864
0.847
0.814
0.811
..
0.804
0.812
0.717
0.861
0.731
0.793
0.875
0.823
..
0.846
0.781
0.726
0.762
0.790
0.733
0.780
0.741
0.748
0.762
0.733
..
0.715
0.732
0.740
..
0.764
0.699
0.703
0.841
0.705
..
0.598
0.721
0.724
0.698
..
..
0.702
0.709
..
0.779
0.741
0.760
0.672
..
..
0.656
0.728

0.885
0.914
0.895
0.831
0.890
0.903
0.890
0.851
0.863
0.896
0.892
0.884
0.887
0.871
0.863
0.894
0.790
0.890
0.824
0.864
0.894
0.870
0.823
0.883
0.835
0.779
0.828
0.844
0.797
0.842
0.798
0.810
0.818
0.775
0.815
0.794
0.761
0.769
0.764
0.793
0.746
0.793
0.875
0.763
0.761
0.669
0.773
0.780
0.780
..
..
0.754
0.721
..
0.789
0.733
0.788
0.722
0.702
0.694
0.708
0.760

0.940
0.938
0.927
0.914
0.913
0.910
0.929
0.908
0.921
0.924
0.917
0.913
0.912
0.916
0.913
0.924
0.828
0.911
0.890
0.912
0.916
0.903
0.890
0.903
0.887
0.862
0.868
0.880
0.859
0.880
0.864
0.872
0.874
0.807
0.863
0.845
0.827
0.846
0.824
0.829
0.805
0.831
0.901
0.813
0.841
0.750
0.829
0.834
0.811
0.806
0.790
0.785
0.813
0.808
0.825
0.797
0.800
0.775
0.798
0.763
0.785
0.792

0.952
0.952
0.948
0.936
0.936
0.937
0.941
0.924
0.935
0.933
0.932
0.924
0.930
0.926
0.923
0.933
0.860
0.927
0.908
0.914
0.924
0.910
0.903
0.913
0.899
0.887
0.889
0.893
0.874
0.881
0.883
0.891
0.881
0.859
0.856
0.869
0.853
0.865
0.844
0.852
0.842
0.850
0.872
0.846
0.852
0.821
0.839
0.850
0.829
0.827
0.829
0.807
0.813
0.818
0.832
0.823
0.807
0.802
0.824
0.798
0.812
0.798

0.960
0.961
0.958
0.953
0.946
0.947
0.951
0.942
0.945
0.941
0.941
0.936
0.939
0.940
0.933
0.937
0.933
0.932
0.922
0.925
0.933
0.920
0.918
0.918
0.909
0.905
0.904
0.905
0.901
0.899
0.893
0.896
0.890
0.888
0.865
0.880
0.873
0.886
0.866
0.869
0.862
0.864
0.861
0.859
0.863
0.842
0.854
0.853
0.838
0.841
0.838
0.818
0.834
0.831
0.827
0.839
0.802
0.820
0.841
0.816
0.813
0.806

0.957
0.963
0.955
0.955
0.946
0.944
0.948
0.945
0.942
0.948
0.938
0.930
0.939
0.933
0.920
0.935
0.930
0.928
0.922
0.921
0.923
0.916
0.910
0.917
0.906
0.901
0.894
0.900
0.900
0.892
0.891
0.891
0.887
0.884
0.843
0.874
0.873
0.880
0.860
0.863
0.861
0.861
0.844
0.849
0.860
0.835
0.849
0.841
0.826
0.832
0.832
0.820
0.828
0.820
0.827
0.826
0.798
0.809
0.823
0.807
0.815
0.803

0.965
0.964
0.957
0.959
0.947
0.949
0.948
0.946
0.942
0.949
0.941
0.938
0.941
0.936
0.931
0.936
0.931
0.934
0.926
0.927
0.921
0.920
0.916
0.920
0.911
0.912
0.904
0.906
0.901
0.899
0.890
0.891
0.887
0.884
0.855
0.876
0.865
0.875
0.867
0.864
0.867
0.865
0.853
0.856
0.852
0.841
0.846
0.844
0.836
0.840
0.832
0.814
0.825
0.819
0.824
0.818
0.799
0.813
0.810
0.809
0.804
0.803

0.967
0.966
0.959
0.956
0.952
0.952
0.950
0.950
0.949
0.946
0.946
0.942
0.942
0.942
0.940
0.939
0.937
0.935
0.929
0.927
0.927
0.926
0.926
0.920
0.915
0.915
0.911
0.910
0.907
0.906
0.899
0.895
0.893
0.888
0.884
0.881
0.879
0.879
0.878
0.875
0.875
0.874
0.867
0.860
0.855
0.855
0.851
0.849
0.847
0.844
0.838
0.830
0.827
0.826
0.823
0.821
0.820
0.820
0.819
0.814
0.814
0.809

0
–1
0
2
1
0
–3
8
–1
–1
1
3
0
2
3
–7
19
–5
3
–1
–5
–1
1
–4
–1
3
0
–3
3
0
–2
–6
–3
3
3
–2
2
–2
6
0
6
0
–10
0
–5
9
0
–6
0
1
–2
8
3
1
–7
–3
3
5
–7
4
–3
2

0.40
0.79
0.71
1.18
0.59
1.12
0.72
1.37
1.02
0.36
0.52
0.83
0.90
..
0.71
0.97
0.97
0.33
1.20
0.86
0.22
0.56
..
0.43
0.67
0.71
0.83
0.66
0.84
0.77
0.74
0.80
0.71
0.56
..
1.05
0.39
0.39
..
0.37
0.65
1.21
0.40
0.79
..
1.13
0.70
0.75
1.12
..
..
0.72
0.17
..
0.13
–0.11
0.36
0.72
..
..
0.77
0.43

0.60
0.26
0.35
0.96
0.26
0.08
0.43
0.65
0.65
0.31
0.28
0.32
0.28
0.51
0.56
0.33
0.47
0.23
0.77
0.54
0.24
0.37
0.79
0.22
0.61
1.02
0.47
0.42
0.75
0.44
0.80
0.74
0.66
0.41
0.57
0.62
0.84
0.96
0.76
0.44
0.76
0.47
0.29
0.64
1.00
1.15
0.70
0.67
0.39
..
..
0.40
1.21
..
0.45
0.84
0.15
0.71
1.29
0.95
1.04
0.41

0.24
0.25
0.28
0.38
0.35
0.38
0.19
0.38
0.25
0.20
0.26
0.26
0.27
0.23
0.24
0.13
1.04
0.22
0.36
0.14
0.10
0.21
0.33
0.16
0.26
0.50
0.40
0.28
0.45
0.24
0.33
0.22
0.18
0.80
0.20
0.35
0.51
0.32
0.53
0.45
0.70
0.42
–0.32
0.47
0.14
1.10
0.22
0.15
0.36
0.38
0.49
0.47
0.14
0.18
–0.02
0.25
0.21
0.47
0.22
0.54
0.30
0.18

0.40
0.42
0.44
0.81
0.40
0.51
0.43
0.77
0.61
0.28
0.35
0.46
0.47
..
0.49
0.46
0.84
0.26
0.75
0.49
0.18
0.37
..
0.26
0.50
0.73
0.56
0.44
0.67
0.47
0.61
0.56
0.50
0.60
..
0.65
0.57
0.54
..
0.42
0.70
0.68
0.10
0.62
..
1.12
0.52
0.50
0.61
..
..
0.52
0.48
..
0.17
0.32
0.24
0.62
..
..
0.68
0.33
Continued →TA B L E 2 / HUMA N D EVELOP MENT IND EX TR END S , 1990–2022

279

TAB LE 2

Human Development Index (HDI)
Value
2015
2019

Change in
HDI rank

Average annual HDI growth(%)
2000–20102010–2022

HDI RANK

1990

2000

2010

2020

2021

2022

2015–2022a

1990–2000

63 Malaysia
64 Costa Rica
65 Serbia
66 Thailand
67 Kazakhstan
67 Seychelles
69 Belarus
High human development
70 Bulgaria
71 Palau
72 Mauritius
73 Grenada
74 Albania
75 China
76 Armenia
77 Mexico
78 Iran (Islamic Republic of)
78 Sri Lanka
80 Bosnia and Herzegovina
81 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
82 Dominican Republic
83 Ecuador
83 North Macedonia
85 Cuba
86 Moldova (Republic of)
87 Maldives
87 Peru
89 Azerbaijan
89 Brazil
91 Colombia
92 Libya
93 Algeria
94 Turkmenistan
95 Guyana
96 Mongolia
97 Dominica
98 Tonga
99 Jordan
100 Ukraine
101 Tunisia
102 Marshall Islands
102 Paraguay
104 Fiji
105 Egypt
106 Uzbekistan
107 Viet Nam
108 Saint Lucia
109 Lebanon
110 South Africa
111 Palestine, State of
112 Indonesia
113 Philippines
114 Botswana
115 Jamaica
116 Samoa
117 Kyrgyzstan
118 Belize
Medium human development
119 Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)120 Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
120 Morocco
122 Nauru
123 Gabon

0.649
0.659
..
0.581
0.672
..
..

0.726
0.709
0.689
0.663
0.680
0.755
0.708

0.768
0.769
0.768
0.743
0.766
0.774
0.790

0.792
0.792
0.794
0.789
0.799
0.797
0.809

0.805
0.811
0.812
0.801
0.810
0.808
0.810

0.802
0.811
0.806
0.800
0.806
0.799
0.800

0.798
0.804
0.804
0.797
0.801
0.795
0.801

0.807
0.806
0.805
0.803
0.802
0.802
0.801

6
5
3
6
–4
–1
–11

1.13
0.73
..
1.33
0.12
..
..

0.56
0.82
1.09
1.15
1.20
0.25
1.10

0.41
0.39
0.39
0.65
0.38
0.30
0.12

1990–2022

0.68
0.63
..
1.02
0.55
..
..

0.698
..
0.620
..
0.649
0.482
0.658
0.666
0.613
0.641
..
..
0.579
0.645
..
0.684
0.688
..
0.620
..
0.620
0.614
0.724
0.593
..
0.496
0.579
..
0.640
0.622
0.731
0.566
..
0.604
0.630
0.567
..
0.492
0.666
..
0.635
..
0.526
0.598
0.587
0.664
..
0.637
0.609

0.723
0.747
0.682
..
0.678
0.586
0.656
0.709
0.692
0.689
0.656
0.691
0.646
0.684
0.676
0.694
0.655
0.635
0.675
0.635
0.668
0.672
0.746
0.652
..
0.570
0.595
0.721
0.679
0.681
0.698
0.651
..
0.656
0.669
0.629
0.603
0.599
0.692
..
0.633
..
0.597
0.635
0.581
0.657
0.672
0.617
0.657

0.790
0.775
0.755
0.779
0.766
0.698
0.739
0.747
0.756
0.735
0.718
0.756
0.707
0.736
0.746
0.779
0.716
0.692
0.725
0.733
0.722
0.732
0.774
0.721
0.699
0.650
0.700
0.735
0.709
0.727
0.766
0.713
..
0.700
0.699
0.667
0.675
0.676
0.731
0.749
0.675
0.688
0.667
0.673
0.652
0.711
0.704
0.661
0.720

0.809
0.782
0.791
0.786
0.797
0.741
0.769
0.769
0.782
0.760
0.757
0.777
0.739
0.764
0.777
0.765
0.749
0.728
0.758
0.751
0.752
0.758
0.749
0.736
0.725
0.686
0.739
0.719
0.723
0.738
0.764
0.724
0.688
0.738
0.716
0.695
0.701
0.697
0.736
0.756
0.721
0.710
0.698
0.696
0.688
0.712
0.710
0.689
0.714

0.813
0.792
0.806
0.790
0.800
0.775
0.789
0.781
0.785
0.775
0.780
0.789
0.765
0.758
0.787
0.766
0.773
0.753
0.774
0.762
0.764
0.768
0.756
0.742
0.732
0.711
0.749
0.745
0.740
0.744
0.774
0.740
0.722
0.746
0.730
0.724
0.725
0.717
0.733
0.760
0.741
0.739
0.718
0.714
0.703
0.712
0.712
0.699
0.718

0.802
0.794
0.792
0.786
0.784
0.781
0.769
0.757
0.779
0.777
0.776
0.785
0.760
0.734
0.766
0.759
0.765
0.737
0.758
0.722
0.758
0.756
0.737
0.730
0.731
0.727
0.740
0.738
0.742
0.740
0.762
0.734
0.727
0.742
0.722
0.729
0.716
0.726
0.724
0.742
0.722
0.715
0.712
0.705
0.701
0.707
0.712
0.691
0.705

0.796
0.802
0.790
0.788
0.785
0.785
0.774
0.757
0.776
0.783
0.776
0.773
0.756
0.746
0.764
0.742
0.767
0.753
0.755
0.738
0.756
0.752
0.746
0.740
0.740
0.721
0.730
0.737
0.738
0.736
0.755
0.729
0.729
0.730
0.715
0.726
0.721
0.718
0.717
0.725
0.721
0.715
0.707
0.692
0.680
0.704
0.708
0.696
0.698

0.799
0.797
0.796
0.793
0.789
0.788
0.786
0.781
0.780
0.780
0.779
0.772
0.766
0.765
0.765
0.764
0.763
0.762
0.762
0.760
0.760
0.758
0.746
0.745
0.744
0.742
0.741
0.740
0.739
0.736
0.734
0.732
0.731
0.731
0.729
0.728
0.727
0.726
0.725
0.723
0.717
0.716
0.713
0.710
0.708
0.706
0.702
0.701
0.700

–12
3
–1
0
–8
18
2
1
–4
6
7
–5
12
–1
–7
–4
5
13
–2
1
0
–6
–1
5
7
27
–2
8
5
–3
–18
1
17
–6
2
11
6
7
–10
–21
–6
–2
1
2
5
–7
–7
1
–11

0.35
..
0.96
..
0.44
1.97
–0.03
0.63
1.22
0.72
..
..
1.10
0.59
..
0.15
–0.49
..
0.85
..
0.75
0.91
0.30
0.95
..
1.40
0.27
..
0.59
0.91
–0.46
1.41
..
0.83
0.60
1.04
..
1.99
0.38
..
–0.03
..
1.27
0.60
–0.10
–0.11
..
–0.32
0.76

0.89
0.37
1.02
..
1.23
1.76
1.20
0.52
0.89
0.65
0.91
0.90
0.91
0.74
0.99
1.16
0.89
0.86
0.72
1.45
0.78
0.86
0.37
1.01
..
1.32
1.64
0.19
0.43
0.66
0.93
0.91
..
0.65
0.44
0.59
1.13
1.22
0.55
..
0.64
..
1.11
0.58
1.16
0.79
0.47
0.69
0.92

0.09
0.23
0.44
0.15
0.25
1.02
0.52
0.37
0.26
0.50
0.68
0.17
0.67
0.32
0.21
–0.16
0.53
0.81
0.42
0.30
0.43
0.29
–0.31
0.27
0.52
1.11
0.48
0.06
0.35
0.10
–0.35
0.22
..
0.36
0.35
0.73
0.62
0.60
–0.07
–0.29
0.50
0.33
0.56
0.45
0.69
–0.06
–0.02
0.49
–0.23

0.42
..
0.78
..
0.61
1.55
0.56
0.50
0.76
0.62
..
..
0.88
0.53
..
0.35
0.32
..
0.65
..
0.64
0.66
0.09
0.72
..
1.27
0.77
..
0.45
0.53
0.01
0.81
..
0.60
0.46
0.78
..
1.22
0.27
..
0.38
..
0.96
0.54
0.59
0.19
..
0.30
0.44

0.657
0.546
0.448
..
0.599

0.699
0.625
0.525
..
0.626

0.759
0.661
0.604
0.559
0.656

0.766
0.688
0.656
0.642
0.692

0.720
0.715
0.684
0.680
0.702

0.691
0.691
0.683
0.689
0.704

0.690
0.691
0.688
0.693
0.687

0.699
0.698
0.698
0.696
0.693

–39
–1
5
9
–6

0.62
1.36
1.60
..
0.44

0.83
0.56
1.41
..
0.47

–0.68
0.45
1.21
1.84
0.46

0.19
0.77
1.40
..
0.46
Continued →280

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 2

Change in
HDI rank

Human Development Index (HDI)

Average annual HDI growth

Value

(%)

HDI RANK

1990

2000

2010

2015

2019

2020

2021

2022

2015–2022a

1990–2000

2000–20102010–2022

1990–2022

124 Suriname
125 Bhutan
126 Tajikistan
127 El Salvador
128 Iraq
129 Bangladesh
130 Nicaragua
131 Cabo Verde132 Tuvalu
133 Equatorial Guinea
134 India
135 Micronesia (Federated States of)
136 Guatemala
137 Kiribati
138 Honduras
139 Lao People’s Democratic Republic
140 Vanuatu
141 Sao Tome and Principe
142 Eswatini (Kingdom of)
142 Namibia
144 Myanmar
145 Ghana
146 Kenya
146 Nepal
148 Cambodia
149 Congo
150 Angola
151 Cameroon
152 Comoros
153 Zambia
154 Papua New Guinea
155 Timor-Leste
156 Solomon Islands
157 Syrian Arab Republic
158 Haiti
159 Uganda
159 Zimbabwe
Low human development
161 Nigeria
161 Rwanda
163 Togo
164 Mauritania
164 Pakistan
166 Côte d’Ivoire
167 Tanzania (United Republic of)
168 Lesotho
169 Senegal
170 Sudan
171 Djibouti
172 Malawi
173 Benin
174 Gambia
175 Eritrea
176 Ethiopia
177 Liberia
177 Madagascar
179 Guinea-Bissau
180 Congo (Democratic Republic of the)181 Guinea
182 Afghanistan
183 Mozambique
184 Sierra Leone
185 Burkina Faso

..
..
0.616
0.519
0.497
0.399
0.487
..
0.564
..
0.434
..
0.490
..
0.513
0.408
..
0.480
0.546
0.595
0.333
0.445
0.480
0.395
0.379
0.541
..
0.440
..
0.417
0.394
..
..
0.563
0.441
0.329
0.479

..
..
0.548
0.609
0.583
0.491
0.563
0.590
0.599
0.511
0.490
0.637
0.551
0.547
0.553
0.473
..
0.498
0.465
0.549
0.407
0.500
0.487
0.461
0.431
0.509
0.380
0.426
0.458
0.418
0.456
0.495
0.488
0.587
0.485
0.392
0.426

0.696
0.582
0.631
0.657
0.629
0.558
0.611
0.649
0.623
0.609
0.572
0.644
0.613
0.584
0.596
0.557
0.578
0.553
0.498
0.584
0.506
0.571
0.545
0.543
0.542
0.581
0.516
0.515
0.524
0.528
0.497
0.639
0.553
0.661
0.449
0.500
0.481

0.707
0.625
0.651
0.663
0.656
0.604
0.644
0.658
0.656
0.648
0.619
0.642
0.629
0.625
0.610
0.604
0.592
0.595
0.577
0.627
0.557
0.586
0.575
0.568
0.564
0.610
0.591
0.562
0.556
0.563
0.540
0.621
0.562
0.552
0.549
0.525
0.544

0.710
0.668
0.668
0.676
0.678
0.646
0.661
0.667
0.654
0.653
0.638
0.640
0.645
0.636
0.629
0.617
0.614
0.608
0.623
0.638
0.608
0.599
0.604
0.598
0.596
0.596
0.597
0.586
0.584
0.574
0.562
0.627
0.568
0.564
0.559
0.544
0.560

0.702
0.675
0.656
0.666
0.661
0.657
0.652
0.649
0.655
0.650
0.638
0.636
0.638
0.629
0.621
0.616
0.612
0.609
0.622
0.634
0.615
0.601
0.599
0.593
0.596
0.598
0.594
0.585
0.588
0.569
0.567
0.633
0.566
0.561
0.557
0.545
0.554

0.689
0.677
0.677
0.669
0.667
0.662
0.665
0.650
0.653
0.647
0.633
0.634
0.630
0.627
0.620
0.615
0.614
0.609
0.612
0.616
0.599
0.600
0.596
0.591
0.596
0.598
0.590
0.581
0.585
0.565
0.564
0.574
0.564
0.558
0.551
0.545
0.549

0.690
0.681
0.679
0.674
0.673
0.670
0.669
0.661
0.653
0.650
0.644
0.634
0.629
0.628
0.624
0.620
0.614
0.613
0.610
0.610
0.608
0.602
0.601
0.601
0.600
0.593
0.591
0.587
0.586
0.569
0.568
0.566
0.562
0.557
0.552
0.550
0.550

–13
10
2
–4
–3
12
0
–7
–7
–4
4
–4
–3
–2
1
2
4
2
5
–8
10
1
2
3
2
–10
–5
1
3
–2
5
–18
–4
–1
–1
2
–1

..
..
–1.16
1.61
1.61
2.10
1.46
..
0.60
..
1.22
..
1.18
..
0.75
1.49
..
0.37
–1.59
–0.80
2.03
1.17
0.14
1.56
1.29
–0.61
..
–0.32
..
0.02
1.47
..
..
0.42
0.96
1.77
–1.17

..
..
1.42
0.76
0.76
1.29
0.82
0.96
0.39
1.77
1.56
0.11
1.07
0.66
0.75
1.65
..
1.05
0.69
0.62
2.20
1.34
1.13
1.65
2.32
1.33
3.11
1.92
1.36
2.36
0.86
2.59
1.26
1.19
–0.77
2.46
1.22

–0.07
1.32
0.61
0.21
0.57
1.54
0.76
0.15
0.39
0.54
0.99
–0.13
0.21
0.61
0.38
0.90
0.50
0.86
1.70
0.36
1.54
0.44
0.82
0.85
0.85
0.17
1.14
1.10
0.94
0.63
1.12
–1.01
0.13
–1.42
1.74
0.80
1.12

..
..
0.30
0.82
0.95
1.63
1.00
..
0.46
..
1.24
..
0.78
..
0.61
1.32
..
0.77
0.35
0.08
1.90
0.95
0.71
1.32
1.45
0.29
..
0.90
..
0.98
1.15
..
..
–0.03
0.70
1.62
0.43

..
0.320
0.399
0.397
0.394
0.425
0.366
0.479
0.371
0.322
..
0.299
0.350
0.323
..
..
..
..
..
0.377
0.270
0.284
0.239
0.314
..

..
0.328
0.436
0.461
0.434
0.454
0.396
0.456
0.388
0.420
0.330
0.378
0.412
0.392
..
0.286
0.434
0.438
..
0.376
0.345
0.340
0.303
0.319
0.296

0.488
0.485
0.469
0.508
0.496
0.470
0.493
0.470
0.470
0.489
0.422
0.461
0.481
0.449
0.458
0.409
0.460
0.488
0.441
0.424
0.415
0.449
0.407
0.416
0.372

0.520
0.509
0.510
0.536
0.525
0.501
0.507
0.508
0.501
0.514
0.473
0.498
0.509
0.467
0.473
0.455
0.472
0.499
0.470
0.457
0.449
0.479
0.445
0.438
0.413

0.537
0.531
0.536
0.552
0.537
0.529
0.533
0.528
0.514
0.521
0.508
0.514
0.506
0.492
0.487
0.485
0.485
0.498
0.488
0.476
0.470
0.492
0.465
0.457
0.446

0.539
0.535
0.540
0.539
0.536
0.530
0.535
0.530
0.514
0.518
0.512
0.512
0.501
0.492
0.490
0.489
0.483
0.486
0.482
0.477
0.471
0.488
0.467
0.453
0.446

0.542
0.539
0.545
0.538
0.537
0.530
0.529
0.522
0.512
0.516
0.512
0.509
0.502
0.490
0.490
0.489
0.484
0.484
0.482
0.475
0.467
0.473
0.459
0.456
0.445

0.548
0.548
0.547
0.540
0.540
0.534
0.532
0.521
0.517
0.516
0.515
0.508
0.504
0.495
0.493
0.492
0.487
0.487
0.483
0.481
0.471
0.462
0.461
0.458
0.438

2
5
2
–4
–3
4
2
0
1
–6
4
1
–7
5
0
5
0
–5
–1
0
2
–8
1
1
2

..
0.25
0.89
1.51
0.97
0.66
0.79
–0.49
0.45
2.69
..
2.37
1.64
1.95
..
..
..
..
..
–0.03
2.48
1.82
2.40
0.16
..

