interpersonal violence, and conflict. Social cohesion captures shared purpose and high levels of trust, the ability of communities and groups to work together toward a common good, respond to challenges, and drive real solutions and sustainable compromises. Lastly, we opt for process legitimacy to capture empowerment, voice and accountability, as well as, aspects of trust, citizen participation, democracy, and corruption. Process legitimacy can thus be understood as expanding vulnerable groups’ voices and influence. This increased voice helps them shape development solutions, influence public policy, and foster accountable service delivery (Table 3).

These four dimensions are operationalized through 16 indicators.<sup>9</sup> Inclusion considers metrics capturing access to labor markets, basic services, and human capital services. Resilience is measured by indicators denoting asset ownership, quality of housing, public assistance (government transfers) and capacity for saving. These indicators are consistent with those frequently used by the literature on resilience to natural disasters (see Kusumati et al 2014; and Marzi et al 2019). They emphasize both exposure to hazards and the ability to resist, absorb, accommodate, and quickly recover from them. Social cohesion considers indicators denoting confidence in government, experience of discrimination, perception of safety, and being a victim of crime. Process legitimacy consists of indicators denoting civil participation, satisfaction with democracy, government effectiveness, and faith in anti-corruption measures. All indicators are equally weighted across dimensions. Table 2 describes the thresholds that identify a person as excluded, following the criteria set out in the sustainable development goals.

# **5.1. Profiles of social sustainability**

In what follows we describe the experience and extent of multidimensional social gaps in Peru and South Africa. Of particular interest is the appraisal of profiles by location and vulnerable group. Table 4 reports the profiling of multidimensional exclusion in these two countries for a cross-dimensional threshold of 33 percent (experiencing multiple social gaps in 4 indicators or more).<sup>10</sup> South Africa shows a higher Social Sustainability Index of 0.34, compared to 0.31 in Peru, explained by a 2- percentage point incidence gap (67 percent compared to 65 percent in Peru), and a 6-percentage point intensity gap (53 percent in South Africa, and 47 percent in Peru). This means that, on average, people in South Africa who experience multiple social gaps do so in eight indicators simultaneously, and in Peru in seven indicators.

However, this pattern is not uniform across vulnerable populations or locations within each country. By gender, we find that women vis-à-vis men in South Africa fare worse in their experiences of social gaps compared to women vis-à-vis men in Peru: something reflected by a 12-percentage point gap in social-gap rates in South Africa, and a 4-percentage point gap in Peru (Table 4). By ethnicity, Indigenous from the Amazonian regions (referred to as other indigenous) Quechuas and Aymaras in Peru and Black South Africans are especially fragile compared to non-native populations and Whites, respectively.<sup>11</sup> Yet the incidence gap between Black South Africans and White populations reaches 43 percentage points: far greater than any of the incidence gaps across ethnic groups in Peru (Table

> 9 For a discussion on the selection of indicators using statistical methods, see Ballon (2023).

> 10 For robustness purposes, we have also analyzed profiles of multidimensional exclusion for cross dimensional thresholds of 50 percent of joint exclusions. These are reported in section 4.3. The results presented here are robust to the choice of cross-dimensional threshold.

> 11 The ENAHO survey uses the main native language spoken by respondents as the criteria for ethnic classification. The survey includes the following groups: Aymara, Quechua, other Indigenous (Ashaninka, Awajún, Bora y Shipibo-Konibo) and Non-Native (Spanish, Portuguese, other foreign language).

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