How was life in 1820 and how has it improved since then? What are the long-term trends in global well-being? Trends in real GDP per capita may not fully reflect changes in other dimensions of well-being, such as life expectancy, educational attainment, personal security, and gender inequality. The product of collaboration between the OECD, the OECD Development Centre, and the CLIOINFRA project, this report represents the work of a group of economic historians to systematically chart long-term changes in the dimensions of global wellbeing and inequality, making use of the best sources and expertise currently available and the most recent research carried out within the discipline. The historical evidence reviewed in the report is organized on ten different dimensions of well-being that mirror those used by the OECD in its report, How's Life? (www.oecd.org/howslife): per capita GDP, real wages, educational attainment, life expectancy, height, personal security, political institutions, environmental quality, income inequality, and gender inequality
World Inequality Report 2022 is the most authoritative and comprehensive account of global trends in inequality, providing cutting-edge information about income and wealth inequality and also pioneering data about the history of inequality, gender inequality, environmental inequalities, and trends in international tax reform and redistribution.
There is long-standing debate on how population growth affects national economies. A new report from Population Matters examines the history of this debate and synthesizes current research on the topic. The authors, led by Harvard economist David Bloom, conclude that population age structure, more than size or growth per se, affects economic development, and that reducing high fertility can create opportunities for economic growth if the right kinds of educational, health, and labor-market policies are in place. The report also examines specific regions of the world and how their differing policy environments have affected the relationship between population change and economic development.
In 2013, the World Bank Group announced two goals that would guide its operations worldwide. First is the eradication of chronic extreme poverty bringing the number of extremely poor people, defined as those living on less than 1.25 purchasing power parity (PPP)†“adjusted dollars a day, to less than 3 percent of the world’s population by 2030.The second is the boosting of shared prosperity, defined as promoting the growth of per capita real income of the poorest 40 percent of the population in each country. In 2015, United Nations member nations agreed in New York to a set of post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the first and foremost of which is the eradication of extreme poverty everywhere, in all its forms. Both the language and the spirit of the SDG objective reflect the growing acceptance of the idea that poverty is a multidimensional concept that reflects multiple deprivations in various aspects of well-being. That said, there is much less agreement on the best ways in which those deprivations should be measured, and on whether or how information on them should be aggregated. Monitoring Global Poverty: Report of the Commission on Global Poverty advises the World Bank on the measurement and monitoring of global poverty in two areas: What should be the interpretation of the definition of extreme poverty, set in 2015 in PPP-adjusted dollars a day per person? What choices should the Bank make regarding complementary monetary and nonmonetary poverty measures to be tracked and made available to policy makers? The World Bank plays an important role in shaping the global debate on combating poverty, and the indicators and data that the Bank collates and makes available shape opinion and actual policies in client countries, and, to a certain extent, in all countries. How we answer the above questions can therefore have a major influence on the global economy.
Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016 is the first of an annual flagship report that will inform a global audience comprising development practitioners, policy makers, researchers, advocates, and citizens in general with the latest and most accurate estimates on trends in global poverty and shared prosperity. This edition will also document trends in inequality and identify recent country experiences that have been successful in reducing inequalities, provide key lessons from those experiences, and synthesize the rigorous evidence on public policies that can shift inequality in a way that bolsters poverty reduction and shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. Specifically, the report will address the following questions: • What is the latest evidence on the levels and evolution of extreme poverty and shared prosperity? • Which countries and regions have been more successful in terms of progress toward the twin goals and which are lagging behind? • What does the global context of lower economic growth mean for achieving the twin goals? • How can inequality reduction contribute to achieving the twin goals? • What does the evidence show concerning global and between- and within-country inequality trends? • Which interventions and countries have used the most innovative approaches to achieving the twin goals through reductions in inequality? The report will make four main contributions. First, it will present the most recent numbers on poverty, shared prosperity, and inequality. Second, it will stress the importance of inequality reduction in ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity by 2030 in a context of weaker growth. Third, it will highlight the diversity of within-country inequality reduction experiences and will synthesize experiences of successful countries and policies, addressing the roots of inequality without compromising economic growth. In doing so, the report will shatter some myths and sharpen our knowledge of what works in reducing inequalities. Finally, it will also advocate for the need to expand and improve data collection—for example, data availability, comparability, and quality—and rigorous evidence on inequality impacts in order to deliver high-quality poverty and shared prosperity monitoring.
This open access book describes methods of mortality forecasting and discusses possible improvements. It contains a selection of previously unpublished and published papers, which together provide a state-of-the-art overview of statistical approaches as well as behavioural and biological perspectives. The different parts of the book provide discussions of current practice, probabilistic forecasting, the linearity in the increase of life expectancy, causes of death, and the role of cohort factors. The key question in the book is whether it is possible to project future mortality accurately, and if so, what is the best approach. This makes the book a valuable read to demographers, pension planners, actuaries, and all those interested and/or working in modelling and forecasting mortality.
This book argues that we are undergoing a transition from industrial capitalism to a new form of capitalism - what the author calls & lsquo; cognitive capitalism & rsquo;
This handbook provides a comprehensive historical account of the field of Quality of Life. It brings together theoretical insights and empirical findings and presents the main items of global quality of life and wellbeing research. Worldwide in its scope of topics, the handbook examines discussions of demographic and health development, the spread of democracy, global economic accounting, multi-item measurement of perceived satisfaction and expert-assessed quality of life and the well-being of children, women and poor people. It looks at well-being in specific regions, including North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, South America and Eastern and Western Europe. In addition to contributions by leading and younger authors, the handbook includes contributions from International Organizations about their own work with respect to social reporting.
Globalization and Development draws upon the experiences of the Latin American and Caribbean region to provide a multidimensional assessment of the globalization process from the perspective of developing countries. Based on a study by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), this book gives a historical overview of economic development in the region and presents both an economic and noneconomic agenda that addresses disparity, respects diversity, and fosters complementarity among regional, national, and international institutions. For orders originating outside of North America, please visit the World Bank website for a list of distributors and geographic discounts at http://publications.worldbank.org/howtoorder or e-mail [email protected].