..
3.99
0.73
0.98
1.34
0.35
2.22
0.30
1.94
1.53
2.49
2.00
1.56
1.37
..
3.64
0.58
1.09
..
1.21
1.86
2.82
2.99
2.69
2.31

0.97
1.02
1.29
0.51
0.71
1.07
0.64
0.86
0.80
0.45
1.67
0.81
0.39
0.82
0.62
1.55
0.48
–0.02
0.76
1.06
1.06
0.24
1.04
0.80
1.37

..
1.70
0.99
0.97
0.99
0.72
1.18
0.26
1.04
1.48
..
1.67
1.15
1.34
..
..
..
..
..
0.76
1.75
1.53
2.07
1.19
..
Continued →TA B L E 2 / HUMA N D EVELOP MENT IND EX TR END S , 1990–2022

281

TAB LE 2

Change in
HDI rank

Human Development Index (HDI)

Average annual HDI growth

Value

(%)

HDI RANK

1990

2000

2010

2015

2019

2020

2021

2022

2015–2022a

1990–2000

2000–20102010–2022

1990–2022

186 Yemen
187 Burundi
188 Mali
189 Chad
189 Niger
191 Central African Republic
192 South Sudan
193 Somalia
Other countries or territories
Korea (Democratic People’s Rep. of)
MonacoHuman development groups
Very high human development
High human development
Medium human development
Low human development
Developing countries
Regions
Arab States
East Asia and the Pacific
Europe and Central Asia
Latin America and the Caribbean
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
Least developed countries
Small island developing states
Organisation for Economic Co‑operation
and Development
World

0.357
0.285
0.236
..
0.212
0.333
..
..

0.434
0.298
0.315
0.292
0.260
0.319
..
..

0.496
0.404
0.406
0.364
0.336
0.357
0.406
..

0.455
0.420
0.409
0.388
0.367
0.367
0.381
..

0.430
0.423
0.421
0.398
0.390
0.391
0.391
..

0.430
0.419
0.407
0.396
0.391
0.389
0.386
..

0.425
0.419
0.408
0.393
0.389
0.387
0.381
..

0.424
0.420
0.410
0.394
0.394
0.387
0.381
0.380

–5
–1
0
0
2
0
–2
..

1.97
0.45
2.93
..
2.06
–0.43
..
..

1.34
3.09
2.57
2.23
2.60
1.13
..
..

–1.30
0.32
0.08
0.66
1.34
0.67
–0.53
..

0.54
1.22
1.74
..
1.96
0.47
..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

...
...

..
..

..
..

..
..

0.785
0.560
0.443
0.354 b
0.513

0.828
0.626
0.497
0.398
0.569

0.870
0.703
0.574
0.473
0.639

0.889
0.736
0.615
0.501
0.672

0.901
0.760
0.635
0.516
0.691

0.895
0.759
0.634
0.515
0.689

0.896
0.760
0.630
0.515
0.688

0.902
0.764
0.640
0.517
0.694

—
—
—
—
—

0.53
1.12
1.16
1.18
1.04

0.50
1.17
1.45
1.74
1.17

0.30
0.70
0.91
0.74
0.69

0.44
0.98
1.16
1.19
0.95

0.550
0.507
0.663
0.637
0.444
0.404 b
0.354
0.605

0.615
0.594
0.680
0.686
0.500
0.429
0.408
0.650

0.672
0.689
0.746
0.735
0.574
0.502
0.487
0.694

0.691
0.728
0.782
0.758
0.616
0.533
0.518
0.721

0.709
0.757
0.802
0.768
0.635
0.549
0.540
0.731

0.704
0.760
0.792
0.755
0.635
0.547
0.542
0.727

0.704
0.761
0.797
0.754
0.631
0.546
0.540
0.722

0.704
0.766
0.802
0.763
0.641
0.549
0.542
0.730

—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—

1.12
1.60
0.25
0.74
1.19
0.60
1.43
0.72

0.89
1.49
0.93
0.69
1.39
1.58
1.79
0.66

0.39
0.89
0.61
0.31
0.92
0.75
0.90
0.42

0.77
1.30
0.60
0.57
1.15
0.96
1.34
0.59

0.796
0.601

0.842
0.645

0.878
0.698

0.894
0.724

0.905
0.739

0.897
0.736

0.899
0.735

0.906
0.739

—
—

0.56
0.71

0.42
0.79

0.26
0.48

0.41
0.65

Notes
For HDI values that are comparable across years and countries,
use this table or the interpolated data at http://hdr.undp.org/en​/data, which present trends using consistent data.
a

A positive value indicates an improvement in rank.

bValue reported with relaxed aggregation rule. For details, see Reader’s guide.

282

Definitions
Human Development Index (HDI): A composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of humandevelopment—a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent
standard of living. See Technical note 1 at http://hdr.undp.org​/sites/default/files/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf for details on
how the HDI is calculated.
Average annual HDI growth: A smoothed annualized growthof the HDI in a given period, calculated as the annual compound growth rate.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Main data sources
Columns 1–8: HDRO calculations based on data from Barroand Lee (2018), IMF (2023), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO
Institute for Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division(2023) and World Bank (2023).
Column 9: Calculated based on data in columns 4 and 8.
Columns 10–13: Calculated based on data in columns 1, 2, 3
and 8.

TA BL E 3

Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index
SDG 10.1
Human
Development
Index (HDI)

Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI)HDI RANK

Value
2022

Value
2022

Overall
loss
(%)
2022

Difference
from HDI
rankb
2022

Very high human development
1 Switzerland
2 Norway
3 Iceland
4 Hong Kong, China (SAR)
5 Denmark
5 Sweden
7 Germany
7 Ireland
9 Singapore
10 Australia
10 Netherlands
12 Belgium
12 Finland
12 Liechtenstein
15 United Kingdom
16 New Zealand
17 United Arab Emirates
18 Canada
19 Korea (Republic of)
20 Luxembourg
20 United States
22 Austria
22 Slovenia
24 Japan
25 Israel
25 Malta
27 Spain
28 France
29 Cyprus
30 Italy
31 Estonia
32 Czechia
33 Greece
34 Bahrain
35 Andorra
36 Poland
37 Latvia
37 Lithuania
39 Croatia
40 Qatar
40 Saudi Arabia
42 Portugal
43 San Marino
44 Chile
45 Slovakia
45 Türkiye
47 Hungary
48 Argentina
49 Kuwait
50 Montenegro
51 Saint Kitts and Nevis
52 Uruguay
53 Romania
54 Antigua and Barbuda
55 Brunei Darussalam
56 Russian Federation
57 Bahamas

0.967
0.966
0.959
0.956
0.952
0.952
0.950
0.950
0.949
0.946
0.946
0.942
0.942
0.942
0.940
0.939
0.937
0.935
0.929
0.927
0.927
0.926
0.926
0.920
0.915
0.915
0.911
0.910
0.907
0.906
0.899
0.895
0.893
0.888
0.884
0.881
0.879
0.879
0.878
0.875
0.875
0.874
0.867
0.860
0.855
0.855
0.851
0.849
0.847
0.844
0.838
0.830
0.827
0.826
0.823
0.821
0.820

0.891
0.903
0.910
0.840
0.898
0.878
0.881
0.886
0.825
0.860
0.885
0.878
0.886
..
0.865
0.856
0.859
0.864
0.841
0.839
0.823
0.859
0.882
0.844
0.808
0.837
0.796
0.820
0.827
0.802
0.835
0.848
0.801
..
0.810
0.797
0.802
0.795
0.817
..
..
0.774
..
0.704
0.808
0.717
0.800
0.747
..
0.756
..
0.720
0.739
..
0.727
0.747
0.663

7.9
6.5
5.1
12.1
5.7
7.8
7.3
6.7
13.1
9.1
6.4
6.8
5.9
..
8.0
8.8
8.3
7.6
9.5
9.5
11.2
7.2
4.8
8.3
11.7
8.5
12.6
9.9
8.8
11.5
7.1
5.3
10.3
..
8.4
9.5
8.8
9.6
6.9
..
..
11.4
..
18.1
5.5
16.1
6.0
12.0
..
10.4
..
13.3
10.6
..
11.7
9.0
19.1

–3
0
2
–17
2
–5
–2
2
–17
–4
3
2
7
..
2
–2
1
4
–2
–3
–8
6
13
4
–7
1
–12
–1
3
–4
6
13
–3
..
3
–3
2
–4
8
..
..
–2
..
–17
9
–13
6
0
..
3
..
–7
0
..
–2
5
–16

Inequalityadjusted
InequalityInequalityCoefficient Inequality
life
Inequality adjusted
adjustedof humanin lifeexpectancyineducation Inequality income
inequality expectancy
index
educationa
index
in incomea
index

2022

(%)
2022c

Value
2022

(%)
2022d

Value
2022

(%)
2022d

Value
2022

7.6
6.3
5.0
11.7
5.6
7.6
7.1
6.6
12.5
8.8
6.4
6.7
5.8
..
7.8
8.7
8.2
7.4
9.3
9.2
10.7
7.0
4.7
8.1
11.1
8.3
12.3
9.8
8.7
11.1
6.9
5.1
10.2
..
8.3
9.3
8.3
9.1
6.9
..
..
11.3
..
16.6
5.5
15.6
6.0
11.7
..
10.1
..
12.8
10.4
..
11.5
8.7
17.8

3.0
2.4
2.2
2.2
3.1
2.5
3.3
2.8
2.3
3.3
3.1
3.2
2.6
4.5
3.5
3.8
4.4
4.0
2.6
3.2
5.6
2.9
2.1
2.6
3.1
4.2
2.6
3.6
2.5
2.6
3.2
3.1
3.5
4.4
4.8
3.9
4.2
4.2
3.3
4.0
5.1
3.0
2.5
5.0
4.7
6.0
3.9
7.3
5.0
2.5
7.5
5.9
4.9
4.8
7.6
5.5
8.9

0.959
0.951
0.945
0.968
0.923
0.953
0.907
0.938
0.964
0.946
0.931
0.927
0.934
0.950
0.923
0.932
0.871
0.928
0.959
0.932
0.845
0.932
0.935
0.972
0.933
0.939
0.957
0.937
0.928
0.960
0.881
0.867
0.900
0.871
0.931
0.843
0.824
0.801
0.882
0.909
0.845
0.929
0.951
0.870
0.811
0.846
0.813
0.800
0.880
0.853
0.740
0.839
0.792
0.867
0.776
0.729
0.762

2.0
2.3
2.2
8.7
2.6
3.4
3.8
2.9
9.4
4.7
4.7
5.7
2.1
..
3.3
4.1
9.8
2.3
8.8
8.1
2.6
2.6
2.0
4.5
6.3
5.2
15.0
7.8
8.7
10.0
1.9
1.2
10.3
8.8
5.6
4.2
1.8
2.9
3.9
11.2
12.6
12.5
5.6
7.1
1.8
11.9
2.7
5.3
22.1
7.8
..
7.3
5.4
..
14.9
2.0
6.9

0.906
0.914
0.938
0.829
0.908
0.891
0.921
0.862
0.785
0.880
0.877
0.865
0.911
..
0.906
0.894
0.815
0.885
0.801
0.759
0.885
0.842
0.895
0.813
0.811
0.804
0.721
0.769
0.791
0.739
0.877
0.874
0.789
0.749
0.701
0.845
0.888
0.879
0.810
0.627
0.698
0.688
0.657
0.776
0.827
0.700
0.805
0.825
0.533
0.774
..
0.726
0.740
..
0.585
0.831
0.703

17.7
14.3
10.7
24.1
11.0
16.9
14.3
14.0
25.9
18.5
11.4
11.3
12.8
..
16.7
18.1
10.4
16.0
16.4
16.4
23.9
15.6
10.0
17.1
24.0
15.5
19.2
17.9
14.8
20.8
15.7
11.1
16.8
..
14.4
19.8
19.0
20.4
13.5
..
..
18.4
..
37.7
10.0
28.9
11.3
22.6
..
19.9
..
25.1
20.9
..
12.1
18.7
37.6

0.814
0.847
0.851
0.738
0.864
0.796
0.817
0.860
0.741
0.763
0.850
0.842
0.818
..
0.773
0.752
0.894
0.785
0.774
0.836
0.745
0.808
0.820
0.761
0.698
0.778
0.732
0.764
0.771
0.729
0.754
0.804
0.722
..
0.814
0.710
0.706
0.715
0.763
..
..
0.724
..
0.517
0.785
0.622
0.781
0.631
..
0.655
..
0.611
0.688
..
0.847
0.688
0.546

Income shares held byGini
coefficient(%)
PoorestRichestRichest40 percent 10 percent 1 percentee
2010–2022 2010–2022
2021
2010–2022e

19.9
22.9
23.9
..
23.4
22.0
20.9
22.3
..
19.5
23.8
23.9
23.5
..
20.0
..
23.0
20.4
20.5
19.4
16.6
21.4
25.1
20.5
16.1
21.0
18.1
21.2
21.3
18.4
21.1
24.2
19.2
..
..
22.3
18.6
19.0
21.3
..
..
19.3
..
15.0
24.9
15.5
21.5
15.0
..
16.8
..
15.9
17.9
..
..
19.1
..

25.8
22.4
22.1
..
22.9
22.4
25.2
23.8
..
26.6
21.6
21.4
22.6
..
25.0
..
20.0
24.4
24.0
25.0
30.1
23.1
20.5
26.4
27.6
25.1
25.0
24.5
26.3
26.1
23.5
22.5
25.2
..
..
23.1
27.5
28.5
22.3
..
..
26.9
..
35.8
18.8
31.6
23.3
30.8
..
26.0
..
30.8
24.2
..
..
29.0
..

9.9
8.9
9.3
17.9
13.4
11.7
13.3
12.2
10.3
9.9
6.9
8.6
11.8
..
12.7
11.9
15.3
13.9
11.7
12.1
19.0
10.7
8.4
12.9
16.0
10.7
11.4
9.0
8.9
12.2
16.3
10.6
10.0
24.3
..
15.2
8.6
12.5
9.3
22.4
21.0
9.4
..
22.9
7.2
18.8
11.1
15.1
19.0
8.6
..
13.4
14.5
..
12.4
23.8
19.6

33.1
27.7
26.1
..
27.5
28.9
31.7
29.2
..
34.3
26.0
26.0
27.1
..
32.6
..
26.0
31.7
31.4
33.4
39.8
29.8
24.0
32.9
38.6
31.4
34.9
30.7
31.7
35.2
30.7
26.2
33.6
..
..
28.8
35.7
36.0
29.5
..
..
34.7
..
44.9
23.2
41.9
29.7
42.0
..
36.8
..
40.8
34.6
..
..
36.0
..
Continued →TA B L E 3 / IN EQ UA LITY-ADJU STED H U MAN D EVELOP MENT IND EX

283

TAB LE 3

SDG 10.1
Human
Development
Index (HDI)HDI RANK

57 Panama
59 Oman
60 Georgia
60 Trinidad and Tobago
62 Barbados
63 Malaysia
64 Costa Rica
65 Serbia
66 Thailand
67 Kazakhstan
67 Seychelles
69 Belarus
High human development
70 Bulgaria
71 Palau
72 Mauritius
73 Grenada
74 Albania
75 China
76 Armenia
77 Mexico
78 Iran (Islamic Republic of)
78 Sri Lanka
80 Bosnia and Herzegovina
81 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
82 Dominican Republic
83 Ecuador
83 North Macedonia
85 Cuba
86 Moldova (Republic of)
87 Maldives
87 Peru
89 Azerbaijan
89 Brazil
91 Colombia
92 Libya
93 Algeria
94 Turkmenistan
95 Guyana
96 Mongolia
97 Dominica
98 Tonga
99 Jordan
100 Ukraine
101 Tunisia
102 Marshall Islands
102 Paraguay
104 Fiji
105 Egypt
106 Uzbekistan
107 Viet Nam
108 Saint Lucia
109 Lebanon
110 South Africa
111 Palestine, State of
112 Indonesia
113 Philippines
114 Botswana

Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI)

Value
2022

Value
2022

Overall
loss
(%)
2022

Difference
from HDI
rankb
2022

0.820
0.819
0.814
0.814
0.809
0.807
0.806
0.805
0.803
0.802
0.802
0.801

0.647
0.721
0.728
..
0.617
0.692
0.656
0.740
0.681
0.734
0.715
0.750

21.1
12.0
10.6
..
23.7
14.3
18.6
8.1
15.2
8.5
10.8
6.4

–20
1
4
..
–27
–5
–12
11
–4
11
4
18

0.799
0.797
0.796
0.793
0.789
0.788
0.786
0.781
0.780
0.780
0.779
0.772
0.766
0.765
0.765
0.764
0.763
0.762
0.762
0.760
0.760
0.758
0.746
0.745
0.744
0.742
0.741
0.740
0.739
0.736
0.734
0.732
0.731
0.731
0.729
0.728
0.727
0.726
0.725
0.723
0.717
0.716
0.713
0.710
0.708

0.703
0.633
0.625
..
0.687
0.662
0.721
0.641
0.584
0.630
0.667
..
0.627
0.630
0.679
..
0.698
0.597
0.607
0.707
0.577
0.568
..
0.588
..
..
0.645
..
0.654
0.615
0.676
0.574
0.620
0.582
0.632
0.561
..
0.607
0.539
..
0.462
0.587
0.588
0.590
0.488

12.0
20.6
21.5
..
12.9
16.0
8.3
17.9
25.1
19.2
14.4
..
18.1
17.6
11.2
..
8.5
21.7
20.3
7.0
24.1
25.1
..
21.1
..
..
13.0
..
11.5
16.4
7.9
21.6
15.2
20.4
13.3
22.9
..
16.4
25.7
..
35.6
18.0
17.5
16.9
31.1

4
–11
–15
..
4
–1
16
–4
–24
–7
6
..
–6
–3
10
..
16
–11
–7
22
–18
–18
..
–8
..
..
11
..
14
2
21
–11
7
–8
14
–9
..
8
–11
..
–23
3
6
8
–12

Inequalityadjusted
InequalityInequalityCoefficient Inequality
life
Inequality adjusted
adjustedof humanin lifeexpectancyineducation Inequality income
inequality expectancy
index
educationa
index
in incomea
index

Income shares held byGini
coefficient(%)
PoorestRichestRichest40 percent 10 percent 1 percentee
2010–2022 2010–2022
2021
2010–2022e

2022

(%)
2022c

Value
2022

(%)
2022d

Value
2022

(%)
2022d

Value
2022

19.9
11.5
10.3
..
20.8
13.8
17.6
7.9
14.9
8.3
10.8
6.2

10.7
6.6
6.7
11.1
7.8
5.4
6.0
4.1
7.1
7.0
9.1
3.3

0.781
0.775
0.741
0.749
0.818
0.819
0.829
0.799
0.853
0.708
0.723
0.792

10.2
4.3
2.7
9.7
5.5
11.4
11.1
6.2
16.0
3.2
6.7
2.8

0.650
0.724
0.864
0.707
0.745
0.636
0.658
0.737
0.611
0.800
0.709
0.774

38.9
23.7
21.4
..
49.0
24.8
35.6
13.5
21.7
14.7
16.6
12.7

0.533
0.668
0.602
..
0.385
0.638
0.517
0.689
0.607
0.698
0.712
0.688

11.6
..
19.1
..
..
15.7
13.1
19.0
19.1
23.3
19.6
24.8

39.4
..
26.2
..
..
31.2
35.7
27.1
27.3
23.4
23.9
20.7

19.6
19.1
18.5
19.6
..
20.1
17.7
15.5
23.0
10.6
20.6
8.7

50.9
..
34.2
..
..
41.2
47.2
35.0
35.1
27.8
32.1
24.4

11.6
18.9
21.0
..
12.8
15.3
8.1
17.5
24.3
18.0
13.8
..
18.1
17.1
11.1
..
8.4
20.9
19.8
6.9
22.4
23.5
..
20.5
..
..
12.9
..
11.2
16.3
7.9
21.1
14.9
19.6
13.2
22.1
..
16.3
24.6
..
32.2
17.3
17.3
16.7
30.1

5.3
12.6
10.0
9.2
6.4
5.4
6.3
9.2
8.3
5.3
4.0
9.5
16.6
8.9
4.4
4.5
9.0
4.8
8.5
11.4
9.6
9.3
7.8
11.4
19.2
16.2
7.5
8.9
8.4
9.3
6.8
9.8
17.6
11.9
12.5
10.7
9.0
12.6
9.3
5.8
19.5
10.3
12.8
14.5
21.6

0.751
0.610
0.748
0.773
0.819
0.853
0.769
0.766
0.770
0.825
0.817
0.682
0.695
0.812
0.793
0.854
0.681
0.891
0.752
0.729
0.743
0.749
0.739
0.778
0.614
0.593
0.749
0.742
0.722
0.757
0.697
0.753
0.573
0.684
0.650
0.689
0.723
0.734
0.716
0.789
0.514
0.738
0.648
0.687
0.554

5.8
3.1
21.7
..
12.3
10.3
2.9
15.0
37.1
12.0
10.9
6.1
14.6
11.8
8.4
9.1
2.7
29.3
20.4
3.6
13.9
17.2
..
33.3
2.9
10.4
11.9
..
4.3
15.4
3.6
30.7
4.8
12.4
8.6
36.9
1.8
15.3
25.2
..
17.3
10.2
15.5
12.0
23.3

0.721
0.885
0.579
..
0.649
0.622
0.755
0.604
0.472
0.663
0.641
0.768
0.582
0.628
0.643
0.685
0.787
0.422
0.593
0.680
0.610
0.577
..
0.442
0.717
0.582
0.632
..
0.780
0.591
0.714
0.465
0.840
0.597
0.667
0.433
0.717
0.546
0.478
..
0.648
0.626
0.569
0.575
0.510

23.7
40.9
31.4
..
19.7
30.3
15.1
28.4
27.5
36.6
26.5
..
22.9
30.6
20.5
..
13.6
28.6
30.6
5.7
43.7
44.0
..
16.8
..
..
19.2
..
20.7
24.1
13.3
22.9
22.5
34.6
18.5
18.7
..
21.1
39.2
20.2
59.9
31.4
23.6
23.6
45.5

0.640
0.470
0.564
..
0.610
0.547
0.646
0.568
0.547
0.458
0.567
..
0.609
0.490
0.613
..
0.635
0.565
0.501
0.714
0.424
0.424
..
0.590
..
..
0.566
..
0.497
0.520
0.621
0.540
0.495
0.482
0.581
0.592
..
0.559
0.459
0.580
0.295
0.439
0.553
0.520
0.412

17.0
..
18.8
..
21.6
18.2
23.2
14.3
16.3
18.5
19.8
..
17.5
13.8
18.1
..
24.3
22.1
16.3
..
10.8
11.5
..
23.1
..
..
20.2
..
20.0
20.3
24.3
20.1
18.9
14.5
21.3
21.8
..
18.1
11.0
20.6
7.2
19.2
18.3
16.9
10.9

32.6
..
29.9
..
22.8
29.4
23.6
35.5
31.7
30.8
25.1
..
30.2
34.3
22.9
..
22.1
23.3
30.6
..
41.5
40.2
..
22.9
..
..
25.7
..
26.8
27.5
21.8
25.6
27.5
35.4
24.2
27.5
..
28.5
38.6
24.8
50.5
25.2
30.7
32.5
41.5

16.6
..
15.9
..
9.2
15.7
19.0
26.8
18.1
14.8
9.4
..
28.6
16.9
7.7
15.1
11.3
35.6
28.1
15.9
22.2
17.8
13.5
9.9
18.4
19.6
14.8
..
..
17.1
13.6
10.9
..
19.6
..
18.1
17.4
16.4
..
20.5
19.3
17.4
14.8
19.6
22.7

40.5
..
36.8
..
29.4
37.1
27.9
45.4
40.9
37.7
33.0
..
38.5
45.5
33.5
..
25.7
29.3
40.2
..
52.9
51.5
..
27.6
..
..
32.7
..
33.5
33.7
25.6
32.8
35.5
45.1
30.7
31.9
..
36.8
51.2
31.8
63.0
33.7
37.9
40.7
53.3
Continued →284

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 3

SDG 10.1
Human
Development
Index (HDI)HDI RANK

115 Jamaica
116 Samoa
117 Kyrgyzstan
118 Belize
Medium human development
119 Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)120 Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
120 Morocco
122 Nauru
123 Gabon
124 Suriname
125 Bhutan
126 Tajikistan
127 El Salvador
128 Iraq
129 Bangladesh
130 Nicaragua
131 Cabo Verde132 Tuvalu
133 Equatorial Guinea
134 India
135 Micronesia (Federated States of)
136 Guatemala
137 Kiribati
138 Honduras
139 Lao People’s Democratic Republic
140 Vanuatu
141 Sao Tome and Principe
142 Eswatini (Kingdom of)
142 Namibia
144 Myanmar
145 Ghana
146 Kenya
146 Nepal
148 Cambodia
149 Congo
150 Angola
151 Cameroon
152 Comoros
153 Zambia
154 Papua New Guinea
155 Timor-Leste
156 Solomon Islands
157 Syrian Arab Republic
158 Haiti
159 Uganda
159 Zimbabwe
Low human development
161 Nigeria
161 Rwanda
163 Togo
164 Mauritania
164 Pakistan
166 Côte d’Ivoire
167 Tanzania (United Republic of)
168 Lesotho
169 Senegal
170 Sudan

Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI)

Value
2022

Value
2022

Overall
loss
(%)
2022

Difference
from HDI
rankb
2022

0.706
0.702
0.701
0.700

0.584
0.602
0.634
..

