Source: authors. Note: The sources listed above are: Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index (BTI); Global Monitoring Database (GMD); Barometers which comprise Afrobarometer (AF), Arab Barometer, Asian Barometer; and Latinobarómetro; World Values Survey (WVS); Varieties of Democracy (V-DEM); World Governance Indicators (WGI).

# **5. Application to Peru and South Africa**

We now present an empirical application of our measure of social sustainability in the context of Peru and South Africa. These two countries are good candidates for piloting an appraisal of social sustainability and its related fragilities in the form of multiple social gaps: both are upper middleincome economies, with high levels of income poverty (30 and 57 percent, respectively). South Africa is meanwhile the most unequal country in the world—with race playing a significant role—while Peru is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America, itself a highly unequal region. Poverty in Peru is disproportionally high among Indigenous peoples (Busso and Messina 2020, IMF 2020). Discrimination, lack of societal cohesion (including extreme hostility towards immigrants), regular episodes of social unrest, and lack of accountability are notorious features of both countries (World Bank 2018, 2022a).

To assess social sustainability multidimensionally, we use Peru’s 2019 National Household Survey (ENAHO) and South Africa’s 2018 Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS). Both are nationally representative at the department and province levels, respectively. SASAS uses face-to-face, threestage-stratification data collection to gather information on relevant demographic, behavioral and attitudinal characteristics of a representative sample of 3,500 adult individuals aged 16 and older in households spread across the country’s nine provinces.<sup>7</sup> The 2018 survey collects information on democracy and governance, intergroup relations, education, crime and security, poverty, the labor market, household characteristics and assets. The ENAHO likewise uses face-to-face interviews and a probabilistic three-stage sampling method to collect information on personal and household characteristics of all household members and their living conditions. While its primary aim has been to monitor the evolution of monetary poverty, ENAHO has become a key source of information for wider policy uses. The 2019 survey, which encompassed 23,347 households, included data collection modules on citizen participation, governance, democracy, transparency, discrimination, perception of insecurity, and access to justice.<sup>8</sup> As such, SASAS and ENAHO provide a unique, long-term account of the speed and direction of changes in the underlying public perceptions, values and social fabric of South Africa and Peru, making them an ideal tool to inform policy-making focused on enhancing social sustainability and reducing fragilities of exclusion.

Our empirical application seeks a common denominator consistent with all the reported dimensions across both surveys and proposes to assess social sustainability across four dimensional pillars: inclusion, resilience, social cohesion, and legitimacy. We opt for inclusion, instead of equity, to analyze equal access to economic, political, civic, and physical spaces. Inclusion thus refers to the process of creating opportunities for all people and addressing deep systemic inequalities. It involves improving the ability of all people to access basic services like running water, human capital services like schools, and markets (including the labor market) regardless of their personal or community characteristics. We select resilience and social cohesion, , to capture readiness for all kinds of shocks while accounting for the strength of inter-personal relationships and the broader sense of solidarity among members of a society. Resilience thus refers to the ability of communities and groups in both fragile and nonfragile environments to cope with shocks such as climate change, pandemics,

> 7 <mark>Small area layers (SALs) were used as primary sampling units, from urban formal, urban informal, rural formal and rural informal settlements.</mark>

> 8 <mark>The modules on opinions and perceptions are collected on adults aged 18 years or older.</mark>

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