17.3
14.2
9.6
..

5
14
27
..

0.699
0.698
0.698
0.696
0.693
0.690
0.681
0.679
0.674
0.673
0.670
0.669
0.661
0.653
0.650
0.644
0.634
0.629
0.628
0.624
0.620
0.614
0.613
0.610
0.610
0.608
0.602
0.601
0.601
0.600
0.593
0.591
0.587
0.586
0.569
0.568
0.566
0.562
0.557
0.552
0.550
0.550

0.600
0.560
0.508
..
0.526
..
0.465
0.585
0.548
0.519
0.470
0.507
0.471
0.545
..
0.444
..
0.453
0.528
0.480
0.466
..
0.459
0.372
0.399
0.475
0.378
0.438
0.424
0.438
0.385
0.344
0.362
0.334
0.344
0.407
0.407
..
..
0.335
0.377
0.370

14.2
19.8
27.2
..
24.1
..
31.7
13.8
18.7
22.9
29.9
24.2
28.7
16.5
..
31.1
..
28.0
15.9
23.1
24.8
..
25.1
39.0
34.6
21.9
37.2
27.1
29.5
27.0
35.1
41.8
38.3
43.0
39.5
28.3
28.1
..
..
39.3
31.5
32.7

0.548
0.548
0.547
0.540
0.540
0.534
0.532
0.521
0.517
0.516

0.369
0.377
0.345
0.351
0.360
0.318
0.372
0.332
0.334
0.331

32.7
31.2
36.9
35.0
33.3
40.4
30.1
36.3
35.4
35.9

Inequalityadjusted
InequalityInequalityCoefficient Inequality
life
Inequality adjusted
adjustedof humanin lifeexpectancyineducation Inequality income
inequality expectancy
index
educationa
index
in incomea
index

Gini
coefficient

Income shares held by(%)
PoorestRichestRichest40 percent 10 percent 1 percentee
2010–2022 2010–2022
2021
2010–2022e

2022

(%)
2022c

Value
2022

(%)
2022d

Value
2022

(%)
2022d

Value
2022

16.3
13.9
9.4
..

8.8
11.0
9.4
9.1

0.710
0.720
0.703
0.713

6.3
7.0
3.4
14.8

0.613
0.673
0.734
0.545

33.7
23.7
15.3
..

0.458
0.450
0.495
..

..
17.9
22.5
..

..
31.3
24.0
..

19.6
..
15.6
19.6

..
38.7
29.0
..

15
2
–5
..
–1
..
–10
14
6
2
–4
2
–1
10
..
–6
..
–4
11
6
3
..
1
–11
–6
10
–5
3
1
5
0
–12
–6
–14
–9
8
9
..
..
–9
6
2

14.0
19.7
26.1
..
24.0
..
30.3
13.7
18.4
22.6
29.1
23.6
27.2
16.2
..
30.5
..
27.4
15.8
22.3
24.7
..
23.9
36.3
32.9
21.7
36.2
26.5
28.7
26.4
33.1
40.2
37.3
41.9
36.0
28.0
26.7
..
..
38.3
30.7
30.6

12.0
17.2
10.5
13.4
19.8
11.5
14.0
15.0
9.2
12.6
14.1
9.6
8.8
14.2
29.1
17.3
13.4
14.3
22.3
9.7
19.4
13.4
10.7
24.4
20.8
20.8
22.5
20.1
14.3
15.3
23.3
28.3
27.4
25.6
24.1
21.0
19.3
12.0
12.7
25.5
20.4
24.4

0.692
0.573
0.757
0.586
0.564
0.685
0.691
0.670
0.719
0.690
0.709
0.759
0.768
0.592
0.450
0.607
0.679
0.642
0.570
0.705
0.608
0.673
0.670
0.423
0.464
0.576
0.524
0.517
0.665
0.650
0.508
0.462
0.457
0.500
0.488
0.558
0.609
0.687
0.703
0.501
0.534
0.458

8.7
15.0
41.9
..
20.6
18.4
48.2
6.0
22.6
29.7
37.3
25.8
27.4
9.2
..
36.9
..
35.0
9.6
21.6
31.3
..
18.7
24.1
25.0
26.9
35.1
19.7
39.8
28.1
20.9
34.2
31.7
47.6
20.4
35.7
44.9
..
..
37.3
27.9
14.6

0.636
0.633
0.353
..
0.527
0.477
0.289
0.637
0.440
0.398
0.362
0.439
0.380
0.628
..
0.359
..
0.317
0.571
0.408
0.331
..
0.446
0.460
0.426
0.404
0.348
0.460
0.301
0.355
0.490
0.351
0.403
0.298
0.437
0.305
0.313
..
..
0.311
0.380
0.512

21.1
26.9
25.9
18.5
31.4
..
28.6
19.9
23.3
25.5
35.9
35.3
45.4
25.1
..
37.4
25.8
32.8
15.5
35.6
23.6
19.1
42.4
60.5
53.0
17.6
51.0
39.6
31.9
35.8
55.1
58.1
52.9
52.4
63.4
27.2
16.1
22.5
..
52.1
43.6
52.9

0.491
0.484
0.490
0.617
0.489
..
0.503
0.468
0.520
0.508
0.404
0.390
0.357
0.437
..
0.401
0.405
0.457
0.451
0.386
0.502
0.425
0.322
0.264
0.321
0.461
0.295
0.353
0.380
0.364
0.228
0.252
0.257
0.250
0.191
0.398
0.354
0.365
..
0.241
0.265
0.216

..
15.7
17.4
20.5
16.8
..
22.3
19.4
16.6
21.9
21.2
14.3
15.4
17.4
..
20.0
16.2
13.1
23.0
11.6
17.8
19.9
16.8
10.5
8.6
21.9
14.3
18.2
20.4
..
12.4
11.5
13.0
13.6
9.4
15.1 f
22.8
18.4
..
15.8
16.1
15.1

..
30.3
31.9
25.4
27.7
..
22.7
26.4
28.7
23.7
26.0
37.2
32.3
30.8
..
27.8
29.7
38.1
22.9
34.6
31.2
24.7
32.9
42.7
47.3
25.5
32.2
31.8
26.4
..
37.9
39.6
35.0
33.7
43.5
31.0 f
24.0
29.2
..
31.2
34.5
34.8

19.0
19.6
15.1
..
11.0
19.6
18.1
12.1
13.7
20.1
11.6
19.6
13.9
..
17.4
21.7
..
19.6
..
19.6
17.1
..
9.0
19.3
21.6
26.5
15.2
15.2
9.7
26.8
20.5
26.0
15.9
14.2
23.2
18.1
17.6
..
20.7
19.6
19.3
21.1

..
40.9
39.5
32.4
38.0
..
28.5
34.0
38.8
29.5
31.8
46.2
42.4
39.1
..
34.2
40.1
48.3
27.8
48.2
38.8
32.3
40.7
54.6
59.1
30.7
43.5
38.7
32.8
..
48.9
51.3
46.6
45.3
55.9
41.9 f
28.7
37.1
..
41.1
42.7
50.3

3
8
0
2
4
–8
12
–2
1
–1

32.1
30.3
36.5
34.7
32.8
40.0
29.5
34.8
34.3
35.4

39.7
19.3
27.7
25.1
26.8
30.4
20.6
33.6
16.3
24.4

0.312
0.585
0.462
0.515
0.523
0.417
0.572
0.338
0.617
0.530

37.8
27.4
37.7
44.0
43.5
46.1
27.0
19.6
47.1
42.5

0.339
0.348
0.340
0.214
0.207
0.227
0.312
0.450
0.185
0.210

18.6
44.3
44.1
35.0
28.2
43.4
41.1
51.4
39.3
39.3

0.475
0.264
0.262
0.391
0.432
0.340
0.289
0.242
0.325
0.326

18.7
15.8
15.6
19.9
22.7
18.0
17.4
13.5
17.9
19.9

26.7
35.6
33.0
24.9
25.5
29.0
33.1
32.9
30.8
27.8

11.6
19.9
14.8
10.8
15.7
21.0
18.2
14.5
14.3
15.4

35.1
43.7
42.5
32.6
29.6
37.2
40.5
44.9
38.3
34.2
Continued →TA B L E 3 / IN EQ UA LITY-ADJU STED H U MAN D EVELOP MENT IND EX

285

TAB LE 3

SDG 10.1
Human
Development
Index (HDI)HDI RANK

171 Djibouti
172 Malawi
173 Benin
174 Gambia
175 Eritrea
176 Ethiopia
177 Liberia
177 Madagascar
179 Guinea-Bissau
180 Congo (Democratic Republic of the)181 Guinea
182 Afghanistan
183 Mozambique
184 Sierra Leone
185 Burkina Faso
186 Yemen
187 Burundi
188 Mali
189 Chad
189 Niger
191 Central African Republic
192 South Sudan
193 Somalia
Other countries or territories.. Korea (Democratic People’s Rep. of).. Monaco
Human development groups
Very high human development
High human development
Medium human development
Low human development
Developing countries
Regions
Arab States
East Asia and the Pacific
Europe and Central Asia
Latin America and the Caribbean
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
Least developed countries
Small island developing states
Organisation for Economic Co‑operation
and Development
World

286

Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI)

Value
2022

Value
2022

Overall
loss
(%)
2022

Difference
from HDI
rankb
2022

0.515
0.508
0.504
0.495
0.493
0.492
0.487
0.487
0.483
0.481
0.471
0.462
0.461
0.458
0.438
0.424
0.420
0.410
0.394
0.394
0.387
0.381
0.380

0.341
0.359
0.309
0.311
..
0.324
0.310
0.328
0.310
0.315
0.285
0.300
0.270
0.277
0.261
0.285
0.273
0.277
0.238
0.262
0.237
0.222
..

33.8
29.3
38.7
37.2
..
34.1
36.3
32.6
35.8
34.5
39.5
35.1
41.4
39.5
40.4
32.8
35.0
32.4
39.6
33.5
38.8
41.7
..

5
11
–6
–2
..
2
–1
4
1
4
–1
1
–4
0
–4
4
1
4
–1
1
0
0
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

0.902
0.764
0.640
0.517
0.694

0.807
0.628
0.447
0.341
0.524

0.704
0.766
0.802
0.763
0.641
0.549
0.542
0.730
0.906
0.739

Inequalityadjusted
InequalityInequalityCoefficient Inequality
life
Inequality adjusted
adjustedof humanin lifeexpectancyineducation Inequality income
inequality expectancy
index
educationa
index
in incomea
index

Gini
coefficient

Income shares held by(%)
PoorestRichestRichest40 percent 10 percent 1 percentee
2010–2022 2010–2022
2021
2010–2022e

2022

(%)
2022c

Value
2022

(%)
2022d

Value
2022

(%)
2022d

Value
2022

33.1
29.0
38.5
36.4
..
33.7
36.2
31.8
35.5
34.1
38.9
34.2
40.4
39.3
40.0
32.1
34.7
32.0
39.6
33.4
38.6
41.4
..

24.7
19.7
32.4
22.0
20.1
21.9
30.0
22.3
29.2
30.8
34.9
24.6
28.6
34.5
30.5
26.7
25.1
32.0
37.7
27.8
35.0
35.9
36.8

0.496
0.530
0.415
0.515
0.573
0.548
0.443
0.541
0.434
0.423
0.390
0.498
0.435
0.407
0.425
0.493
0.484
0.412
0.316
0.468
0.345
0.351
0.351

45.8
28.0
43.7
47.0
..
42.8
42.1
28.3
42.1
26.8
50.1
48.8
38.3
47.5
46.1
46.4
39.5
41.0
42.9
35.0
35.2
39.6
..

0.191
0.356
0.220
0.212
..
0.204
0.271
0.293
0.240
0.371
0.181
0.195
0.263
0.193
0.163
0.168
0.234
0.147
0.173
0.159
0.217
0.210
..

28.7
39.3
39.3
40.1
..
36.5
36.4
44.9
35.3
44.8
31.6
29.2
54.4
35.9
43.4
23.2
39.5
23.0
38.2
37.4
45.5
48.9
47.4

0.419
0.244
0.324
0.275
..
0.304
0.249
0.223
0.287
0.198
0.328
0.277
0.172
0.269
0.258
0.279
0.179
0.351
0.245
0.241
0.178
0.149
0.188

15.8
17.9
18.0
17.5
..
19.4
18.8
15.7
19.4
15.5
21.6
..
12.7
19.6
16.1
18.8
17.9
18.7
18.2
19.0
15.3
12.5 f
..

32.3
31.0
30.0
30.6
..
28.5
27.1
33.5
27.6
32.0
23.1
..
41.2
29.4
35.3
29.4
31.0
28.1
29.7
31.1
33.1
33.2 f
..

15.9
15.0
14.0
13.6
13.8
13.8
12.2
15.2
12.0
14.6
8.6
16.2
31.1
15.0
15.6
24.2
14.7
11.8
13.8
16.6
31.0
15.5
12.4

41.6
38.5
37.9
38.8
..
35.0
35.3
42.6
34.8
42.1
29.6
..
50.5
35.7
43.0
36.7
38.6
36.0
37.5
37.3
43.0
44.1
..

..
..

..
..

11.3
3.5

0.731
0.965

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

11.9
..

..
..

10.5
17.8
30.2
34.0
24.5

—
—
—
—
—

10.2
17.3
29.7
33.8
24.2

4.5
8.3
17.4
28.9
14.9

0.871
0.779
0.609
0.455
0.662

5.9
14.0
34.6
39.2
25.0

0.819
0.594
0.370
0.251
0.452

20.2
29.6
37.1
33.4
32.5

0.737
0.536
0.396
0.348
0.480

18.9
17.3
19.3
18.8
18.2

27.3
31.3
28.7
29.1
29.9

16.0
17.1
20.2
15.4
17.9

—
—
—
—
—

0.534
0.640
0.708
0.605
0.443
0.363
0.363
0.558

24.1
16.4
11.7
20.7
30.9
33.9
33.0
23.6

—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—

23.7
16.0
11.5
20.0
30.3
33.6
32.7
23.2

13.8
7.9
7.5
9.8
17.7
27.9
23.4
14.9

0.681
0.797
0.762
0.746
0.613
0.451
0.529
0.675

32.9
12.3
6.5
14.7
37.7
33.6
36.2
22.0

0.395
0.593
0.733
0.605
0.343
0.322
0.286
0.497

24.5
27.9
20.4
35.3
35.5
39.4
38.6
32.7

0.566
0.554
0.636
0.490
0.414
0.330
0.316
0.518

20.8
18.2
19.6
13.0
20.3
16.4
18.0
..

26.8
29.6
26.9
37.1
27.6
32.4
30.5
..

17.3
16.5
15.7
21.8
19.6
16.0
16.6
18.9

—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—

0.803
0.576

11.4
22.1

—
—

11.1
21.7

4.7
13.1

0.881
0.695

6.7
21.7

0.809
0.508

21.8
30.3

0.725
0.542

18.2
18.4

28.3
29.4

15.9
17.5

—
—

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 3

Notes

Definitionsa

See http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/IHDI for the list of
surveys used to estimate inequalities.

b

Based on countries for which an Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index value is calculated.

c

Calculated by HDRO from period life tables fromUNDESA (2022).

d

Data refer to 2022 or the most recent year available.

eData refer to the most recent year available during theperiod specified.

fRefers to 2009.

Human Development Index (HDI): A composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of humandevelopment—a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent
standard of living. See Technical note 1 at http://hdr.undp.org​/sites/default/files/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf for details on
how the HDI is calculated.
Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI): HDI value adjusted for inequalities in the three basic dimensions of human development.
See Technical note 2 at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files​/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf for details on how the IHDI is
calculated.
Overall loss: Percentage difference between the IHDI value
and the HDI value.
Difference from HDI rank: Difference in ranks on the IHDI andthe HDI, calculated only for countries for which an IHDI value
is calculated.
Coefficient of human inequality: Average inequality in thethree basic dimensions of human development.
Inequality in life expectancy: Inequality in distribution of expected length of life based on data from life tables estimatedusing the Atkinson inequality index.
Inequality-adjusted life expectancy index: HDI life expectancy
index value adjusted for inequality in distribution of expected
length of life based on data from life tables listed in Main data
sources.
Inequality in education: Inequality in distribution of years ofschooling based on data from household surveys estimated using the Atkinson inequality index.
Inequality-adjusted education index: HDI education index
value adjusted for inequality in distribution of years of schooling based on data from household surveys listed in Main data
sources.
Inequality in income: Inequality in income distribution basedon data from household surveys estimated using the Atkinson
inequality index.
Inequality-adjusted income index: HDI income index value adjusted for inequality in income distribution based on data fromhousehold surveys listed in Main data sources.

Main data sources
Column 1: HDRO calculations based on data from Barro andLee (2018), IMF (2023), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division(2023) and World Bank (2023).
Column 2: Calculated as the geometric mean of the values
in the inequality-adjusted life expectancy index, inequalityadjusted education index and inequality-adjusted income index
using the methodology in Technical note 2 (available at http://​hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf).
Column 3: Calculated based on data in columns 1 and 2.
Column 4: Calculated based on IHDI values and recalculated
HDI ranks for countries for which an IHDI value is calculated.
Column 5: Calculated as the arithmetic mean of the values ininequality in life expectancy, inequality in education and inequality in income using the methodology in Technical note
2 (available at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr2023​_technical_notes.pdf).
Column 6: Calculated based on complete life tables fromUNDESA (2022).
Column 7: Calculated based on inequality in life expectancy
and the HDI life expectancy index.
Column 8: Calculated based on data from CEDLAS andWorld Bank (2023), Eurostat’s European Union Statistics
on Income and Living Conditions (2023), ICF Macro Demographic and Health Surveys (various years), LIS (2023),
United Nations Children’s Fund Multiple Indicator Cluster
Surveys (various years) and UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023), using the methodology in Technical note 2 (available
at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr2023_technical​_notes.pdf).
Column 9: Calculated based on inequality in education and the
HDI education index.
Column 10: UNU-WIDER 2023.
Column 11: Calculated based on inequality in income and the
HDI income index.
Columns 12, 13 and 15: World Bank 2023.
Column 14: World Inequality Database 2022.

Income shares: Percentage share of income (or consumption)that accrues to the indicated population subgroups.
Income share held by richest 1%: Share of pretax national income held by the richest 1 percent of the population. Pretax
national income is the sum of all pretax personal income flows
accruing to the owners of the production factors, labour andcapital, before the tax/transfer system is taken into account andafter the pension system is taken into account.
Gini coefficient: Measure of the deviation of the distribution ofincome among individuals or households in a country from aperfectly equal distribution. A value of 0 represents absoluteequality, a value of 100 absolute inequality.

TA B L E 3 / IN EQ UA LITY-ADJU STED H U MAN D EVELOP MENT IND EX

287

TAB LE 4

Gender Development Index
Gender Development Index

Human Development Index

SDG 3

SDG 4.3

SDG 4.4

Life expectancy at birth

Expected years of schooling

Mean years of schooling

Value(years)(years)(years)SDG 8.5
Estimated gross national
income per capitaa(2017 PPP $)ValueGroupbFemaleMale

FemaleMale

FemaleMale

FemaleMale

FemaleMale

HDI RANK

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022c

2022c

2022c

2022c

2022

2022

Very high human development
1 Switzerland
2 Norway
3 Iceland
4 Hong Kong, China (SAR)
5 Denmark
5 Sweden
7 Germany
7 Ireland
9 Singapore
10 Australia
10 Netherlands
12 Belgium
12 Finland
12 Liechtenstein
15 United Kingdom
16 New Zealand
17 United Arab Emirates
18 Canada
19 Korea (Republic of)
20 Luxembourg
20 United States
22 Austria
22 Slovenia
24 Japan
25 Israel
25 Malta
27 Spain
28 France
29 Cyprus
30 Italy
31 Estonia
32 Czechia
33 Greece
34 Bahrain
35 Andorra
36 Poland
37 Latvia
37 Lithuania
39 Croatia
40 Qatar
40 Saudi Arabia
42 Portugal
43 San Marino
44 Chile
45 Slovakia
45 Türkiye
47 Hungary
48 Argentina
49 Kuwait
50 Montenegro
51 Saint Kitts and Nevis
52 Uruguay
53 Romania
54 Antigua and Barbuda
55 Brunei Darussalam
56 Russian Federation
57 Bahamas
57 Panama
59 Oman

0.971
0.986
0.975
0.972
0.981
0.983
0.966
0.991
0.991
0.978
0.960
0.975
0.989
0.949
0.976
0.970
0.986
0.988
0.948
0.993
1.005
0.972
0.999
0.968
0.991
0.980
0.988
0.986
0.977
0.969
1.022
0.988
0.969
0.937
..
1.009
1.022
1.028
0.993
1.027
0.928
0.998
0.966
0.973
1.002
0.941
0.989
0.995
1.014
0.978
..
1.020
0.981
..
0.983
1.021
1.007
1.017
0.937

2
1
1
2
1
1
2
1
1
1
2
1
1
3
1
2
1
1
3
1
1
2
1
2
1
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
2
3
..
1
1
2
1
2
3
1
2
2
1
3
1
1
1
1
..
1
1
..
1
1
1
1
3

0.949
0.957
0.946
0.943
0.942
0.941
0.932
0.943
0.945
0.935
0.925
0.929
0.937
0.924
0.926
0.924
0.923
0.929
0.900
0.920
0.928
0.912
0.924
0.904
0.910
0.903
0.902
0.903
0.895
0.890
0.908
0.888
0.878
0.847
..
0.884
0.887
0.891
0.875
0.893
0.832
0.873
0.853
0.847
0.856
0.825
0.846
0.841
0.848
0.833
..
0.832
0.818
..
0.814
0.829
0.822
0.826
0.780

0.977
0.970
0.969
0.970
0.960
0.957
0.964
0.951
0.954
0.956
0.964
0.952
0.947
0.974
0.949
0.953
0.936
0.940
0.950
0.927
0.923
0.938
0.925
0.933
0.918
0.922
0.913
0.916
0.916
0.918
0.888
0.899
0.907
0.904
..
0.876
0.868
0.867
0.881
0.869
0.897
0.874
0.883
0.870
0.854
0.876
0.855
0.845
0.836
0.852
..
0.816
0.834
..
0.829
0.812
0.817
0.813
0.833

85.9
85.1
84.3
86.9
83.8
85.1
83.5
84.4
86.3
85.5
83.9
84.4
84.9
86.1
83.8
84.7
81.4
84.8
87.1
84.8
81.0
84.6
84.6
87.8 l
84.5
85.7
86.5
86.0
83.7
86.0
83.0
81.2
83.3
80.5
85.8
80.8
80.1
79.1
82.0
83.1
79.5
84.9
84.7
81.9
78.8
81.5
78.3
79.3
82.8
80.3
75.7
81.7
77.6
81.6
76.8
75.7
77.8
80.1
76.0

82.5
81.7
81.4
81.8
80.0
81.9
78.5
81.0
82.0
81.7
80.9
80.2
79.8
83.0 i
80.4
81.3
77.7
80.9
80.7
80.4
75.5
80.2
79.6
81.8
80.6
81.6
81.2
80.4
80.1
82.0
75.0
75.1
78.0
78.2
81.4
73.2
71.5
69.5
76.4
80.6
76.7
79.3
82.0
77.2
71.9
75.4
71.6
72.9
78.9
73.5
68.7
74.1
70.7
76.5
72.5
64.7
70.8
73.7
72.4

16.7
19.5 f20.5 f
17.9
19.4 f20.7 f17.4
19.5 f17.0
22.0 f18.9 f19.9 f20.3 f
14.5
18.2 f20.2 f19.8 f
16.5
16.1
14.3
17.3
16.8
18.3 f
15.4
15.6
16.6
18.4 f
16.4
16.6
17.1
16.8
16.9
20.2 f
17.0
12.8
16.7
17.3
17.1
16.5
15.3
15.5 m
17.1
12.0
17.1
15.3
19.6 f
15.4
20.9 f17.8 d15.6
19.7 f,p18.8 f
15.0
16.7 d14.2
15.8 d12.2 m13.9 d
13.5

16.5
17.8
17.8
17.8
18.2 g17.5
17.3
18.8 g16.8
20.2 g18.2 g18.0
18.3 g16.4
17.1
19.2 g
16.4
15.4
16.8
14.1
15.6
15.9
16.6
15.5
14.5
15.2
17.2
15.6
15.8
16.2
15.1
15.8
19.9 g
15.7
12.8
15.2
15.9
15.8
14.7
12.6
14.8 n
16.6
12.9
16.5
14.2
19.8 g14.7
17.1
13.8 d
14.6
17.0 p15.9
14.0
14.4 d13.3
15.5 d
11.6 m
12.6 d12.6

13.5 d13.2 d
13.9
12.0
13.2
12.8 d
14.0
11.9 d
11.6
12.8
12.4
12.5 d
13.1 d12.1 j
13.4
12.9
12.6
14.0 d
12.0 d12.9 k
13.7
12.0 d12.9 d12.4
13.5 d
12.0
10.5
11.5 d
12.4
10.6
13.8
12.8 d
11.1
10.8
11.5
13.3
13.6 d13.6
12.1 d11.8 d10.7
9.6
10.7 o11.0 d
13.0 d
8.1 d
12.1
11.4
8.3 d
12.1 d
11.1 m
9.3 d11.1 d10.3 n9.2
12.5
12.8 d10.9 d12.3

14.3 d12.9 d
13.7
12.8
12.8
12.5 d
14.5
11.4 d
12.3
12.6
12.8
12.6 d12.7 d
14.0 j
13.4
13.0
12.9
13.8 d13.3 d
13.0 k13.5
12.6 d12.8 d13.0
13.4 d
12.4
10.7
11.9 d
12.5
10.9
13.3
13.1 d
11.7
11.2
11.7
13.0
13.0 d13.4
12.6 d
9.7 d
11.7
9.5
10.5 o11.2 d
13.0 d
9.6 d
12.4
10.9
7.0 d
13.2 d
10.6 q8.7 d11.7 d
10.6 n9.2
12.3
12.7 d
10.4 d11.7

56,92861,06745,506
51,56351,75347,82841,022
66,876
76,611 h41,131
44,13943,72042,302
114,829 h
35,91034,94051,51039,76531,063
66,69753,46941,89935,26433,47837,41533,971
32,835
38,13531,77731,41331,19930,761
24,821
22,722..
27,366
26,34533,012
27,57347,964
24,647
31,84550,41018,612
26,634
20,53827,203
16,93328,01817,543..
17,426
22,595..
44,703
21,781
28,37527,611
13,055

82,109 e
77,164 e63,42075,270 e
72,38766,01970,040108,424 e
99,844 e
57,49670,57563,80456,914179,045 e
57,59152,542
84,088 e
57,23061,037
90,256 e
77,898 e
71,61647,84354,39549,79254,09947,54357,26348,47057,80843,73749,404
38,22764,700..
43,446
38,71643,912
41,433
114,135 e
69,72339,19965,36330,33737,96745,077
41,76827,26575,232 e27,750..
27,294
41,297..
72,82333,00137,08536,44745,769Continued →288

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 4

Gender Development Index

Human Development Index

SDG 3

SDG 4.3

SDG 4.4

Life expectancy at birth

Expected years of schooling

Mean years of schooling

Value(years)(years)(years)SDG 8.5
Estimated gross national
income per capitaa(2017 PPP $)ValueGroupbFemaleMale

FemaleMale

FemaleMale

FemaleMale

FemaleHDI RANK

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022c

2022c

2022c

2022c

2022

Male
2022

60 Georgia
60 Trinidad and Tobago
62 Barbados
63 Malaysia
64 Costa Rica
65 Serbia
66 Thailand
67 Kazakhstan
67 Seychelles
69 Belarus
High human development
70 Bulgaria
71 Palau
72 Mauritius
73 Grenada
74 Albania
75 China
76 Armenia
77 Mexico
78 Iran (Islamic Republic of)
78 Sri Lanka
80 Bosnia and Herzegovina
81 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
82 Dominican Republic
83 Ecuador
83 North Macedonia
85 Cuba
86 Moldova (Republic of)
87 Maldives
87 Peru
89 Azerbaijan
89 Brazil
91 Colombia
92 Libya
93 Algeria
94 Turkmenistan
95 Guyana
96 Mongolia
97 Dominica
98 Tonga
99 Jordan
100 Ukraine
101 Tunisia
102 Marshall Islands
102 Paraguay
104 Fiji
105 Egypt
106 Uzbekistan
107 Viet Nam
108 Saint Lucia
109 Lebanon
110 South Africa
111 Palestine, State of
112 Indonesia
113 Philippines
114 Botswana
115 Jamaica
116 Samoa
117 Kyrgyzstan
118 Belize

1.005
0.992
1.030
0.973
0.995
0.986
1.011
0.998
1.064
1.003

1
1
2
2
1
1
1
1
3
1

0.815
0.809
0.815
0.794
0.803
0.799
0.807
0.799
0.829
0.801

0.811
0.815
0.792
0.816
0.807
0.810
0.798
0.801
0.779
0.799

76.5
78.2
79.6
78.8
80.0
77.0
83.9
73.0
76.0
78.4

66.8
71.3
75.7
74.0
74.8
71.3
75.5
65.8
68.2
68.1

17.0
14.4 r
18.3 d,f
13.4
16.7 d
15.2
15.9
15.0
15.4
13.9

16.5
13.8 r
14.8 d12.5
15.6 d
13.8
15.3
14.6
12.6
14.0

12.8
11.9 d
10.4 s10.7 d8.9
11.2 d8.7 d12.5 d
12.0 m12.3 d12.6
11.6 d9.1 s
10.8 d8.7
11.9 d9.0 d12.4 d
10.4
12.2 d12,237
17,08812,595
19,262
16,531
15,90915,28918,59524,756
14,502

20,141
28,007
17,21434,98323,96523,38818,58026,89031,651
23,022

0.995
1.007
0.976
0.976
0.977
0.962
1.026
0.979
0.880
0.947
0.952
..
1.029
0.990
0.950
0.973
1.033
0.976
0.952
0.961
1.000
0.998
0.988
0.881
..
0.992
1.032
..
0.996
0.863
1.021
0.928
0.945
0.994
0.940
0.884
0.924
1.007
1.013
0.928
0.985
0.880
0.940
0.966
0.998
1.016
0.968
0.975
0.982

1
1
1
1
1
2
2
1
5
3
2
..
2
1
2
2
2
1
2
2
1
1
1
5
..
1
2
..
1
5
1
3
3
1
3
5
4
1
1
3
1
5
3
2
1
1
2
1
1

0.797
0.802
0.784
0.781
0.780
0.771
0.795
0.770
0.710
0.751
0.759
..
0.775
0.760
0.744
0.750
0.776
0.748
0.742
0.743
0.758
0.756
0.739
0.682
..
0.738
0.751
..
0.736
0.662
0.741
0.698
0.708
0.728
0.700
0.664
0.691
0.729
0.729
0.690
0.710
0.649
0.688
0.694
0.707
0.710
0.687
0.690
0.691

0.800
0.797
0.803
0.801
0.798
0.802
0.775
0.787
0.806
0.793
0.797
..
0.753
0.768
0.783
0.771
0.751
0.767
0.779
0.773
0.758
0.758
0.748
0.774
..
0.743
0.728
..
0.739
0.767
0.726
0.751
0.748
0.732
0.745
0.752
0.748
0.723
0.719
0.743
0.721
0.737
0.732
0.718
0.708
0.699
0.709
0.707
0.704

75.1
69.3
77.1
78.3
79.5
81.3
78.4
78.2
77.5
80.2
77.5
71.7
77.5
80.5
76.2
80.6
73.3
81.8
75.5
76.2
76.6
77.1
74.8
78.5
72.9
69.4
77.4
76.5
74.1
76.7
73.9
77.4
67.1
73.6
70.2
72.6
74.3
79.3
74.9
76.6
64.2
75.9
70.4
74.2
68.4
72.7
75.3
74.9
74.7

68.3
62.2
71.0
72.6
74.5
76.0
67.9
71.5
71.9
72.9
73.1
66.7
71.0
75.3
71.7
75.8
64.2
80.1
71.3
70.6
70.3
70.3
69.7
75.9
65.9
62.8
68.1
69.9
68.6
72.1
63.5
71.4
63.5
67.6
66.5
67.9
69.0
69.9
68.0
72.2
58.6
71.0
66.2
70.2
63.3
68.5
70.1
66.2
67.7

14.1
18.3 f,o
15.2
17.1 d14.7
15.7 d
14.8
15.0
14.2
14.1 d13.8
16.4 d
14.8
15.3
13.4
15.3
15.4
13.3 d
14.9 d
12.7
16.2
14.7
14.8 n16.3
13.2
13.3 r
15.3 d
14.4 m17.4
12.9 d13.5
15.5 d
17.0
14.6 u
14.4
12.8
12.0
13.3 v
13.4
12.8 w
14.8
14.0
14.1 d13.2
11.8
13.6 d
13.0
13.2
12.8

13.6
16.9 o14.1
16.1 d14.3
14.8 d
14.0
14.1
14.1
13.2 d12.8
16.1 d
12.3
14.4
12.6
13.7
14.4
11.2 d
14.7 d
12.7
15.0
14.2
13.5 n14.7
13.2
12.7 r
13.8 d12.7 m15.2
12.4 d13.1
13.8 d15.8
13.3 u
13.3
13.0
12.0
12.8 v
12.1
11.3 w
13.7
12.4
13.9 d
12.4
11.1
11.4 d
11.9
12.8
12.1

11.5
13.3 o
9.9 s
9.8 m
9.8 s
7.5 m
11.3
9.1
10.7 d
11.1
9.8
11.0 o
9.6 d
8.9
9.7
10.6 d11.9 d7.9 d
9.4 d
10.2 d
8.5 d
9.0
8.4 m
6.5 d
10.8 d
8.7 s
9.9
9.0 n
11.0 s
10.1
11.4 s7.3 d12.7 o8.9
10.4
10.2 d
11.7
8.1 d
8.8 d
8.0 m
11.5
9.9
8.2
9.2 d
10.4
9.9 d
11.8 d11.9 d
9.0

11.3
12.8 m10.1 s9.9 n
10.4 s
8.7 t
11.3
9.4
10.8 d
11.4
11.4
11.0 o
8.7 d
9.0
10.8
10.4 d11.8 d7.7 d10.6 d10.9 d
8.0 d
8.7
7.2 m
7.5 d
11.5 d
8.5 s
8.8
9.7 n
10.8 s10.8
10.7 s8.7 d12.9 m
8.9
10.3
9.6 d
12.1
8.8 d
8.3 d
9.2 o
11.7
10.0
8.9
8.7 d
10.5
8.6 d
11.0 d
12.0 d8.7

20,70015,15915,594
9,775
13,19913,292
13,443
13,5484,140
6,241
12,420..
14,773
9,147
11,526
5,571
12,272
12,161
9,515
11,526
11,292
12,252
12,073
3,842..
26,505
8,099
..
5,051
2,753
9,025
5,198
4,518
10,349
6,282
3,739
4,390
9,615
11,815
6,546
10,423
2,134
8,111
6,179
13,676
7,647
3,314
3,442
6,319

31,46623,21831,124
17,412
17,39822,567
17,77025,00825,192
17,99020,853..
22,506
12,245
21,296
10,373
13,72523,78314,365
18,60318,061
17,85427,24817,859..
45,454
12,640..
7,698
15,380
14,233
15,528
9,096
15,954
16,15820,79011,716
12,042
17,807
18,43916,095
11,75915,926
11,851
16,037
11,775
6,562
6,170
12,133
Continued →TA B L E 4 / GEND ER D EVELOP MENT IND EX

289

TAB LE 4

Gender Development Index

Human Development Index

SDG 3

SDG 4.3

SDG 4.4

Life expectancy at birth

Expected years of schooling

Mean years of schoolingValue
HDI RANK

Medium human development
119 Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)120 Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
120 Morocco
122 Nauru
123 Gabon
124 Suriname
125 Bhutan
126 Tajikistan
127 El Salvador
128 Iraq
129 Bangladesh
130 Nicaragua
131 Cabo Verde132 Tuvalu
133 Equatorial Guinea
134 India
135 Micronesia (Federated States of)
136 Guatemala
137 Kiribati
138 Honduras
139 Lao People's Democratic Republic
140 Vanuatu
141 Sao Tome and Principe
142 Eswatini (Kingdom of)
142 Namibia
144 Myanmar
145 Ghana
146 Kenya
146 Nepal
148 Cambodia
149 Congo
150 Angola
151 Cameroon
152 Comoros
153 Zambia
154 Papua New Guinea
155 Timor-Leste
156 Solomon Islands
157 Syrian Arab Republic
158 Haiti
159 Uganda
159 Zimbabwe
Low human development
161 Nigeria
161 Rwanda
163 Togo
164 Mauritania
164 Pakistan
166 Côte d'Ivoire
167 Tanzania (United Republic of)
168 Lesotho
169 Senegal
170 Sudan
171 Djibouti
172 Malawi
173 Benin
174 Gambia
175 Eritrea
176 Ethiopia(years)(years)(years)SDG 8.5
Estimated gross national
income per capitaa(2017 PPP $)ValueGroupbFemaleMale

FemaleMale

FemaleMale

FemaleMale

Female

Male

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022c

2022c

2022c

2022c

2022

2022

1.002
0.965
0.851
1.037
0.982
0.987
0.970
0.919
0.972
0.786
0.914
0.949
0.981
0.975
..
0.852
0.950
0.931
0.849
0.974
0.919
0.936
..
0.987
1.006
0.941
0.933
0.948
0.885
0.926
0.909
0.905
0.900
0.914
0.930
0.927
0.904
0.959
0.805
0.929
0.899
0.936

1
2
5
2
1
1
2
4
2
5
4
3
1
1
..
5
2
3
5
2
4
3
..
1
1
3
3
3
5
3
4
4
4
4
3
3
4
2
5
3
5
3

0.695
0.686
0.628
0.708
0.683
0.683
0.670
0.647
0.662
0.569
0.635
0.647
0.652
0.643
..
0.582
0.615
0.604
0.555
0.616
0.593
0.591
..
0.606
0.612
0.583
0.583
0.585
0.562
0.577
0.564
0.561
0.556
0.558
0.548
0.546
0.534
0.554
0.481
0.531
0.522
0.532

0.693
0.711
0.737
0.683
0.696
0.692
0.690
0.704
0.681
0.724
0.694
0.682
0.664
0.659
..
0.684
0.647
0.649
0.654
0.632
0.645
0.631
..
0.614
0.608
0.619
0.625
0.617
0.635
0.623
0.620
0.620
0.618
0.611
0.589
0.589
0.591
0.578
0.597
0.571
0.580
0.568

75.7
67.9
77.2
67.8
68.4
73.6
74.2
73.5
75.8
73.4
76.0
77.6
79.0
69.4
63.3
69.4
74.8
71.8
69.4
73.2
71.2
73.1
71.9
60.6
61.7
70.5
66.1
64.7
72.4
72.6
64.6
64.5
62.6
66.1
64.5
69.2
70.8
72.4
76.1
66.7
65.7
62.1

66.9
62.3
72.9
60.5
63.4
67.2
70.6
69.2
66.8
69.2
71.5
71.6
70.3
61.1
59.4
66.3
67.3
65.7
65.7
68.5
66.9
68.3
66.1
52.6
54.6
64.2
61.8
59.6
68.6
67.1
61.5
59.4
59.4
61.5
59.1
63.4
67.4
69.3
68.7
60.9
61.5
56.4

o

14.3
15.1
14.5
14.4 d
12.6 n11.3
13.6 d
10.4 d12.2 u11.6 v
12.4
12.3 u11.8 d
12.4 d
12.0 n12.6
12.7 n10.6 d
12.4
10.3 u10.0
11.9 d12.9 r
14.4 d11.7 x12.3 d
11.5
11.4 x12.8
11.3 o13.0 d
11.5
12.7 d
13.4 d
11.1 y10.5 x13.4 x11.1 d7.2 o
11.1 m11.1 x10.7 d

o

12.4
14.9
14.7
11.0 d12.3 m
10.6
12.6 d
11.3 d
11.6 u12.8 v
11.5
12.8 u11.3 d11.8 d12.3 n12.6
12.5 m10.9 d
11.3
9.6 u
10.4
11.7 d12.5 r
15.5 d11.8 x11.3 d
11.7
11.4 x12.5
11.8 m
11.9 d12.9
14.1 d12.7 d
11.0 y11.7 x13.1 x
9.7 d
7.7 m
11.2 n11.9 x11.4 d

o

9.8
9.2
5.1
9.3 m
10.4
8.6 d
5.2 d
10.9 s
6.8
5.6 s
6.8
7.5
5.8 o
10.5 d
8.2 n
5.5
6.9 n
5.2 d
9.3 m
6.9 d
5.0 s
6.6 n
5.3 d
5.8
7.5 s
6.2 s
5.6 s
7.1
3.4 d
4.4
7.2 s
4.5 x
5.6 s
5.2 y
6.4 s
4.2 s
5.5 x
5.5 n
5.4 o
5.1 s
5.2 d
8.2 d

m

9.5
10.5
7.0
9.2 n
8.7
8.2 d
6.3 d
11.6 s
7.6
8.0 s
8.0
7.0
6.3 o
10.8 d
8.4 m
7.6
7.8 n
6.3 d
9.0 o
7.8 d
6.9 s
7.5 n
6.7 d
5.7
7.0 s
6.9 s
7.6 s
8.3
5.7 d
6.2
9.4 s
7.2 x
7.6 s
7.3 y
8.3 s
5.7 s
6.6 x
6.8 n
6.7 o
6.3 s
7.7 d
9.6 d

4,285
6,727
2,968
11,558
7,296
8,820
9,343
3,295
6,244
2,087
3,684
3,596
5,732
3,378
..
2,958
2,652
6,114
1,100
4,695
6,380
2,445
..
6,958
7,827
2,545
4,794
3,977
2,609
3,563
2,085
4,696
3,048
2,338
2,531
3,219
1,145
1,998
1,049
2,110
1,890
1,762

8,126
9,243
12,876
18,213
14,95815,832
11,766
6,300
11,794
16,070
9,387
7,311
9,491
6,063
..
10,696
4,756
11,938
5,903
5,837
9,088
4,033
..
9,848
10,673
5,544
5,970
5,654
5,564
5,034
3,722
5,974
4,318
4,174
3,800
4,171
2,094
2,537
6,132
3,506
2,597
2,433

0.886
0.921
0.848
0.874
0.834
0.861
0.940
0.999
0.925
0.868
0.844
0.926
0.848
0.940
..
0.922

5
4
5
5
5
5
3
1
3
5
5
3
5
3
..
4

0.515
0.524
0.505
0.503
0.480
0.492
0.516
0.519
0.496
0.472
0.466
0.489
0.462
0.481
..
0.472

0.581
0.569
0.596
0.575
0.575
0.572
0.549
0.520
0.536
0.544
0.552
0.528
0.544
0.511
..
0.512

54.0
69.2
62.2
66.4
68.9
60.3
68.9
55.9
70.2
68.2
65.5
66.3
61.7
64.3
68.7
68.9

53.3
64.8
60.9
63.0
64.1
57.7
64.7
50.3
65.5
63.0
60.3
59.6
58.3
61.5
64.5
62.6

10.2
11.5
12.5 d
8.2
7.3 d
9.5
8.7
11.4 d
9.9
8.3 d
8.2 d
11.5 d
9.5
9.9 x
6.9 d
10.2 d

10.8
11.3
14.3 d
8.0
8.4 d
10.7
8.5
10.8 d
8.4
8.7 d
8.0 d
11.5 d
11.1
8.1 x
7.8 d
9.8 d

6.6
4.5
4.2 d
4.1 s
3.9 d
3.1 s
5.1 d
8.2 d
2.3 d
3.5
2.9 o
4.3
2.1 s
3.7
4.0 n
1.7 d

8.7
5.4
7.2 d
5.8 s
4.8 d
5.4 s
6.3 d
6.8 d
3.7 d
4.2
5.1 o
6.4
4.4 s
5.6
5.7 n
3.2 d

4,110
1,662
1,744
3,053
2,120
4,063
2,195
2,129
2,256
1,750
2,307
1,191
2,604
1,792
..
1,762

5,386
3,000
2,679
7,727
8,571
6,665
2,970
3,304
4,712
5,282
7,481
1,687
4,205
2,390
..
2,970
Continued →290

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 4

Gender Development Index

Human Development Index

SDG 3

SDG 4.3

SDG 4.4

Life expectancy at birth

Expected years of schooling

Mean years of schooling

Value(years)(years)(years)SDG 8.5
Estimated gross national
income per capitaa(2017 PPP $)ValueGroupbFemaleMale

FemaleMale

FemaleMale

FemaleMale

FemaleMale

HDI RANK

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022c

2022c

2022c

2022c

2022

2022

177 Liberia
177 Madagascar
179 Guinea-Bissau
180 Congo (Democratic Republic of the)181 Guinea
182 Afghanistan
183 Mozambique
184 Sierra Leone
185 Burkina Faso
186 Yemen
187 Burundi
188 Mali
189 Chad
189 Niger
191 Central African Republic
192 South Sudan
193 Somalia
Other countries or territories
Korea (Democratic People’s Rep. of)
MonacoHuman development groups
Very high human development
High human development
Medium human development
Low human development
Developing countries
Regions
Arab States
East Asia and the Pacific
Europe and Central Asia
Latin America and the Caribbean
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
Least developed countries
Small island developing states
Organisation for Economic Co‑operation
and Development
World

0.860
0.945
0.862
0.891
0.818
0.622
0.929
0.885
0.881
0.456
0.926
0.830
0.776
0.826
..
..
0.769

5
3
5
5
5
5
3
5
5
5
3
5
5
5
..
..
5

0.451
0.473
0.451
0.454
0.422
0.332
0.443
0.432
0.409
0.219
0.404
0.368
0.342
0.354
..
..
0.327

0.524
0.500
0.523
0.510
0.515
0.534
0.477
0.488
0.464
0.480
0.436
0.444
0.441
0.428
..
..
0.425

62.4
67.6
61.9
62.1
60.2
66.2
62.7
61.7
61.5
67.2
63.9
60.8
54.8
63.4
56.8
57.0
58.2

59.8
63.0
57.7
57.5
57.6
59.8
56.5
59.1
58.0
60.5
60.1
58.1
51.3
60.8
52.3
54.0
54.1

10.1
9.3 d
10.4 v
9.6 d
9.1 d
8.1 d
10.3 d
9.4 r
8.2
6.9 o
10.2 d
6.4 d
6.8 d
6.5 d
6.1 d
4.5 d
7.6 n

10.8
9.1 d
11.6 v
9.7 d
11.2 d13.2 d
11.1 d
9.0 r
8.0
8.9 o
9.7 d
7.5 d
9.5 d
7.9 d
8.4 d
6.7 d
8.3 n

3.6 s
4.3
2.5
5.8 s
1.4 d
1.2
3.2
2.4 d
1.6 d
1.8 z
2.6 d
1.1
1.3 d
1.0 s
2.7 s
4.8 aa
0.9

7.2 s
4.9
5.1
8.8 s
3.4 d
3.9
4.4
4.8 d
3.1 d
3.6 z
4.1 d
2.2
3.5 d
1.8 s
5.4 s
6.2 aa
2.9

1,163
1,224
1,487
917
1,719
396
1,060
1,326
1,454
150
636
1,333
991
893
..
..
578

1,499
1,702
2,282
1,246
3,104
2,256
1,385
1,898
2,624
2,042
789
2,741
1,783
1,663
..
..
1,563

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

76.1
88.9 l71.0
85.1 i..
19.4 d,f..
18.1 d,g

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

0.988
0.962
0.870
0.868
0.929

—
—
—
—
—

0.895
0.747
0.587
0.478
0.665

0.906
0.777
0.675
0.551
0.716

82.3
78.0
69.9
63.7
72.9

76.4
72.5
66.1
59.7
68.2

17.1
14.8
12.3
8.9
12.6

16.1
14.2
12.3
9.6
12.5

12.2
8.3
5.8
3.9
7.1

12.3
9.0
7.6
5.5
8.2

34,726
10,904
3,127
2,073
7,283

55,44220,011
9,638
4,368
14,943

0.877
0.962
0.963
0.991
0.855
0.915
0.890
0.979

—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—

0.646
0.749
0.785
0.758
0.580
0.525
0.509
0.722

0.736
0.779
0.815
0.765
0.678
0.574
0.572
0.738

73.5
79.0
77.0
76.9
70.4
62.6
67.4
74.3

69.3
73.6
70.2
70.6
66.7
58.7
62.5
69.0

11.8
14.8
15.5
15.3
11.8
10.2
9.9
12.9

12.0
14.2
15.5
14.2
12.0
10.5
10.3
12.3

7.2
7.8
10.4
9.0
5.7
5.2
4.3
8.5

8.3
8.7
10.8
8.9
7.5
6.9
5.9
8.8

5,468
11,93913,573
11,503
2,958
3,025
2,042
13,07922,726
20,216
26,631
18,823
10,808
4,388
4,054
19,712

0.984
0.951

—
—

0.898
0.719

0.912
0.756

82.9
74.5

77.4
69.6

17.1
13.1

16.1
12.9

12.1
8.2

12.3
9.1

36,106
12,516

56,84822,035

TA B L E 4 / GEND ER D EVELOP MENT IND EX

291

TAB LE 4

Notesa

Because disaggregated income data are not available,
data are crudely estimated. See Definitions and Technical note 3 at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files​/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf for details on how the
Gender Development Index is calculated.

bCountries are divided into five groups by absolute deviation from gender parity in HDI values.

cData refer to 2022 or the most recent year available.

dUpdated by HDRO based on data from UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023).

e

In calculating the male HDI value, estimated gross national income per capita is capped at $75,000.

f

In calculating the female HDI value, expected years ofschooling is capped at 18 years.

g

In calculating the male HDI value, expected years ofschooling is capped at 18 years.

h

In calculating the female HDI value, estimated grossnational income per capita is capped at $75,000.

i

In calculating the male HDI value, life expectancy at birthis capped at 82.5 years.

jUpdated by HDRO using the mean years of schooling
trend of Austria and data from UNESCO Institute for
Statistics (2023).

k

Updated by HDRO based on data from OECD (2023)
and UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023).

l

In calculating the female HDI value, life expectancy atbirth is capped at 87.5 years.

m

HDRO estimate based on data from Robert Barro andJong-­Wha Lee; the Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies and the World Bank’s Socio-­Economic Database for Latin America and the Caribbean; ICF Macro
Demographic and Health Surveys; the Organisation for
Economic Co-­operation and Development; United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Multiple Indicator Cluster
Surveys; and the United Nations Educational, Scientificand Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics.

n

Based on HDRO estimates using cross-­country regression.

oUpdated by HDRO based on data from UNESCO
Institute for Statistics (2023) and estimates using cross-­country regression.

pRefers to 2015 based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

q

Refers to 2015 based on HDRO estimates using cross-­country regression.

r

Updated by HDRO based on data from UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023) and UNICEF Multiple Indicator
Cluster Surveys for various years.

s

Updated by HDRO based on data from Barro and Lee(2018) and UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023).

t

Refers to 2018 based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

uUpdated by HDRO based on data from CEDLAS andWorld Bank (2023) and UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

v

Updated by HDRO based on data from UNICEF Multiple
Indicator Cluster Surveys for various years.

2 92

w

Updated by HDRO based on data from UNICEF Multiple
Indicator Cluster Surveys for various years and estimates using cross-­country regression.

x

Updated by HDRO based on data from ICF Macro
Demographic and Health Surveys for various years and
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023).

yUpdated by HDRO based on data from ICF Macro Demographic and Health Surveys for various years.

z

Updated by HDRO based on data from Barro and Lee(2018) and estimates using cross-­country regression.

aa

Refers to 2008 based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

Definitions
Gender Development Index: Ratio of female to male HDI values. See Technical note 3 at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default​/files/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf for details on how the Gender Development Index is calculated.
Gender Development Index groups: Countries are divided into
five groups by absolute deviation from gender parity in HDI
values. Group 1 comprises countries with high equality in HDI
achievements between women and men (absolute deviation ofless than 2.5 percent), group 2 comprises countries with medium to high equality in HDI achievements between women andmen (absolute deviation of 2.5–5 percent), group 3 comprises
countries with medium equality in HDI achievements between
women and men (absolute deviation of 5–7.5 percent), group
4 comprises countries with medium to low equality in HDI
achievements between women and men (absolute deviationof 7.5–10 percent) and group 5 comprises countries with low
equality in HDI achievements between women and men (absolute deviation from gender parity of more than 10 percent).
Human Development Index (HDI): A composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of humandevelopment­—­a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent
standard of living. See Technical note 1 at http://hdr.undp.org​/sites/default/files/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf for details on
how the HDI is calculated.
Life expectancy at birth: Number of years a newborn infant
could expect to live if prevailing patterns of age-­specific mortality rates at the time of birth stay the same throughout the
infant’s life.
Expected years of schooling: Number of years of schoolingthat a child of school entrance age can expect to receive if prevailing patterns of age-­specific enrolment rates persist throughout the child’s life.
Mean years of schooling: Average number of years of education received by people ages 25 and older, converted fromeducational attainment levels using official durations of eachlevel.
Estimated gross national income per capita: Derived from theratio of female to male wages, female and male shares of economically active population and gross national income (in 2017
purchasing power parity terms). See Technical note 3 at http://​hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf
for details.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Main data sources
Column 1: Calculated based on data in columns 3 and 4.
Column 2: Calculated based on data in column 1.
Columns 3 and 4: HDRO calculations based on data from Barroand Lee (2018), IMF (2023), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO
Institute for Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division(2023) and World Bank (2023).
Columns 5 and 6: UNDESA 2022.
Columns 7 and 8: CEDLAS and World Bank 2023, ICF Macro
Demographic and Health Surveys, UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2023 and UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys.
Columns 9 and 10: Barro and Lee 2018, ICF Macro Demographic and Health Surveys, OECD 2023, UNESCO Institute for
Statistics 2023 and UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys.
Columns 11 and 12: HDRO calculations based on ILO (2023),
IMF (2023), UNDESA (2023), United Nations Statistics Division(2023) and World Bank (2023).

TA BL E 5

Gender Inequality Index
Gender Inequality Index

HDI RANK

Value
2022

Rank
2022

Very high human development
1 Switzerland
2 Norway
3 Iceland
4 Hong Kong, China (SAR)
5 Denmark
5 Sweden
7 Germany
7 Ireland
9 Singapore
10 Australia
10 Netherlands
12 Belgium
12 Finland
12 Liechtenstein
15 United Kingdom
16 New Zealand
17 United Arab Emirates
18 Canada
19 Korea (Republic of)
20 Luxembourg
20 United States
22 Austria
22 Slovenia
24 Japan
25 Israel
25 Malta
27 Spain
28 France
29 Cyprus
30 Italy
31 Estonia
32 Czechia
33 Greece
34 Bahrain
35 Andorra
36 Poland
37 Latvia
37 Lithuania
39 Croatia
40 Qatar
40 Saudi Arabia
42 Portugal
43 San Marino
44 Chile
45 Slovakia
45 Türkiye
47 Hungary
48 Argentina
49 Kuwait
50 Montenegro
51 Saint Kitts and Nevis
52 Uruguay
53 Romania
54 Antigua and Barbuda
55 Brunei Darussalam
56 Russian Federation
57 Bahamas
57 Panama
59 Oman

0.018
0.012
0.039
..
0.009
0.023
0.071
0.072
0.036
0.063
0.025
0.044
0.032
..
0.094
0.082
0.035
0.069
0.062
0.043
0.180
0.048
0.049
0.078
0.092
0.117
0.059
0.084
0.253
0.057
0.093
0.113
0.120
0.181
..
0.105
0.142
0.098
0.087
0.212
0.229
0.076
..
0.190
0.184
0.259
0.230
0.292
0.199
0.114
..
0.240
0.230
..
0.279
0.178
0.333
0.392
0.267

3
2
9
..
1
4
19
20
8
17
5
11
6
..
28
23
7
18
16
10
44
12
13
22
26
35
15
24
62
14
27
32
37
45
..
31
39
30
25
54
55
21
..
49
46
63
56
71
51
33
..
60
56
..
68
43
79
95
66

SDG 3.1
Maternal
mortality ratio

SDG 3.7
Adolescentbirth rate

(deaths per(births per 1,000
100,000 live births) women ages 15–19)
2020
2022

7
2
3
..
5
5
4
5
7
3
4
5
8
..
10
7
9
11
8
6
21
5
5
4
3
3
3
8
68
5
5
3
8
16
..
2
18
9
5
8
16
12
..
15
5
17
15
45
7
6
..
19
10
21
44
14
77
50
17

2.2
2.2
5.1
1.6
1.8
3.3
7.2
5.9
2.5
7.7
2.7
5.1
4.1
3.0
10.0
11.8
2.8
6.6
2.1
4.2
15.1
5.2
4.4
2.8
7.4
11.5
6.3
9.4
6.8
3.9
8.1
9.4
8.3
8.7
5.9
9.2
10.5
9.7
8.2
6.9
11.6
7.1
3.7
22.8
26.6
15.7
21.9
37.9
5.3
9.7
36.8
35.2
35.4
32.3
9.5
14.5
25.1
68.5
9.7

SDG 5.5
Share of seatsin parliament

SDG 4.4
Population with at least somesecondary education

Labour force participation ratea(% held
by women)2022(% ages 25 and older)
Female
Male
2022b
2022b

(% ages 15 and older)
Female
Male
2022
2022

96.9 c99.1 c
99.8
77.9
95.1
92.4 c95.4
88.6 c
80.5
94.6
89.8
88.7 c
99.2
..
99.8
82.0
82.0
97.8 d83.8 c96.6 d95.4
100.0 d97.8 c98.2
92.5 c82.2
78.5
84.3 c
81.1
78.6
97.6
99.8 c
69.9
79.9
81.7
86.5
99.8 c95.5
95.5 d81.8 c71.3
59.7
81.8 e82.2
98.8 c59.1 c97.6
73.6 d61.8 c70.8 c..
62.5
89.4 c..
70.9
98.3
86.8 c
67.6
93.3

61.5
62.5
70.7
52.9
59.4
63.7
56.1
59.4
63.4
62.3
63.6
50.8
58.2
52.8
59.1
66.9
55.3
61.5
55.0
58.0
56.8
56.6
54.3
54.2
61.2
56.1
53.2
52.5
59.6
40.7
60.6
52.2
44.7
42.4
..
50.1
55.6
58.8
46.9
61.7
34.5
54.7
70.4
50.1
56.2
35.1
53.7
52.1
44.4
44.4
..
55.7
42.3
..
54.9
55.5
69.0
49.7
35.0

39.0
45.0
47.6
..
43.6
46.4
34.8
27.4
29.1
44.5
37.8
44.3
45.5
28.0
31.3
50.4
50.0
35.0
18.6
33.3
28.1
41.0
33.1
15.4
23.3
27.8
41.4
36.4
14.3
33.0
25.7
23.5
21.0
22.5
46.4
27.5
30.0
28.4
31.8
4.4
19.9
37.0
33.3
32.7
21.3
17.4
14.1
44.4
6.3
27.2
31.3
26.9
18.9
31.4
9.1
17.8
20.0
22.5
9.9

97.5 c99.3 c
99.7
84.1
95.2
92.7 c95.9
86.4 c
85.9
94.4
92.7
90.7 c
98.9
..
99.8
81.8
86.1
97.6 d93.5 c89.3 d95.1
100.0 d98.8 c99.1
94.5 c88.1
83.2
88.3 c
84.8
86.1
98.1
99.8 c
77.8
83.1
84.6
90.7
99.3 c97.9
97.4 d71.4 c80.9
61.9
84.3 e84.4
99.1 c78.1 c98.8
71.6 d56.5 c83.7 c..
59.3
94.0 c..
71.5
98.9
90.0 c
65.6
98.7

71.9
69.6
78.3
64.7
67.4
70.4
66.6
70.5
77.0
71.1
72.4
59.5
64.2
67.3
68.0
75.9
89.5
69.5
73.7
65.1
68.0
66.7
63.6
71.4
68.5
71.2
62.9
60.2
71.1
58.1
71.4
67.9
60.4
85.8
..
65.5
67.9
67.7
58.2
95.3
79.6
63.1
70.6
70.6
67.3
71.4
67.8
71.7
88.5
57.8
..
71.4
62.0
..
71.7
70.3
73.9
77.0
83.8
Continued →TA B L E 5 / GEND ER INEQUALITY IND EX

293

TAB LE 5

SDG 3.1
Maternal
mortality ratio

Gender Inequality Index

HDI RANK

60 Georgia
60 Trinidad and Tobago
62 Barbados
63 Malaysia
64 Costa Rica
65 Serbia
66 Thailand
67 Kazakhstan
67 Seychelles
69 Belarus
High human development
70 Bulgaria
71 Palau
72 Mauritius
73 Grenada
74 Albania
75 China
76 Armenia
77 Mexico
78 Iran (Islamic Republic of)
78 Sri Lanka
80 Bosnia and Herzegovina
81 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
82 Dominican Republic
83 Ecuador
83 North Macedonia
85 Cuba
86 Moldova (Republic of)
87 Maldives
87 Peru
89 Azerbaijan
89 Brazil
91 Colombia
92 Libya
93 Algeria
94 Turkmenistan
95 Guyana
96 Mongolia
97 Dominica
98 Tonga
99 Jordan
100 Ukraine
101 Tunisia
102 Marshall Islands
102 Paraguay
104 Fiji
105 Egypt
106 Uzbekistan
107 Viet Nam
108 Saint Lucia
109 Lebanon
110 South Africa
111 Palestine, State of
112 Indonesia
113 Philippines
114 Botswana
115 Jamaica
116 Samoa
117 Kyrgyzstan
118 Belize

SDG 3.7
Adolescentbirth rate

(deaths per(births per 1,000
100,000 live births) women ages 15–19)
2020
2022

SDG 5.5
Share of seatsin parliament

SDG 4.4
Population with at least somesecondary education

Labour force participation ratea(% held
by women)2022(% ages 25 and older)
Female
Male
2022b
2022b

(% ages 15 and older)
Female
Male
2022
2022

Value
2022

Rank
2022

0.283
0.264
0.289
0.202
0.232
0.119
0.310
0.177
..
0.096

69
64
70
52
58
36
74
42
..
29

28
27
39
21
22
10
29
13
3
1

29.7
37.7
41.9
9.1
35.7
14.4
31.6
20.9
52.1
11.2

19.0
32.4
32.7
14.5
47.4
36.6
14.0
24.7
22.9
34.7

98.2
86.0 d95.7 d76.1 c50.2
89.9 c49.3 c100.0 c..
98.4 c98.7
81.9 d86.3 d79.2 c48.1
96.1 c53.0 c100.0 c..
99.5 c

55.5
47.3
58.2
55.1
50.1
51.0
59.9
63.3
65.2
65.8

73.5
62.4
65.1
80.5
72.9
66.1
76.0
74.6
65.3
75.3

0.206
..
0.369
..
0.116
0.186
0.198
0.352
0.484
0.376
0.148
..
0.433
0.371
0.134
0.300
0.156
0.328
0.360
0.329
0.391
0.392
0.266
0.460
..
0.416
0.297
..
0.462
0.449
0.188
0.237
..
0.429
0.332
0.389
0.242
0.378
0.347
0.365
0.401
..
0.439
0.388
0.483
0.350
0.406
0.345
0.454

53
..
87
..
34
47
50
84
121
90
40
..
107
89
38
73
41
76
85
77
94
95
65
114
..
104
72
..
115
111
48
59
..
106
78
93
61
91
82
86
99
..
109
92
120
83
101
81
113

7
..
84
21
8
23
27
59
22
29
6
62
107
66
3
39
12
57
69
41
72
75
72
78
5
112
39
..
126
41
17
37
..
71
38
17
30
124
73
21
127
20
173
78
186
99
59
50
130

38.2
42.1
24.0
32.1
14.5
11.1
18.3
53.7
29.7
15.4
9.4
46.5
63.2
62.1
16.1
48.9
27.2
6.8
56.1
40.1
43.6
57.6
7.0
11.6
21.2
64.6
25.0
37.9
19.2
24.9
15.2
6.6
57.5
69.9
26.1
43.6
15.7
35.0
36.3
20.0
60.9
42.9
32.9
48.1
48.3
32.0
43.8
33.8
56.6

24.2
6.9
20.0
31.0
35.7
24.9
35.5
49.8
5.6
5.3
17.5
18.2
25.7
38.7
41.7
53.4
40.6
4.6
40.0
18.3
17.5
29.2
16.5
7.0
25.7
35.4
17.1
34.4
3.7
13.3
20.3
26.3
6.1
16.8
19.6
22.8
29.1
30.3
24.1
6.3
45.4 k
..
21.9
27.5
11.1
31.0
13.0
20.5
19.6

94.9
96.9 f66.5 c..
82.2 d79.7 d96.0
63.7
73.1 c80.6
82.7
43.6 g
67.5
54.1
61.9
78.6 c96.3 c46.9 d55.6
93.6 c67.4
59.7
62.2 h42.9 c98.1 c58.7 d79.3..
93.7 d77.4
95.7 d40.0 c91.6 i
54.3
66.1
85.9 c100.061.5 c50.0 c54.7 j
83.0
67.9
51.0
74.4 c92.1
74.8 d92.4 l92.4 c54.5

96.5
97.3 f72.4 c..
86.5 d86.4 d
97.1
65.4
77.3 c83.3
94.0
41.8 g
64.2
54.2
75.1
81.8 c98.1 c46.3 d66.7
97.6 c65.0
57.1
45.3 h46.8 c98.4 c56.4 d73.0..
93.4 d84.2
93.5 d47.2 c92.5 i53.3
61.3
78.7 c100.0
69.5 c44.0 c61.1 g
84.9
67.6
58.2
69.9 c92.5
67.0 d87.0 l94.4 c
49.8

50.6
59.8
42.2
37.7
56.1
53.8
62.8
45.0
13.6
29.7
41.1
..
50.9
53.6
42.2
55.5
71.5
53.3
66.7
61.9
53.8
51.1
32.8
17.6
..
37.8
53.5
..
43.0
13.8
47.8
29.3
37.3
59.1
37.3
15.3
39.9
68.5
62.7
29.8
50.8
18.6
52.5
44.1
60.1
56.0
49.8
52.5
48.6

63.1
73.6
68.4
54.3
69.9
74.5
71.8
76.3
67.5
70.7
61.8
..
76.9
76.9
64.1
84.0
73.7
78.2
82.4
69.6
73.6
76.2
59.9
65.5
..
53.4
68.4
..
54.9
60.7
62.9
71.8
61.2
82.4
77.7
69.1
73.1
77.8
75.8
70.2
63.5
70.7
81.5
68.8
69.7
69.9
80.6
78.0
75.6
Continued →294

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 5

Gender Inequality Index

HDI RANK

Medium human development
119 Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)120 Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
120 Morocco
122 Nauru
123 Gabon
124 Suriname
125 Bhutan
126 Tajikistan
127 El Salvador
128 Iraq
129 Bangladesh
130 Nicaragua
131 Cabo Verde132 Tuvalu
133 Equatorial Guinea
134 India
135 Micronesia (Federated States of)
136 Guatemala
137 Kiribati
138 Honduras
139 Lao People's Democratic Republic
140 Vanuatu
141 Sao Tome and Principe
142 Eswatini (Kingdom of)
142 Namibia
144 Myanmar
145 Ghana
146 Kenya
146 Nepal
148 Cambodia
149 Congo
150 Angola
151 Cameroon
152 Comoros
153 Zambia
154 Papua New Guinea
155 Timor-Leste
156 Solomon Islands
157 Syrian Arab Republic
158 Haiti
159 Uganda
159 Zimbabwe
Low human development
161 Nigeria
161 Rwanda
163 Togo
164 Mauritania
164 Pakistan
166 Côte d'Ivoire
167 Tanzania (United Republic of)
168 Lesotho
169 Senegal
170 Sudan
171 Djibouti
172 Malawi
173 Benin
174 Gambia
175 Eritrea
176 Ethiopia

SDG 3.1
Maternal
mortality ratio

SDG 3.7
Adolescentbirth rate

(deaths per(births per 1,000
100,000 live births) women ages 15–19)
2020
2022

SDG 5.5
Share of seatsin parliament

SDG 4.4
Population with at least somesecondary education

Labour force participation ratea(% held
by women)2022(% ages 25 and older)
Female
Male
2022b
2022b

(% ages 15 and older)
Female
Male
2022
2022

Value
2022

Rank
2022

0.521
0.418
0.440
..
0.524
0.405
0.334
0.269
0.369
0.562
0.498
0.397
0.325
..
..
0.437
..
0.474
..
0.413
0.467
..
..
0.491
0.450
0.479
0.512
0.533
0.495
0.486
0.572
0.520
0.555
..
0.526
0.604
0.415
..
0.487
0.621
0.527
0.519

134
105
110
..
136
100
80
67
87
143
127
97
75
..
..
108
..
117
..
102
116
..
..
124
112
119
130
139
126
122
144
133
142
..
137
151
103
..
123
158
138
132

259
161
72
..
227
96
60
17
43
76
123
78
42
..
212
103
74
96
76
72
126
94
146
240
215
179
263
530
174
218
282
222
438
217
135
192
204
122
30
350
284
357

82.0
63.1
25.5
71.1
89.8
55.2
18.5
44.9
54.5
61.2
73.3
84.0
54.0
31.7
136.4
16.3
35.7
63.2
39.6
71.3
71.8
63.2
77.4
68.4
63.1
32.8
63.4
62.6
63.4
45.7
101.2
135.8
108.6
56.1
116.1
54.3
33.3
59.4
38.1
51.8
105.7
92.6

22.2 m
48.2
21.4
10.5
18.1
29.4
15.7
26.6
27.4
28.9
20.9
51.6
38.9
6.3
27.0
14.6
7.1
19.4
6.7
27.3
22.0
1.9
14.5
21.2
35.6
15.0 m
14.5
24.8
33.8
19.3
15.9
33.6
31.1
16.7
15.1
1.7
40.0
8.0
11.2
2.7 o
33.8
33.6

81.0 d
58.4
31.9
..
70.4
45.5 e26.7 g93.6 d42.7
25.3 d43.7 c49.4 c28.8 g
58.1
..
41.0
..
31.1 c..
34.8 c18.7 d..
42.9 n35.3
42.1 d39.2 d59.1 d54.6
26.0 d16.4
32.1 d21.3 g24.5 d..
33.7 d26.3 d33.5 c..
24.1 j28.0 d10.8 c63.4 c76.4 d
69.5
37.9
..
55.3
42.3 e34.3 g94.0 d51.4
40.4 d50.5 c40.3 c31.7 g
58.5
..
58.7
..
37.8 c..
31.4 c30.4 d..
52.8 n37.3
45.0 d49.9 d74.0 d63.5
42.8 d29.0
50.0 d37.4 g39.3 d..
51.4 d37.5 d39.8 c..
32.0 j36.9 d20.4 c73.6 c

45.2
71.8
19.8
56.8
34.7
42.3
53.5
33.3
46.4
10.8
39.2
48.6
46.7
20.0
..
28.3
45.0
41.5
16.1
49.6
61.5
26.7
..
44.9
54.1
44.2
72.1
62.9
27.9
73.7
44.1
74.7
66.8
41.1
54.2
46.0
27.9
82.9
14.4
48.8
74.5
60.0

70.6
85.0
69.6
73.6
56.2
61.7
73.5
52.1
77.7
68.2
81.4
81.1
62.8
29.6
..
76.1
66.0
82.8
73.0
81.1
70.8
36.4
..
51.5
61.2
78.6
73.1
72.6
55.0
85.8
63.9
78.2
76.8
59.4
66.4
48.0
41.4
86.0
68.9
66.0
84.2
71.6

0.677
0.400
0.578
0.603
0.522
0.612
0.513
0.552
0.505
0.548
..
0.579
0.649
0.585
..
0.494

165
98
147
150
135
156
131
141
129
140
..
148
160
149
..
125

1,047
259
399
464
154
480
238
566
261
270
234
381
523
458
322
267

99.6
32.2
77.0
76.8
41.2
103.3
123.4
89.1
64.6
77.6
22.7
117.2
90.8
60.7
63.6
66.5

4.5
54.7
18.7
20.3
20.1
15.6
36.9
26.0
44.2
31.0 p
26.2
22.9
7.4
8.6
22.0 o
38.9

42.4
14.6
13.5 c16.1 d
22.0 c13.5 d9.3 c34.1 c
9.2 c
17.0
..
12.7
9.2 c
26.0
..
7.5 c

57.8
18.7
33.1 c27.6 d26.9 c29.3 d
14.3 c29.7 c19.0 c20.4..
26.2
21.5 c40.7..
13.1 c

77.0
54.8
79.8
31.0
24.5
54.5
75.5
51.6
39.3
28.0
18.2
63.1
51.6
59.0
..
57.6

85.7
66.2
98.6
65.7
80.7
71.2
84.5
65.0
68.4
69.1
48.1
74.6
67.8
64.5
..
79.2
Continued →TA B L E 5 / GEND ER INEQUALITY IND EX

295

TAB LE 5

SDG 3.1
Maternal
mortality ratio

Gender Inequality Index

HDI RANK

177 Liberia
177 Madagascar
179 Guinea-Bissau
180 Congo (Democratic Republic of the)181 Guinea
182 Afghanistan
183 Mozambique
184 Sierra Leone
185 Burkina Faso
186 Yemen
187 Burundi
188 Mali
189 Chad
189 Niger
191 Central African Republic
192 South Sudan
193 Somalia
Other countries or territories
Korea (Democratic People’s Rep. of)
MonacoHuman development groups
Very high human development
High human development
Medium human development
Low human development
Developing countries
Regions
Arab States
East Asia and the Pacific
Europe and Central Asia
Latin America and the Caribbean
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
Least developed countries
Small island developing states
Organisation for Economic Co‑operation
and Development
World

296

SDG 3.7
Adolescentbirth rate

(deaths per(births per 1,000
100,000 live births) women ages 15–19)
2020
2022

SDG 5.5
Share of seatsin parliament

SDG 4.4
Population with at least somesecondary education

Labour force participation ratea(% held
by women)2022(% ages 25 and older)
Female
Male
2022b
2022b

(% ages 15 and older)
Female
Male
2022
2022

Value
2022

Rank
2022

0.656
0.574
0.631
0.605
0.609
0.665
0.477
0.613
0.577
0.820
0.499
0.607
0.671
0.609
..
..
0.674

161
145
159
152
154
162
118
157
146
166
128
153
163
154
..
..
164

652
392
725
547
553
620
127
443
264
183
494
440
1,063
441
835
1,223
621

122.0
118.1
85.8
107.5
112.2
79.7
165.1
97.9
108.7
52.5
52.6
147.7
135.7
168.0
159.0
97.4
116.1

9.7
17.8
13.7
14.8
29.6
27.2 m
42.4
12.3
16.9
0.3
38.9
28.6
25.9
25.9
12.9
32.3
20.7

19.7 d15.9
10.9
38.8 c
7.5 c
7.0
17.9
14.5 c11.2 c
23.7
8.2 c
8.0
3.7 c
2.6 c
14.2
26.5 q4.4

45.8 d21.2
24.6
65.7 c20.0 c24.1
25.1
33.9 c20.3 c38.2
13.8 c15.5
15.0 c4.5 c
31.8
36.4 q
17.8

43.5
78.8
52.1
60.0
44.6
23.3
73.9
48.3
27.5
5.8
78.0
51.5
51.1
64.6
..
..
22.3

50.1
88.9
66.1
66.4
67.0
77.1
80.1
55.9
41.0
64.7
79.1
85.0
75.0
96.5
..
..
49.3

..
..

..
..

107
..

2.4
6.9

17.6
33.3

..
..

..
..

..
39.5

..
56.6

0.150
0.339
0.476
0.579
0.485

—
—
—
—
—

15
65
152
497
235

13.5
28.7
37.8
88.3
45.9

29.3
26.0
23.0
24.0
24.3

87.7
74.0
40.5
21.3
56.8

90.1
78.4
55.6
31.9
65.4

54.0
49.8
34.2
50.8
44.9

69.4
74.2
75.7
77.5
75.3

0.523
0.340
0.224
0.386
0.478
0.565
0.556
0.457

—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—

128
78
21
85
132
516
354
203

44.2
21.4
19.5
52.3
27.9
99.3
92.4
50.6

18.3
21.0
26.0
34.1
17.9
26.4
25.1
27.0

51.0
72.5
83.7
64.4
40.9
30.9
23.4
58.8

57.4
79.0
89.9
64.2
55.7
42.0
33.8
62.3

19.9
54.0
45.4
51.6
28.1
63.9
50.4
51.4

70.2
75.4
69.6
75.3
76.3
76.4
75.5
69.8

0.194
0.462

—
—

21
215

18.5
41.9

32.7
26.2

86.7
64.1

89.3
71.0

53.0
46.8

68.7
73.9

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 5

Notes

DefinitionsaUpdated by HDRO based on data from International
Labour Organization (2023).

b

Data refer to 2022 or the most recent year available.

cUpdated by HDRO based on data from UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023).

Gender Inequality Index: A composite measure reflecting
inequality in achievement between women and men in three
dimensions: reproductive health, empowerment and the labour market. See Technical note 4 at http://hdr.undp.org/sites​/default/files/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf for details on how
the Gender Inequality Index is calculated.

dUpdated by HDRO based on data from Barro and Lee(2018) and UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023).

Maternal mortality ratio: Number of deaths due to pregnancy-­
related causes per 100,000 live births.

eRefers to 2018 based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

Adolescent birth rate: Number of births to women ages 15–19
per 1,000 women ages 15–19.

f

Refers to 2013 based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

g

Updated by HDRO based on data from UNESCO
Institute for Statistics (2023) and estimates using cross-­country regression.

Share of seats in parliament: Proportion of seats held by
women in the national parliament expressed as a percentage
of total seats. For countries with a bicameral legislative system,
the share of seats is calculated based on both houses.

hUpdated by HDRO based on data from Barro and Lee(2018) and estimates using cross-­country regression.

iRefers to 2011 based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

j

HDRO estimate based on data from Robert Barro andJong-­
Wha Lee, ICF Macro Demographic and Health
Surveys, the Organisation for Economic Co-­operation
and Development, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys and the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Institute for Statistics.

k

Excludes the 36 special rotating delegates appointed onan ad hoc basis.

lRefers to 2019 based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

m

Refers to 2021.

nUpdated by HDRO based on data from UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023) and UNICEF Multiple Indicator
Cluster Surveys for various years.

oRefers to 2019.

p

Refers to 2018.

q

Refers to 2008 based on UNESCO Institute for Statistics(2023).

Main data sources
Column 1: HDRO calculations based on data in columns 3–9.
Column 2: Calculated based on data in column 1.
Column 3: WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group and
UNDESA/Population Division 2023.
Column 4: UNDESA 2022.
Column 5: IPU 2023.
Columns 6 and 7: Barro and Lee 2018, ICF Macro Demographicand Health Surveys, OECD 2023, UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2023 and UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys.
Columns 8 and 9: ILO 2023.

Population with at least some secondary education: Percentage of the population ages 25 and older that has reached (butnot necessarily completed) a secondary level of education.
Labour force participation rate: Proportion of the working-­age
population (ages 15 and older) that engages in the labour market, either by working or actively looking for work, expressed asa percentage of the working-­age population.

TA B L E 5 / GEND ER INEQUALITY IND EX

297

TAB LE 6

Multidimensional Poverty Index: developing countries
SDG 1.2
Contribution of deprivationin dimension to overall
multidimensional povertya

Population in multidimensional povertya
Multidimensional
Poverty Indexa
Year andsurveyb

Headcount

2011–2022

Value

(%)

(thousands)
In survey
year
2021

Estimates based on surveys for 2017–2022
Albania
2017/2018 D
Algeria
2018/2019 M
Argentina
2019/2020 Me
Bangladesh
2019 MBenin
2017/2018 D
Burundi2016/2017 D
Cambodia
2021/2022 D
Cameroon2018 D
Central African Republic
2018/2019 M
Chad
2019 M
Congo (Democratic Republic of the)2017/2018 M
Costa Rica
2018 M
Cuba
2019 M
Dominican Republic
2019 M
Ecuador2018 N
Ethiopia2019 DFiji
2021 M
Gambia2019/2020 D
Georgia2018 MGhana
2017/2018 M
Guinea2018 D
Guinea-Bissau
2018/2019 M
Guyana2019/2020 M
Haiti
2016/2017 D
Honduras
2019 MIndia
2019/2021 D
Indonesia
2017 D
Iraq
2018 M
Jamaica2018 N
Jordan2017/2018 D
Kiribati
2018/2019 M
Kyrgyzstan
2018 M
Lao People's Democratic Republic
2017 M
Lesotho2018 M
Liberia
2019/2020 D
Madagascar
2021 D
Malawi2019/2020 M
Maldives
2016/2017 D
Mali
2018 D
Mauritania
2019/2021 D
Mexico2021 N
Mongolia
2018 M
Montenegro
2018 M
Morocco2017/2018 P
Mozambique
2019/2020 N
Nepal
2019 M
Nigeria
2021 M
North Macedonia
2018/2019 M
Pakistan
2017/2018 D
Palestine, State of
2019/2020 M
Papua New Guinea
2016/2018 D
Peru
2021 N
Philippines
2017 D
Rwanda2019/2020 D
Samoa
2019/2020 M
Sao Tome and Principe
2019 M
Senegal2019 D
Serbia2019 M
Seychelles
2019 N

0.003
0.005
0.001 f0.104
0.368
0.409 g
0.070
0.232
0.461
0.517
0.331
0.002 f,h
0.003 f
0.009
0.008
0.367
0.006
0.198
0.001 f
0.111
0.373
0.341
0.007 i
0.200
0.051
0.069
0.014 j0.033
0.011 k
0.002
0.080
0.001
0.108
0.084 h
0.259
0.386
0.231
0.003
0.376
0.327
0.016 l,m
0.028 n0.005
0.027 o0.372 k,p0.074
0.175 j,q
0.001
0.198
0.002
0.263 j0.026
0.024 j
0.231
0.025
0.048
0.263
0.000 f,r
0.003 h,s

0.7
1.4
0.4 f
24.6
66.8
75.1 g
16.6
43.6
80.4
84.2
64.5
0.5 f,h
0.7 f
2.3
2.1
68.7
1.5
41.7
0.3 f
24.6
66.2
64.4
1.8 i
41.3
12.0
16.4
3.6 j
8.6
2.8 k
0.4
19.8
0.4
23.1
19.6 h
52.3
68.4
49.9
0.8
68.3
58.4
4.1 l,m
7.3 n
1.2
6.4 o
61.9 k,p17.5
33.0 j,q
0.4
38.3
0.6
56.6 j
6.6
5.8 j
48.8
6.3
11.7
50.8
0.1 f,r0.9 h,s

20
590
195 f
40,784
7,976
8,378 g
2,791
10,931
4,189
13,57556,18727 f,h80 f
247
356
78,443
14
1,074
13 f
7,606
8,313
1,269
15 i
4,483
1,193
230,739
9,572 j
3,505
78 k
45
25
24
1,615
431 h
2,662
19,7849,666
413,622
2,697
5,156 l,m
230 n
82,285 o19,310 k,p
5,047
70,516 j,q
884,22828
5,283 j
2,236
6,187 j
6,418
14
25
8,134
8 f,r
1 h,s

Country

20
610
196 f
41,7308,682
9,426 g
2,761
11,856
4,388
14,461
61,86928 f,h80 f
252
372
82,679
14
1,101
13 f
8,089
8,960
1,327
15 i
4,724
1,231
230,739
9,907 j
3,759
78 k
48
26
26
1,713
447 h
2,717
19,7849,922
414,9682,697
5,156 l,m
243 n
82,358 o19,866 k,p
5,258
70,516 j,q
888,701
29
5,634 j
2,236
6,600 j
6,572
14
26
8,579
8 f,r
1 h,s

Population
Population
Inequality
in severe
vulnerable toIntensity of
among
multidimensional multidimensional
deprivation the poor
povertypovertyaHealthStandard
Education of living

SDG 1.2
SDG 1.1
Population living below
monetary poverty line(%)
National
povertyline

PPP $2.15
a day

(%)

Value

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

2011–2021c

2011–2021c

39.1
39.2
34.0 f42.2
55.0
54.4 g
42.3
53.2
57.4
61.4
51.3
37.1 f,h38.1 f
38.8
38.0
53.3
38.1
47.5
36.6 f
45.1
56.4
52.9
39.3 i
48.4
42.7
42.0
38.7 j37.9
38.9 k
35.4
40.5
36.3
47.0
43.0 h
49.6
56.4
46.3
34.4
55.0
56.0
40.5 l,m38.8 n39.6
42.0 o60.0 k,p42.5
52.9 j,q
38.2
51.7
35.0
46.5 j38.9
41.8 j
47.3
39.1
40.9
51.7
38.1 f,r34.2 h,s

.. d
0.007
.. d
0.010
0.025
0.022 g
0.009
0.026
0.025
0.024
0.020
.. d
.. d
0.006
0.004
0.022
.. d
0.016
.. d
0.014
0.025
0.021
0.007 i
0.019
0.011
0.010
0.006 j0.005
0.005 k
.. d
0.006
.. d
0.016
0.009 h
0.018
0.026
0.012
.. d
0.022
0.024
0.007 l,m
0.004 n.. d
0.012 o0.037 k,p0.010
0.027 j,q
.. d
0.023
.. d
0.016 j0.006
0.010 j
0.014
0.003
0.007
0.019
.. d
.. d

0.1
0.2
0.0 f
6.5
40.9
46.1 g
4.1
24.6
55.8
64.6
36.8
0.0 f,h
0.1 f
0.2
0.1
41.9
0.2
17.3
0.0 f
8.4
43.5
35.9
0.2 i
18.5
3.0
4.2
0.4 j
1.3
0.2 k
0.0
3.5
0.0
9.6
5.0 h
24.9
45.8
17.5
0.0
44.7
38.0
0.8 l,m
0.8 n
0.1
1.4 o
43.0 k,p4.9
18.1 j,q
0.1
21.5
0.0
25.8 j
0.9
1.3 j
19.7
0.5
2.1
27.7
0.0 f,r0.0 h,s

5.0
3.6
1.6 f
18.2
14.7
15.8 g
20.5
17.6
12.9
10.7
17.4
2.4 f,h
2.7 f
4.8
5.9
18.4
7.4
28.0
2.1 f
20.1
16.4
20.0
6.5 i
21.8
14.8
18.7
4.7 j
5.2
5.0 k
0.7
30.2
5.2
21.2
28.6 h
23.3
15.4
27.5
4.8
15.3
12.3
3.5 l,m15.5 n2.9
10.9 o13.9 k,p17.8
16.6 j,q
2.2
12.9
1.3
25.3 j
10.4
7.3 j
22.7
12.9
17.0
18.2
2.1 f,r
0.4 h,s28.3
31.2
69.7 f17.3
20.8
23.8 g
21.5
25.2
20.2
19.1
23.1
40.5 f,h10.1 f
14.6
33.9
14.0
38.0
32.7
47.1 f
23.6
21.4
19.1
30.4 i
18.5
18.8
32.2
34.7 j33.1
52.2 k
37.5
30.3
64.6
21.5
21.9 h
19.7
17.8
18.6
80.7
19.6
17.7
64.1 l,m21.1 n58.5
24.4 o27.3 k,p23.2
19.5 j,q
29.6
27.6
62.9
4.6 j
14.0
20.3 j
19.0
36.9
18.7
20.7
30.9 f,r66.8 h,s

55.1
49.3
21.4 f37.6
36.3
27.2 g
48.0
27.6
27.8
36.6
19.9
41.0 f,h39.8 f
46.2
27.3
31.5
17.4
33.0
23.8 f
30.5
38.4
35.0
22.4 i
24.6
39.2
28.2
26.8 j60.9
20.9 k
53.5
12.1
17.9
39.7
18.1 h
28.6
31.6
25.5
15.1
41.2
42.4
13.6 l,m26.8 n22.3
46.8 o26.3 k,p33.9
35.5 j,q
52.6
41.3
31.0
30.1 j33.6
31.0 j
26.6
31.2
36.6
48.4
40.1 f,r
32.1 h,s

16.7
19.5
8.9 f
45.1
42.9
49.0 g
30.5
47.1
52.0
44.3
57.0
18.5 f,h50.1 f
39.2
38.8
54.5
44.6
34.3
29.1 f
45.9
40.3
45.8
47.2 i
57.0
42.0
39.7
38.5 j6.0
26.9 k
9.0
57.6
17.5
38.8
60.0 h
51.7
50.6
55.9
4.2
39.3
39.9
22.3 l,m
52.1 n19.2
28.8 o46.4 k,p43.0
45.0 j,q
17.8
31.1
6.1
65.3 j52.4
48.7 j
54.4
31.9
44.6
30.9
29.0 f,r
1.1 h,s

21.8
5.5
42.0
24.3
38.5
64.9
17.7
37.5
..
42.3
63.9
30.0
..
21.0
33.0
23.5
24.1
48.6
21.3
23.4
43.7
47.7
..
58.5
48.0
21.9
9.8
18.9
19.9
15.7
21.9
25.3
18.3
49.7
50.9
70.7
50.7
5.4
44.6
31.8
43.9
27.8
22.6
4.8
46.1
..
40.1
21.8
21.9
29.2
..
30.1
16.7
38.2
20.3
66.7
46.7
21.7
25.3

0.0
0.5
1.0
13.5
19.9
65.1
..
25.7
..
30.9
69.7
1.2
..
0.9
3.6
27.0
1.3
17.2
5.5
25.2
13.8
21.7
..
29.2
12.7
10.0
3.5
0.1
..
..
1.7
1.3
7.1
32.4
27.6
80.7
70.1
0.0
14.8
6.5
3.1
0.7
2.8
1.4
64.6
..
30.9
2.7
4.9
0.5
..
2.9
3.0
52.0
1.2
15.6
9.3
1.6
0.5
Continued →298

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 6

SDG 1.2
Contribution of deprivationin dimension to overall
multidimensional povertya

Population in multidimensional povertya
Multidimensional
Poverty Indexa
Year andsurveyb

Headcount

Population
Population
Inequality
in severe
vulnerable toIntensity of
among
multidimensional multidimensional
deprivation the poor
povertypovertyaStandard
Education of living

National
povertyline

PPP $2.15
a day

2011–2022

Value

(%)

(thousands)
In survey
year
2021

(%)

Value

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

(%)

2011–2021c

2011–2021c

Sierra Leone
2019 D
Suriname2018 M
Tajikistan
2017 D
Thailand2019 M
Togo
2017 M
Tonga
2019 M
Tunisia2018 M
Turkmenistan
2019 M
Tuvalu2019/2020 M
Uzbekistan
2021/2022 M
Viet Nam
2020/2021 M
Zambia2018 D
Zimbabwe2019 M
Estimates based on surveys for 2011–2016
Afghanistan
2015/2016 D
Angola2015/2016 D
Armenia
2015/2016 D
Barbados2012 M
Belize2015/2016 M
Bolivia (Plurinational State of)2016 N
Bosnia and Herzegovina
2011/2012 M
Botswana
2015/2016 N
Brazil2015 Nv
China
2014 Nw
Colombia
2015/2016 D
Comoros2012 D
Congo
2014/2015 M
Côte d'Ivoire
2016 M
Egypt2014 DEl Salvador
2014 M
Eswatini (Kingdom of)2014 M
Gabon
2012 D
Guatemala2014/2015 D
Kazakhstan
2015 M
Kenya
2014 D
Libya
2014 P
Moldova (Republic of)2012 M
Myanmar2015/2016 D
Namibia2013 D
Nicaragua
2011/2012 D
Niger
2012 D
Paraguay
2016 M
Saint Lucia
2012 M
South Africa
2016 D
Sri Lanka
2016 N
Sudan
2014 M
Tanzania (United Republic of)
2015/2016 D
Timor-Leste2016 D
Trinidad and Tobago
2011 M
Uganda2016 D
Ukraine2012 M
Yemen
2013 D
Developing countries—
Regions
Arab States—
East Asia and the Pacific—
Europe and Central Asia—
Latin America and the Caribbean—
South Asia—
Sub-Saharan Africa
—

0.293
0.011
0.029
0.002 f
0.180
0.003
0.003
0.001 h0.008
0.006 j,t
0.008 j
0.232
0.110

59.2
2.9
7.4
0.6 f
37.6
0.9
0.8
0.2 h
2.1
1.7 j,t
1.9 j
47.9
25.8

4,765
17
664
412 f
2,954
1
94
15 h
0
599 j,t
1,871 j
8,544
3,961

4,987
17
726
414 f
3,252
1
97
16 h
0
589 j,t
1,871 j
9,329
4,126

49.5
39.4
39.0
36.7 f
47.8
38.1
36.5
34.0 h38.2
35.3 j,t40.3 j
48.4
42.6

0.019
0.007
0.004
0.003 f
0.016
.. d
.. d
.. d
0.002
0.001 j,t
0.010 j
0.015
0.009

28.0
0.4
0.7
0.0 f
15.2
0.0
0.1
0.0 h
0.0
0.0 j,t
0.4 j
21.0
6.8

21.3
4.0
20.1
6.1 f
23.8
6.4
2.4
0.3 h
12.2
0.2 j,t
3.5 j
23.9
26.3

23.0
20.4
47.8
38.3 f
20.9
38.2
24.4
82.4 h36.5
94.5 j,t
22.9 j
21.5
23.6

24.1
43.8
26.5
45.1 f
28.1
40.7
61.6
15.5 h43.6
0.0 j,t40.7 j
25.0
17.3

53.0
35.8
25.8
16.7 f
50.9
21.1
14.0
2.1 h
20.0
5.5 j,t36.4 j
53.5
59.2

56.8
..
26.3
6.8
45.5
..
15.2
..
..
14.1
6.7
54.4
38.3

26.1
..
6.1
0.0
28.1
1.8
0.1
..
..
..
0.7
61.4
39.8

0.272 j0.282
0.001 g0.009 k0.017
0.038
0.008 k0.073 u0.016 f,j,v
0.016 x,y
0.020 j
0.181
0.112
0.236
0.020 g,h
0.032
0.081
0.070 g0.134
0.002 f,g
0.171 g
0.007
0.004
0.176
0.185 g0.074 g0.601 g0.019
0.007 k
0.025
0.011
0.279
0.284 g0.222 g0.002 f0.281 g0.001 g,j0.245 g0.088

55.9 j
51.1
0.2 g
2.5 k
4.3
9.1
2.2 k
17.2 u3.8 f,j,v
3.9 x,y
4.8 j
37.3
24.3
46.1
5.2 g,h7.9
19.2
15.6 g28.9
0.5 f,g37.5 g2.0
0.9
38.3
40.9 g16.5 g91.0 g
4.5
1.9 k
6.3
2.9
52.3
57.1 g48.3 g0.6 f
57.2 g
0.2 g,j48.5 g18.2

19,365 j
14,899
5g
7k
16
1,020
80 k
405 u
7,883 f,j,v
53,815 x,y2,308 j255
1,229
11,1555,008 g,h
488
216
287 g
4,621
81 f,g17,176 g
122
33
19,883901 g
993 g
16,333 g
282
3k
3,530
626
19,36331,046 g
591 g
9f
22,152 g
111 g,j13,078 g
1,051,611

22,420 j
17,633
5g
7k
17
1,094
72 k
446 u
8,234 f,j,v
55,396 x,y2,497 j306
1,416
12,6595,724 g,h
496
229
365 g
5,086
87 f,g19,865 g
135
29
20,613
1,034 g
1,128 g22,973 g
302
3k
3,716
636
23,89236,288 g
637 g
10 f
26,214 g
106 g,j15,985 g
1,116,713

48.6 j55.3
36.2 g34.2 k39.8
41.7
37.9 k
42.2 u42.5 f,j,v
41.4 x,y40.6 j
48.5
46.0
51.2
37.6 g,h41.3
42.3
44.7 g46.2
35.6 f,g
45.6 g
37.1
37.4
45.9
45.2 g45.3 g66.1 g41.9
37.5 k
39.8
38.3
53.4
49.8 g45.9 g38.0 f49.2 g34.4 g,j50.6 g48.5

0.020 j
0.024
.. d
.. d
0.007
0.008
0.002 k0.008 u0.008 f,j,v
0.005 x,y0.009 j
0.020
0.013
0.019
0.004 g,h
0.009
0.009
0.013 g0.013.. d0.014 g
0.003
.. d
0.015
0.013 g0.013 g0.026 g
0.013
.. d
0.005
0.004
0.023
0.016 g0.014 g.. d0.017 g.. d
0.021 g0.017

24.9 j
32.5
0.0 g
0.0 k
0.6
1.9
0.1 k
3.5 u
0.9 f,j,v
0.3 x,y
0.8 j
16.1
9.4
24.5
0.6 g,h
1.7
4.4
5.1 g
11.2
0.0 f,g12.4 g0.1
0.1
13.8
13.1 g5.6 g76.3 g
1.0
0.0 k
0.9
0.3
30.9
27.5 g17.4 g0.1 f
25.7 g
0.0 g,j24.3 g7.9

18.1 j
15.5
2.8 g
0.5 k
8.4
12.1
4.1 k
19.7 u6.2 f,j,v
17.4 x,y
6.2 j
22.3
21.3
17.6
6.1 g,h9.9
20.9
18.4 g
21.1
1.8 f,g35.8 g
11.4
3.7
21.9
19.2 g13.4 g
4.9 g
7.2
1.6 k
12.2
14.3
17.7
23.4 g26.8 g
3.7 f
23.6 g
0.4 g,j22.3 g14.8

10.0 j21.2
33.1 g96.0 k
39.5
18.7
79.7 k30.3 u49.8 f,j,v
35.2 x,y12.0 j
20.8
23.4
19.6
40.0 g,h
15.5
29.3
32.7 g26.3
90.4 f,g
23.5 g
39.0
9.2
18.5
31.6 g11.5 g21.4 g14.3
69.5 k
39.5
32.5
21.1
22.5 g29.3 g45.5 f24.0 g60.5 g,j29.0 g24.2

45.0 j32.1
36.8 g
0.7 k
20.9
31.5
7.2 k
16.5 u22.9 f,j,v
39.2 x,y39.5 j
31.6
20.2
40.4
53.1 g,h43.4
17.9
21.4 g
35.0
3.1 f,g15.0 g
48.6
42.4
32.3
13.9 g36.2 g36.7 g
38.9
7.5 k
13.1
24.4
29.2
22.3 g23.1 g34.0 f21.6 g28.4 g,j30.4 g31.6

45.0 j46.8
30.1 g
3.3 k
39.6
49.8
13.1 k
53.2 u27.3 f,j,v
25.6 x,y48.5 j
47.6
56.4
40.0
6.9 g,h41.1
52.8
46.0 g
38.7
6.4 f,g61.5 g
12.4
48.4
49.2
54.4 g52.3 g41.8 g46.8
23.0 k
47.4
43.0
49.8
55.2 g47.6 g20.5 f
54.5 g11.2 g,j40.6 g
44.2

54.5
32.3
26.5
..
..
36.4
16.9
..
..
0.0
39.3
42.4
40.9
39.5
32.5
26.2
58.9
33.4
59.3
5.2
36.1
..
24.5
24.8
17.4
24.9
40.8
26.9
25.0
55.5
4.1
..
26.4
41.8
..
20.3
1.6
48.6
20.1

..
31.1
0.5
..
..
2.0
0.1
15.4
5.8
0.1
6.6
18.6
35.4
11.4
1.5
3.6
36.1
2.5
9.5
0.0
29.4
..
0.0
2.0
15.6
3.9
50.6
0.7
5.1
20.5
1.0
15.3
44.9
24.4
..
42.2
0.0
19.8
10.5

0.074
0.022
0.004
0.024
0.091
0.262

15.1
5.1
1.2
5.6
20.5
49.5

44,119102,302
1,671
31,712
380,793491,015

52,636
105,845
1,713
33,258389,488533,772

48.9
42.4
37.1
43.1
44.6
52.9

0.019
0.008
0.003
0.011
0.014
0.022

6.9
0.9
0.1
1.5
6.9
27.9

9.0
14.4
2.5
6.5
17.9
18.6

26.1
28.1
66.7
33.5
27.9
20.6

34.3
35.8
16.5
27.6
33.7
29.6

39.7
36.1
16.8
38.9
38.3
49.8

23.4
3.8
12.2
37.9
22.6
41.1

4.7
0.8
0.7
4.9
9.2
37.4

Country

Health

SDG 1.2
SDG 1.1
Population living below
monetary poverty line(%)

TA B L E 6 / MULTIDIMEN S IONAL P OVERTY IND EX: D EVELOP ING COU NTR IES

299

TAB LE 6

Notesa

Not all indicators were available for all countries, so
caution should be used in cross-country comparisons.
When an indicator is missing, weights of available indicators are adjusted to total 100 percent. See Technicalnote 5 at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr2023_­
technical_notes.pdf for details.

uvCaptures only deaths of children under age 5 who diedin the last five years and deaths of children ages 12–18
years who died in the last two years.
The methodology was adjusted to account for missing
indicator on nutrition and incomplete indicator on childmortality (the survey did not collect the date of childdeaths).

D indicates data from Demographic and Health Surveys, M indicates data from Multiple Indicator Cluster
Surveys, N indicates data from national surveys andP indicates data from Pan Arab Population and Family
Health Surveys (see https://hdr.undp.org/mpi-2023-faqs
and Methodological Note 55 at https://ophi.org.uk/mpi​-­methodological-note-55/ for the list of national surveys).

w

Based on the version of data accessed on 7 June 2016.

x

Given the information available in the data, child mortality was constructed based on deaths that occurred
between surveys—that is, between 2012 and 2014.
Child deaths reported by an adult man in the household
were taken into account because the date of death wasreported.

c

Data refer to the most recent year available during theperiod specified.

ydValue is not reported because it is based on a small
number of multidimensionally poor people.

e

Urban areas only.

fConsiders child deaths that occurred at any time because the survey did not collect the date of child deaths.

g

Revised estimate from the 2020 MPI.

h

Missing indicator on cooking fuel.

i

Revised estimate from the 2022 MPI based on the survey microdata update.

jMissing indicator on nutrition.

k

Missing indicator on child mortality.

lChild mortality data were not used because the data
were collected from a sample of women ages 15–49 thatwas not representative of the female population in thatage group.

bmAnthropometric data were collected from all children
under age 5 and from selected individuals who are age
5 or older. Construction of the nutrition indicator was restricted to children under age 5 since the anthropometric sample is representative of the under 5 population.

n

Indicator on sanitation follows the national classificationin which pit latrine with slab is considered unimproved.

oFollowing the national report, latrines are considered an
improved source for the sanitation indicator.

pSome 235 households were present in the individual
datafile but not in the asset datafile. It is assumed thatthese households owned zero relevant assets.

q

The analytical sample was restricted to the Multiple
Indicator Cluster Survey sample, and its sample weight
was used, because child mortality information was notcollected for the National Immunization Coverage Survey sample.

r

Because of the high proportion of children excluded
from nutrition indicators due to measurements not being
taken, estimates based on the 2019 Serbia Multiple
Indicator Cluster Survey should be interpreted withcaution. The unweighted sample size used for the multidimensional poverty calculation is 82.8 percent.

sMissing indicator on school attendance.

t

The analytical sample was restricted to the round 2
sample because standard of living questions were notcollected for the round 1 sample.

300

Missing indicator on housing.

Definitions
Multidimensional Poverty Index: Proportion of the populationthat is multidimensionally poor adjusted by the intensity of thedeprivations. See Technical note 5 at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/
default/files/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf for details on how
the Multidimensional Poverty Index is calculated.
Multidimensional poverty headcount: Population with a deprivation score of at least 33.3 percent. It is expressed as ashare of the population in the survey year, the number of multidimensionally poor people in the survey year and the projected
number of multidimensionally poor people in 2021.
Intensity of deprivation of multidimensional poverty: Average
deprivation score experienced by people in multidimensional
poverty.
Inequality among the poor: Variance of individual deprivation
scores of poor people. It is calculated by subtracting the deprivation score of each multidimensionally poor person from theintensity, squaring the differences and dividing the sum of theweighted squares by the number of multidimensionally poor
people.
Population in severe multidimensional poverty: Percentageof the population in severe multidimensional poverty—that is,
those with a deprivation score of 50 percent or more.
Population vulnerable to multidimensional poverty: Percentage of the population at risk of suffering multiple deprivations—that is, those with a deprivation score of 20–33.3 percent.
Contribution of deprivation in dimension to overall multi‑
dimensional poverty: Percentage of the Multidimensional Poverty Index attributed to deprivations in each dimension.
Population living below national poverty line: Percentage ofthe population living below the national poverty line, which isthe poverty line deemed appropriate for a country by its authorities. National estimates are based on population-weighted
subgroup estimates from household surveys.
Population living below PPP $2.15 a day: Percentage of the
population living below the international poverty line of $2.15 (in2017 purchasing power parity [PPP] terms) a day.

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Main data sources
Column 1: Refers to the year and the survey whose data wereused to calculate the country’s Multidimensional Poverty Index
value and its components.
Columns 2–12: HDRO and OPHI calculations based on data on
household deprivations in health, education, and standard ofliving from various surveys listed in column 1 using the methodology described in Technical note 5 at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/
default/files/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf. Columns 4 and 5
also use population data from UNDESA (2022).
Columns 13 and 14: World Bank 2022.

TA BL E 7

Planetary pressures–adjusted Human Development Index
Human
Development
Index (HDI)

Planetary pressures–adjusted HDI (PHDI)

SDG 9.4
Adjustment factor
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxidefor planetary
emissions per
emissionspressures
capita (production) (production) index

SDG 8.4, 12.2
Material footprint
per capita

Material
footprint index

Value

Value

Difference from
HDI valuea (%)

Difference from
HDI ranka

Value(tonnes)Value(tonnes)Value

HDI RANK

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2021

2021

2022

2022

Very high human development
1 Switzerland
2 Norway
3 Iceland
4 Hong Kong, China (SAR)
5 Denmark
5 Sweden
7 Germany
7 Ireland
9 Singapore
10 Australia
10 Netherlands
12 Belgium
12 Finland
12 Liechtenstein
15 United Kingdom
16 New Zealand
17 United Arab Emirates
18 Canada
19 Korea (Republic of)
20 Luxembourg
20 United States
22 Austria
22 Slovenia
24 Japan
25 Israel
25 Malta
27 Spain
28 France
29 Cyprus
30 Italy
31 Estonia
32 Czechia
33 Greece
34 Bahrain
35 Andorra
36 Poland
37 Latvia
37 Lithuania
39 Croatia
40 Qatar
40 Saudi Arabia
42 Portugal
43 San Marino
44 Chile
45 Slovakia
45 Türkiye
47 Hungary
48 Argentina
49 Kuwait
50 Montenegro
51 Saint Kitts and Nevis
52 Uruguay
53 Romania
54 Antigua and Barbuda
55 Brunei Darussalam
56 Russian Federation
57 Bahamas
57 Panama
59 Oman

0.967
0.966
0.959
0.956
0.952
0.952
0.950
0.950
0.949
0.946
0.946
0.942
0.942
0.942
0.940
0.939
0.937
0.935
0.929
0.927
0.927
0.926
0.926
0.920
0.915
0.915
0.911
0.910
0.907
0.906
0.899
0.895
0.893
0.888
0.884
0.881
0.879
0.879
0.878
0.875
0.875
0.874
0.867
0.860
0.855
0.855
0.851
0.849
0.847
0.844
0.838
0.830
0.827
0.826
0.823
0.821
0.820
0.820
0.819

0.826
0.808
0.806
..
0.839
0.839
0.833
0.814
0.745
0.763
0.796
0.803
0.787
..
0.846
0.814
0.688
0.726
0.775
0.685
0.740
0.789
0.832
0.809
0.780
0.806
0.839
0.823
0.803
0.825
0.766
0.782
0.809
0.673
..
0.780
0.782
0.748
0.807
0.450
0.690
0.807
..
0.786
0.776
0.783
0.769
0.782
0.580
..
..
0.784
0.759
..
0.576
0.725
0.744
0.773
0.593

14.6
16.4
16.0
..
11.9
11.9
12.3
14.3
21.5
19.3
15.9
14.8
16.5
..
10.0
13.3
26.6
22.4
16.6
26.1
20.2
14.8
10.2
12.1
14.8
11.9
7.9
9.6
11.5
8.9
14.8
12.6
9.4
24.2
..
11.5
11.0
14.9
8.1
48.6
21.1
7.7
..
8.6
9.2
8.4
9.6
7.9
31.5
..
..
5.5
8.2
..
30.0
11.7
9.3
5.7
27.6

–6
–12
–14
..
2
2
1
–4
–38
–29
–12
–8
–12
..
12
4
–58
–40
–16
–58
–30
–2
14
10
–7
6
23
17
8
20
–8
3
19
–54
..
3
7
–10
21
–108
–35
24
..
16
9
15
8
17
–68
..
..
21
6
..
–69
–8
3
16
–55

0.854
0.837
0.841
..
0.881
0.881
0.876
0.857
0.785
0.807
0.842
0.852
0.835
..
0.900
0.867
0.735
0.776
0.835
0.739
0.798
0.852
0.898
0.879
0.852
0.881
0.921
0.905
0.886
0.910
0.852
0.874
0.906
0.758
..
0.885
0.890
0.851
0.920
0.514
0.789
0.924
..
0.914
0.907
0.916
0.904
0.921
0.685
..
..
0.945
0.917
..
0.700
0.883
0.907
0.943
0.724

4.1
7.6
9.5
4.4
5.1
3.7
8.1
7.5
9.4
14.9
8.0
8.2
6.9
3.7
5.2
6.7
25.3
14.1
11.9
13.2
14.9
7.4
6.2
8.5
6.2
3.1
4.8
4.8
5.6
5.7
7.8
9.2
5.5
26.1
4.6
8.6
3.9
5.0
4.3
39.9
17.6
3.9
..
4.6
6.5
5.3
5.0
4.2
24.3
3.7
4.7
2.4
4.0
6.4
25.4
11.8
5.1
2.7
15.7

0.946
0.901
0.876
0.943
0.934
0.952
0.894
0.902
0.877
0.805
0.896
0.892
0.911
0.951
0.933
0.913
0.669
0.816
0.845
0.828
0.805
0.903
0.920
0.889
0.920
0.960
0.937
0.938
0.926
0.926
0.898
0.880
0.928
0.660
0.940
0.887
0.950
0.935
0.944
0.479
0.771
0.949
..
0.940
0.916
0.930
0.935
0.945
0.683
0.952
0.939
0.969
0.948
0.916
0.669
0.846
0.933
0.965
0.795

33.6
32.1
27.4
..
24.2
26.7
19.9
26.3
43.2
26.9
29.8
26.5
33.9
..
18.7
25.2
28.2
37.2
24.7
49.2
29.3
28.0
17.4
18.5
30.2
28.0
13.3
18.1
21.8
14.8
27.3
18.6
16.2
20.3
..
16.5
23.9
32.8
14.8
63.6
27.1
14.3
..
15.8
14.2
13.8
17.9
14.5
44.0
..
..
11.2
16.0
..
37.8
11.4
16.7
11.1
49.0

0.761
0.772
0.805
..
0.828
0.811
0.859
0.813
0.694
0.809
0.788
0.811
0.760
..
0.868
0.821
0.800
0.736
0.825
0.651
0.792
0.801
0.877
0.869
0.785
0.801
0.906
0.872
0.845
0.895
0.806
0.868
0.885
0.856
..
0.883
0.830
0.767
0.895
0.548
0.808
0.898
..
0.888
0.899
0.902
0.873
0.897
0.688
..
..
0.921
0.887
..
0.731
0.919
0.882
0.921
0.652
Continued →TA B L E 7 / PL A N ETA RY PR ES S U R ES –ADJU STED H U MAN D EVELOP MENT IND EX

301

TAB LE 7

Human
Development
Index (HDI)

Planetary pressures–adjusted HDI (PHDI)

SDG 9.4
Adjustment factor
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxidefor planetary
emissions per
emissionspressures
capita (production) (production) index

SDG 8.4, 12.2
Material footprint
per capita

Material
footprint index
Value

Value

Value

Difference from
HDI valuea (%)

Difference from
HDI ranka

Value(tonnes)Value(tonnes)

HDI RANK

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2021

2021

2022

2022

60 Georgia
60 Trinidad and Tobago
62 Barbados
63 Malaysia
64 Costa Rica
65 Serbia
66 Thailand
67 Kazakhstan
67 Seychelles
69 Belarus
High human development
70 Bulgaria
71 Palau
72 Mauritius
73 Grenada
74 Albania
75 China
76 Armenia
77 Mexico
78 Iran (Islamic Republic of)
78 Sri Lanka
80 Bosnia and Herzegovina
81 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
82 Dominican Republic
83 Ecuador
83 North Macedonia
85 Cuba
86 Moldova (Republic of)
87 Maldives
87 Peru
89 Azerbaijan
89 Brazil
91 Colombia
92 Libya
93 Algeria
94 Turkmenistan
95 Guyana
96 Mongolia
97 Dominica
98 Tonga
99 Jordan
100 Ukraine
101 Tunisia
102 Marshall Islands
102 Paraguay
104 Fiji
105 Egypt
106 Uzbekistan
107 Viet Nam
108 Saint Lucia
109 Lebanon
110 South Africa
111 Palestine, State of
112 Indonesia
113 Philippines
114 Botswana
115 Jamaica
116 Samoa
117 Kyrgyzstan
118 Belize

0.814
0.814
0.809
0.807
0.806
0.805
0.803
0.802
0.802
0.801

0.767
..
..
0.704
0.763
0.732
0.750
0.688
..
..

5.8
..
..
12.8
5.3
9.1
6.6
14.2
..
..

17
..
..
–11
17
3
14
–15
..
..

0.942
..
..
0.872
0.947
0.909
0.934
0.858
..
..

2.9
23.3
4.4
8.3
1.5
6.0
3.7
13.3
6.2
6.4

0.962
0.696
0.943
0.892
0.981
0.921
0.951
0.827
0.919
0.917

10.9
..
..
20.8
12.2
14.5
11.8
15.6
..
..

0.922
..
..
0.852
0.913
0.897
0.916
0.889
..
..

0.799
0.797
0.796
0.793
0.789
0.788
0.786
0.781
0.780
0.780
0.779
0.772
0.766
0.765
0.765
0.764
0.763
0.762
0.762
0.760
0.760
0.758
0.746
0.745
0.744
0.742
0.741
0.740
0.739
0.736
0.734
0.732
0.731
0.731
0.729
0.728
0.727
0.726
0.725
0.723
0.717
0.716
0.713
0.710
0.708
0.706
0.702
0.701
0.700

0.720
..
..
..
0.747
0.679
0.752
0.734
0.715
0.762
0.710
..
0.732
0.733
0.715
0.740
0.731
..
0.733
0.719
0.702
0.725
0.661
0.702
0.662
..
0.619
..
..
0.706
0.685
0.701
..
0.684
..
0.695
0.696
0.681
..
0.680
0.667
0.695
0.685
0.687
0.677
0.676
..
0.683
0.668

9.9
..
..
..
5.3
13.8
4.3
6.0
8.3
2.3
8.9
..
4.4
4.2
6.5
3.1
4.2
..
3.8
5.4
7.6
4.4
11.4
5.8
11.0
..
16.5
..
..
4.1
6.7
4.2
..
6.4
..
4.5
4.3
6.2
..
5.9
7.0
2.9
3.9
3.2
4.4
4.2
..
2.6
4.6

0
..
..
..
15
–22
20
13
3
24
3
..
14
17
7
22
16
..
21
13
7
18
–19
11
–15
..
–23
..
..
16
5
14
..
4
..
14
16
5
..
5
–1
19
14
16
8
8
..
14
7

0.901
..
..
..
0.947
0.862
0.957
0.939
0.917
0.976
0.911
..
0.956
0.958
0.935
0.968
0.958
..
0.962
0.946
0.924
0.957
0.886
0.942
0.890
..
0.836
..
..
0.960
0.934
0.957
..
0.936
..
0.955
0.958
0.938
..
0.940
0.930
0.970
0.960
0.968
0.956
0.957
..
0.975
0.954

6.1
12.3
3.1
2.6
1.7
8.0
2.5
3.7
7.8
0.9
6.1
2.3
2.1
2.2
3.7
1.9
1.8
3.3
1.7
3.7
2.3
1.9
9.5
4.1
11.0
4.4
11.4
2.1
1.8
2.0
4.8
2.9
3.6
1.4
1.2
2.3
3.4
3.6
2.6
4.2
7.2
0.7
2.2
1.3
2.4
2.3
1.2
1.4
1.8

0.920
0.839
0.959
0.965
0.978
0.896
0.967
0.952
0.898
0.988
0.920
0.970
0.972
0.971
0.952
0.976
0.976
0.957
0.978
0.951
0.970
0.976
0.876
0.947
0.856
0.942
0.851
0.973
0.976
0.973
0.937
0.962
0.953
0.982
0.985
0.971
0.955
0.953
0.966
0.945
0.906
0.991
0.971
0.984
0.969
0.969
0.985
0.981
0.977

16.5
..
..
..
11.7
24.3
7.4
10.3
8.9
5.0
13.9
..
8.5
7.7
11.6
5.6
8.5
..
7.8
8.3
17.1
8.8
14.6
8.7
10.7
..
25.3
..
..
7.6
9.8
6.7
..
15.4
..
8.4
5.6
10.8
..
9.2
6.7
7.1
7.0
6.8
8.0
7.7
..
4.4
9.8

0.883
..
..
..
0.917
0.828
0.948
0.927
0.937
0.965
0.901
..
0.940
0.945
0.917
0.960
0.939
..
0.945
0.941
0.879
0.937
0.896
0.938
0.924
..
0.820
..
..
0.946
0.930
0.952
..
0.891
..
0.940
0.960
0.924
..
0.935
0.953
0.949
0.950
0.952
0.943
0.945
..
0.968
0.931
Continued →3 02

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 7

HumanDevelopment
Index (HDI)HDI RANK

Medium human development
119 Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of)120 Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
120 Morocco
122 Nauru
123 Gabon
124 Suriname
125 Bhutan
126 Tajikistan
127 El Salvador
128 Iraq
129 Bangladesh
130 Nicaragua
131 Cabo Verde132 Tuvalu
133 Equatorial Guinea
134 India
135 Micronesia (Federated States of)
136 Guatemala
137 Kiribati
138 Honduras
139 Lao People's Democratic Republic
140 Vanuatu
141 Sao Tome and Principe
142 Eswatini (Kingdom of)
142 Namibia
144 Myanmar
145 Ghana
146 Kenya
146 Nepal
148 Cambodia
149 Congo
150 Angola
151 Cameroon
152 Comoros
153 Zambia
154 Papua New Guinea
155 Timor-Leste
156 Solomon Islands
157 Syrian Arab Republic
158 Haiti
159 Uganda
159 Zimbabwe
Low human development
161 Nigeria
161 Rwanda
163 Togo
164 Mauritania
164 Pakistan
166 Côte d’Ivoire
167 Tanzania (United Republic of)
168 Lesotho
169 Senegal
170 Sudan
171 Djibouti
172 Malawi
173 Benin
174 Gambia
175 Eritrea
176 Ethiopia

SDG 9.4
Adjustment factor
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxidefor planetary
emissions per
emissionspressures
capita (production) (production) index

Planetary pressures–adjusted HDI (PHDI)

SDG 8.4, 12.2
Material footprint
per capita

Material
footprint index

Value

Value

Difference from
HDI valuea (%)

Difference from
HDI ranka

Value(tonnes)Value(tonnes)

Value

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2021

2021

2022

2022

0.699
0.698
0.698
0.696
0.693
0.690
0.681
0.679
0.674
0.673
0.670
0.669
0.661
0.653
0.650
0.644
0.634
0.629
0.628
0.624
0.620
0.614
0.613
0.610
0.610
0.608
0.602
0.601
0.601
0.600
0.593
0.591
0.587
0.586
0.569
0.568
0.566
0.562
0.557
0.552
0.550
0.550

0.664
0.662
0.672
..
0.667
..
0.615
0.664
0.649
0.643
0.656
0.642
..
..
0.624
0.625
..
0.604
..
0.606
0.580
..
..
..
0.584
0.596
0.586
0.590
0.581
0.572
0.580
0.581
0.577
..
0.561
0.558
..
..
..
0.546
0.543
0.541

5.0
5.2
3.7
..
3.8
..
9.7
2.2
3.7
4.5
2.1
4.0
..
..
4.0
3.0
..
4.0
..
2.9
6.5
..
..
..
4.3
2.0
2.7
1.8
3.3
4.7
2.2
1.7
1.7
..
1.4
1.8
..
..
..
1.1
1.3
1.6

5
4
10
..
10
..
–3
10
5
5
8
6
..
..
5
7
..
3
..
5
–3
..
..
..
1
6
4
6
3
–2
4
7
3
..
1
1
..
..
..
1
1
0

0.950
0.948
0.963
..
0.963
..
0.903
0.978
0.963
0.956
0.980
0.959
..
..
0.960
0.971
..
0.960
..
0.972
0.936
..
..
..
0.958
0.980
0.974
0.982
0.967
0.953
0.979
0.984
0.983
..
0.987
0.983
..
..
..
0.989
0.987
0.983

2.5
1.8
2.0
4.3
2.5
6.0
1.4
1.0
1.2
3.9
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.0
3.4
1.9
1.4
1.1
0.5
1.1
3.1
0.7
0.7
0.9
1.5
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.5
1.2
1.2
0.5
0.4
0.5
0.4
0.8
0.5
0.4
1.3
0.2
0.1
0.5

0.967
0.977
0.974
0.944
0.967
0.922
0.982
0.987
0.985
0.949
0.992
0.990
0.988
0.987
0.955
0.975
0.982
0.985
0.993
0.986
0.959
0.991
0.991
0.988
0.981
0.991
0.992
0.994
0.993
0.984
0.984
0.993
0.995
0.993
0.994
0.990
0.993
0.994
0.983
0.997
0.998
0.993

9.4
11.3
6.8
..
5.9
..
24.7
4.4
8.2
5.2
4.6
10.0
..
..
5.0
4.8
..
9.1
..
6.1
12.2
..
..
..
9.2
4.5
6.1
4.4
8.5
10.9
3.7
3.7
4.0
..
3.0
3.4
..
..
..
2.7
3.3
3.7

0.934
0.920
0.952
..
0.958
..
0.824
0.969
0.942
0.963
0.967
0.929
..
..
0.964
0.966
..
0.935
..
0.957
0.914
..
..
..
0.935
0.968
0.957
0.969
0.940
0.923
0.974
0.974
0.972
..
0.979
0.976
..
..
..
0.981
0.977
0.973

0.548
0.548
0.547
0.540
0.540
0.534
0.532
0.521
0.517
0.516
0.515
0.508
0.504
0.495
0.493
0.492

0.539
0.541
0.541
0.520
0.528
..
0.525
..
0.503
0.506
0.493
0.501
0.494
0.489
0.487
0.485

1.6
1.3
1.1
3.7
2.2
..
1.3
..
2.7
1.9
4.3
1.4
2.0
1.2
1.2
1.4

–1
2
4
–1
1
..
2
..
0
2
–1
2
2
1
1
1

0.983
0.987
0.989
0.964
0.979
..
0.986
..
0.973
0.982
0.956
0.986
0.980
0.988
0.988
0.986

0.6
0.1
0.3
1.0
1.0
0.4
0.2
1.1
0.7
0.5
0.4
0.1
0.6
0.3
0.2
0.2

0.992
0.998
0.996
0.987
0.987
0.994
0.997
0.986
0.991
0.994
0.995
0.999
0.992
0.996
0.997
0.998

3.7
3.4
2.5
8.4
4.2
..
3.4
..
6.3
4.3
11.5
3.8
4.5
2.9
3.1
3.7

0.974
0.976
0.982
0.940
0.970
..
0.976
..
0.955
0.970
0.918
0.973
0.968
0.979
0.978
0.974
Continued →TA B L E 7 / PL A N ETA RY PR ES S U R ES –ADJU STED H U MAN D EVELOP MENT IND EX

303

TAB LE 7

Human
Development
Index (HDI)

SDG 9.4
Adjustment factor
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxidefor planetary
emissions per
emissionspressures
capita (production) (production) index

Planetary pressures–adjusted HDI (PHDI)

SDG 8.4, 12.2
Material footprint
per capita

Material
footprint index
Value

Value

Value

Difference from
HDI valuea (%)

Difference from
HDI ranka

Value(tonnes)Value(tonnes)

HDI RANK

2022

2022

2022

2022

2022

2021

2021

2022

2022

177 Liberia
177 Madagascar
179 Guinea-Bissau
180 Congo (Democratic Republic of the)181 Guinea
182 Afghanistan
183 Mozambique
184 Sierra Leone
185 Burkina Faso
186 Yemen
187 Burundi
188 Mali
189 Chad
189 Niger
191 Central African Republic
192 South Sudan
193 Somalia
Other countries or territories.. Korea (Democratic People’s Rep. of).. Monaco
Human development groups
Very high human development
High human development
Medium human development
Low human development
Developing countries
Regions
Arab States
East Asia and the Pacific
Europe and Central Asia
Latin America and the Caribbean
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
Least developed countries
Small island developing states
Organisation for Economic Co‑operation
and Development
World

0.487
0.487
0.483
0.481
0.471
0.462
0.461
0.458
0.438
0.424
0.420
0.410
0.394
0.394
0.387
0.381
0.380

0.482
0.483
..
0.477
0.462
0.459
0.456
0.452
0.433
0.420
0.417
0.404
0.382
0.389
0.383
0.376
0.376

1.0
0.8
..
0.8
1.9
0.6
1.1
1.3
1.1
0.9
0.7
1.5
3.0
1.3
1.0
1.3
1.1

0
1
..
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
–2
0
1
0
1

0.991
0.992
..
0.992
0.981
0.994
0.988
0.988
0.990
0.992
0.994
0.986
0.969
0.987
0.989
0.986
0.988

0.2
0.1
0.2
0.0
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.3
0.4
0.1
0.3
0.1
0.1
0.0
0.2
0.0

0.998
0.998
0.998
0.999
0.995
0.996
0.997
0.998
0.997
0.995
0.999
0.996
0.998
0.998
0.999
0.998
1.000

2.3
2.0
..
2.1
4.6
1.2
2.9
3.2
2.5
1.7
1.6
3.3
8.3
3.5
3.1
3.6
3.2

0.984
0.986
..
0.985
0.967
0.992
0.980
0.977
0.983
0.988
0.989
0.977
0.941
0.975
0.978
0.975
0.977

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

..
..

2.0
..

0.974
..

..
..

..
..

0.902
0.764
0.640
0.517
0.694

0.779
0.691
0.622
0.509
0.652

13.6
9.6
2.8
1.5
6.1

—
—
—
—
—

0.863
0.904
0.972
0.985
0.940

9.5
5.5
1.6
0.4
3.5

0.876
0.928
0.979
0.994
0.955

21.0
16.9
5.0
3.5
10.6

0.851
0.880
0.964
0.975
0.924

0.704
0.766
0.802
0.763
0.641
0.549
0.542
0.730

0.658
0.683
0.743
0.716
0.622
0.539
0.533
..

6.5
10.8
7.4
6.2
3.0
1.8
1.7
..

—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—

0.935
0.891
0.927
0.939
0.970
0.982
0.984
..

4.6
6.2
5.3
2.6
1.9
0.7
0.4
2.7

0.940
0.919
0.931
0.966
0.975
0.991
0.995
0.965

10.0
19.3
10.9
12.4
4.9
3.8
3.8
..

0.929
0.863
0.923
0.912
0.965
0.973
0.973
..

0.906
0.739

0.787
0.685

13.1
7.3

—
—

0.869
0.926

8.7
4.5

0.887
0.941

21.0
12.5

0.851
0.911

304

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

TA BL E 7

Notes
a

Definitions

Based on countries for which a Planetary pressuresadjusted Human Development Index value is calculated.

Human Development Index (HDI): A composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of humandevelopment—a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent
standard of living. See Technical note 1 at http://hdr.undp.org/
sites/default/files/hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf for details on
how the HDI is calculated.
Planetary pressures-adjusted HDI (PHDI): HDI value adjusted
by the level of carbon dioxide emissions and material footprint
per capita to account for the excessive human pressure on theplanet. It should be seen as an incentive for transformation.
See Technical note 6 at http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/
hdr2023_technical_notes.pdf for details on how the PHDI is
calculated.
Difference from HDI value: Percentage difference between
the PHDI value and the HDI value, calculated only for countries
for which a PHDI value is calculated.
Difference from HDI rank: Difference in ranks on the PHDI andthe HDI, calculated only for countries for which a PHDI value
is calculated.

Main data sources
Column 1: HDRO calculations based on data from Barro andLee (2018), IMF (2023), UNDESA (2022, 2023), UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2023), United Nations Statistics Division(2023) and World Bank (2023).
Column 2: Calculated as the product of the HDI and the adjustment factor presented in column 5.
Column 3: Calculated based on data in columns 1 and 2.
Column 4: Calculated based on PHDI values and recalculated
HDI ranks for countries for which a PHDI value is calculated.
Column 5: Calculated based on data in columns 7 and 9.
Column 6: Global Carbon Project 2023.
Column 7: Calculated based on data in column 6.
Column 8: United Nations Environment Programme 2023.
Column 9: Calculated based on data in column 8.

Adjustment factor for planetary pressures: Arithmetic averageof the carbon dioxide emissions index and the material footprintindex, both defined below. A high value implies less pressure
on the planet.
Carbon dioxide emissions per capita (production): Carbon
dioxide emissions produced as a consequence of human activities (use of coal, oil and gas for combustion and industrial
processes, gas flaring and cement manufacture), divided by
midyear population. Values are territorial emissions, meaningthat emissions are attributed to the country in which they physically occur.
Carbon dioxide emissions (production) index: Carbon dioxide emissions per capita (production-based) expressed as anindex with a minimum value of 0 and a maximum value of 76.61
tonnes per capita. A high value on this index implies less pressure on the planet.
Material footprint per capita: Material footprint is the attribution of global material extraction to a country’s domestic final
demand. Total material footprint is the sum of the material footprint for biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores and nonmetal ores.
This indicator is calculated as the raw material equivalent of imports plus domestic extraction minus raw material equivalentsof exports, divided by annual average population.
Material footprint index: Material footprint per capita expressed as an index with a minimum value of 0 and a maximum
value of 140.82 tonnes per capita. A high value on this index
implies less pressure on the planet.

TA B L E 7 / PL A N ETA RY PR ES S U R ES –ADJU STED H U MAN D EVELOP MENT IND EX

305

Developing regions

Arab States (20 countries or territories)
Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya,
Morocco, State of Palestine, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan,
Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
East Asia and the Pacific (26 countries)
Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Fiji, Indonesia, Kiribati, Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia,
Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nauru,
Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Singapore, Solomon Islands,
Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Viet Nam
Europe and Central Asia (17 countries)
Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia,
Serbia, Tajikistan, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan
Latin America and the Caribbean (33 countries)
Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Plurinational
State of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica,
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana,
Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint
Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname,
Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
South Asia (9 countries)
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Islamic Republic of Iran, Maldives,
Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka
Sub-­Saharan Africa (46 countries)
Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cameroon,
Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of
the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Kingdom of Eswatini,
Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho,
Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique,
Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal,
Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, United Republic of
Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Note: All countries listed in developing regions are included in aggregates for developing countries. Countries
included in aggregates for Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States follow UN classifications, which are available at https://www.un.org/ohrlls/. Countries included in aggregates for Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development are listed at http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/list​-oecd-member-countries.htm.

306

HUMA N DEVELOP MENT R EP ORT 2023/2024

Statistical references

Note: Statistical references relate to statistical materialpresented in this Statistical Annex and in the full setof statistical tables posted at https://hdr.undp.org/en​/human-development-report-2023-24.
Barro, R. J., and J.‑W. Lee. 2018. Dataset of Educational Attainment, June 2018 Revision. http://www.barrolee​.com. Accessed 9 August 2023.
CEDLAS (Center for Distributive, Labor and Social
Studies) and World Bank. 2023. Socio-Economic
Database for Latin America and the Caribbean (SEDLAC). https://www.cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/wp​/en/­
estadisticas/sedlac/estadisticas/. Accessed 19 September 2023.
Eurostat. 2023. European Union Statistics on Incomeand Living Conditions. EU-SILC UDB 2021 – version of
October 2023. Brussels. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat​/web/microdata/european-union-statistics-on-income​-and-living-conditions. Accessed 30 October 2023.
Global Carbon Project. 2023. Global Carbon Atlas. https://globalcarbonatlas.org/emissions/carbon​-­emissions/. Accessed 24 November 2023.
ICF Macro. Various years. Demographic and Health
Surveys. https://dhsprogram.com. Accessed 28 November 2023.
ILO (International Labour Organization). 2023.
­ILOSTAT database. https://ilostat.ilo.org/data/. Accessed 22 November 2023.
IMF (International Monetary Fund). 2023. World Economic Outlook database. October 2023 Edition. Washington, DC. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO​/weo-database/2023/October. Accessed 15 November2023.
IPU (Inter‑Parliamentary Union). 2023. Parline database: Monthly ranking of women in national parliaments. https://data.ipu.org/women-ranking. Accessed 1
August 2023.
LIS. 2023. Luxembourg Income Study Database.
https://www.lisdatacenter.org/data-access. Accessed
30 September 2023.
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co‑operation andDevelopment). 2023. OECD.Stat. https://stats.oecd​.org. Accessed 20 September 2023.
UNDESA (United Nations Department of Eco‑nomic and Social Affairs). 2022. World Population
Prospects: The 2022 Revision. New York. https://
population.un.org​/wpp/. Accessed 1 August 2023.
UNDESA (United Nations Department of Economic
and Social Affairs). 2023. World Economic Situation
and Prospects 2023. https://www.un.org/development​/desa/dpad/publication/world-economic-situation-and​-prospects-2023/. Accessed 15 November 2023.
UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme).
2023. International Resource Panel’s Global material
flows database. https://www.resourcepanel.org/global​-material-flows-database. Accessed 18 December 2023.
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientificand Cultural Organization) Institute for Statistics.
2023. UIS Developer Portal, Bulk Data Download Service. https://apiportal.uis.unesco.org/bdds. Accessed 19
September 2023.

STATISTICAL R EFER ENCES

UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). Various
years. Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys. New York.
http://mics.unicef.org. Accessed 31 October 2023.
United Nations Statistics Division. 2023. National
Accounts Main Aggregates Database. http://unstats.un​.org/unsd/snaama. Accessed 15 November 2023.
UNU-WIDER (United Nations University World Insti‑
tute for Development Economics Research). 2023.
World Income Inequality Database (WIID) Companion
dataset. Version 28 November 2023. https://www.wider​.unu.edu/database/world-income-inequality-­database​-wiid#WIIDcomp. Accessed 28 November 2023.
WHO (World Health Organization), UNICEF (United
Nations Children’s Fund), UNFPA (United Nations
Population Fund), World Bank Group and UNDESA(United Nations Department of Economic and Social
Affairs)/Population Division. 2023. Trends in Maternal
Mortality 2000 to 2020: Estimates by WHO, UNICEF,
UNFPA, World Bank Group and UNDESA/Population
Division. Geneva: World Health Organization. https://​www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240068759. Accessed 1 August 2023.
World Bank. 2022. World Development Indicators database. Washington, DC. http://data.worldbank.org. Accessed 2 May 2023.
World Bank. 2023. World Development Indicators database. Washington, DC. http://data.worldbank.org. Accessed 7 November 2023.
World Inequality Database. 2022. World Inequality
Database. http://wid.world. Accessed 28 September
2023.

307

KEY TO H U M A N D E V E LO P M E N T I N D E X R A N KS , 202 2
Afghanistan

182

Dominican Republic

82

Liberia

177

Saint Lucia

108

Albania74

Ecuador

83

Libya

92

Algeria

93

Egypt

105

Liechtenstein

12Saint Vincent and
the Grenadines

81

Andorra35

El Salvador

127

Lithuania

37

Samoa

116

Angola150

Equatorial Guinea

133

Luxembourg

20

San Marino

43

Antigua and Barbuda

54

Eritrea

175

Madagascar

177

Sao Tome and Principe

141

Argentina

48

Estonia

31

Malawi172

Armenia76

Eswatini (Kingdom of)

142

Malaysia

63

Australia

10Ethiopia

176

Maldives

87

Austria

22

Fiji

104

Mali

188

Azerbaijan

89

Finland

12

Malta

25

Bahamas57

France28

Marshall Islands

102

Bahrain

34

Gabon

123

Mauritania

164

Bangladesh

129

Gambia174

Mauritius

72

Barbados

62

Georgia60

Mexico77

Belarus69

Germany

7

Belgium

12

Ghana

145

Micronesia(Federated States of)135

South Africa

110

Belize118

Greece33

Moldova (Republic of)86South Sudan

192

Benin

173

Grenada

73

Spain

27

Bhutan125

Guatemala

136

Bolivia (Plurinational State of)120

Guinea181

Bosnia and Herzegovina

80

Guinea-Bissau

179

Botswana

114

Guyana95

Brazil

89

Haiti

158

Brunei Darussalam

55

Honduras

138

Bulgaria

70

Hong Kong, China (SAR)

4

Burkina Faso

185

Hungary

47

Burundi187

Iceland

3

Cabo Verde

131

India

134

Cambodia

148

Indonesia

112

Cameroon

151

Iran (Islamic Republic of)78

Canada

18

Iraq

128

Central African Republic

191

Ireland

7

Chad

189

Israel

25

Chile

44

Italy

30

China

75

Jamaica

115

Colombia

91

Japan

24

Comoros

152

Jordan

99

Congo

149

Kazakhstan

67

Congo
(Democratic Republic of the)

180

Kenya

146

Costa Rica

64

Kiribati

137

Côte d’Ivoire

166

Croatia

39

Cuba

85

Cyprus29

Czechia

Korea (Democratic People’s Rep. of)

MonacoSaudi Arabia

40

Senegal169

Serbia65

Seychelles

67

Sierra Leone

184

Singapore

9

Slovakia

45

Slovenia

22

Solomon Islands

156

Somalia193

Mongolia

96

Sri Lanka

78

Montenegro

50

Sudan

170

Morocco120

Suriname

124

Mozambique183

Sweden5

Myanmar144

Switzerland

1

Namibia

142

Syrian Arab Republic

157

Nauru

122

Tajikistan

126

Nepal

146

Tanzania (United Republic of)

167

Netherlands

10

Thailand66

New Zealand

16

Timor-Leste

155

Nicaragua

130

Togo

163

Niger

189

Tonga

98

Nigeria161

Trinidad and Tobago

60

North Macedonia

83

Tunisia

101

Norway2

Türkiye

45

Oman

59

Turkmenistan

94

Pakistan164

Tuvalu

132

Palau

71

Uganda159

Palestine, State of111

Ukraine100

Panama57

United Arab Emirates

17

Papua New Guinea

154

United Kingdom

15

Paraguay102

United States

20

Peru

87

Uruguay

52

Philippines

113

Uzbekistan

106

Poland36

Vanuatu

140

Portugal

42

Qatar

40

Venezuela(Bolivarian Republic of)119

Viet Nam

107

Yemen

186

Zambia153

Zimbabwe

159

Korea (Republic of)

19

Kuwait49

Kyrgyzstan

117

32

Lao People’s
Democratic Republic

139

Romania53

Denmark5

Latvia37

Russian Federation

56

Djibouti

171

Lebanon109

Rwanda161

Dominica

97

Lesotho168

Saint Kitts and Nevis

51

United Nations Development Programme
One United Nations PlazaNew York, NY 10017
www.undp.org

ISBN: 9789210031028