Frances Stewart

Economic Growth and Human Development

This paper cuts adrift the mainstream approach to the legal-origins debate on the law-growth nexus by integrating both overall economic and human components in our understanding of how regulation quality and the rule of law lie at the heart of economic and inequality adjusted human developments. Findings summarily reveal that legal-origin does not explain economic growth and human development beyond the mechanisms of law channels. As a policy implication results support benefits of the rule of law and quality of regulation as channels to economic growth and human development.

Horizontal inequalities : a neglected dimension of development

Current thinking about development places individuals firmly at the centre of concern, the basic building block for analysis and policy. This is as true of the innovations led by Amartya Sen, which move us away from a focus purely on incomes to incorporate wider perspectives on well-being, as of the more traditional neoclassical welfare analysis which underpins most development policy. The present overriding concerns with reduced poverty and inequality, which stem from both types of analysis, are equally individual-focused. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), for example, are concerned with the numbers of individuals in poverty in the world as a whole, not with who they are, or where they live. Measures of inequality relate to the ranking of individuals (or households) within a country (or sometimes the globe). The issues of individuals’ poverty and inequality are, of course, extremely important, but they neglect a vital dimension of human well-being and of social stability: that is, the group dimension.

Crisis Prevention: Tackling Horizontal Inequalities

This paper analyses the economic and social causes of conflict, drawing conclusions for conflict prevention. Civil wars normally occur when groups mobilize against each other, on the basis of some cultural characteristic like ethnicity or religion. It is suggested that horizontal inequalities, i.e. inequalities among groups in political, economic and social dimensions, provide the basis for inter-group animosity. Policies to limit excessive horizontal inequalities are needed in all vulnerable countries.

Groups and Capabilities

The paper suggests that groups should be given a more central role than they generally are in the capability approach. Being a member of a group or groups is an intrinsic aspect of human life: the quality of groups with which individuals identify forms an important direct contribution to their well‐being, is instrumental to other capabilities, and influences peoples choices and values. The argument is illustrated empirically by reference to identity groups in conflict; and to empowering and enriching groups among the poor. The paper concludes that one should analyse and categorise group capabilities as well as individual capabilities. While capabilities are beings and doings of individuals in the capability approach, groups are included in some of the analysis. The paper is thus consistent with the capability approach, but argues that groups play a much more dominant role in human life and well‐being than appears in much of the analysis of capabilities.

Globalisation and education

Abstract This paper analyses the links between globalisation and education. The growth of the global economy has increased opportunities for those countries with good levels of education, but has made growth more difficult for countries with weak levels of education. Countries with good human resources, high savings and good economic policies (chiefly in East and Southeast Asia) have attracted foreign investment and technology, and have experienced fast growth in exports of manufactures and in output per capita. Developed countries find it increasingly difficult to compete with such economies unless they invest in good education, training and skills, leading to high rates of innovation and productivity. Countries with weak levels of human resources have found it more difficult to succeed—and many, especially in Africa, have experienced falling per capita incomes. Globalisation has made it more difficult to build up educational levels in these countries, as public expenditure has been cut during adjustment. Hence virtuous and vicious cycles of development have emerged, with a good spread of education leading to high growth and generating resources for further development of education and, conversely, countries with poor human resources having low or negative growth and reduced potential for building up their educational systems.

V-goods and the role of the urban informal sector in development.

This paper analyzes the role of the urban informal sector in a developing country in relation to the performance of agriculture and other rural activities on the one hand and that of urban formal sector activities on the other. It decomposes the sectors into traditional and modernizing components traceable to production and consumption linkages with the rest of the economy as well as the character of government interventions over time. The paper contrasts success cases a la Taiwan in which the overall size of the urban informal sector remains modest the modernizing sub-sector grows in relative importance and the end of overall labor surplus is reached rather early with non-success cases a la the Philippines in which rapid rural-urban migration enhances the overall size of the urban informal sector the traditional sub-sector grows relatively and the end of the labor surplus condition is substantially delayed. (authors)

Human Development: Beyond the Human Development Index

The well‐known Human Development Index (HDI) encompasses only three rather basic aspects of human welfare. This paper aims to go beyond this, by identifying 11 categories of human development. We next propose plausible candidates as indicators of these categories. We then estimate correlations among the indicators within each category, discarding those that are highly correlated with others. This left 39 indicators to encompass the categories. Of these, eight indicators are highly correlated with the HDI and may therefore be represented by it. But 31 are not highly correlated, suggesting that a full assessment of human development requires a much broader set of indicators than the HDI alone. Following the same procedure, we find that under‐five mortality rates perform equally as well as the HDI, and income per capita is less representative of other dimensions of human development. The HDI (and the other two broad indicators) are shown to be worse indicators of the extended categories of human development for OECD countries than for developing countries.

Development and security

• The immediate impact of security/insecurity on well being and consequently on development achievements—or the ways in which security forms part of the definition of development; i.e. the role of security as an objective. • The way that insecurity affects non-security elements of development and economic growth, i.e. the role of security as an instrument. • The way that development affects security—or the development instrumental role.

Strategies for Success in Human Development

This paper analyzes the various policy dimensions which have contributed to successful human development (HD) performance in developing countries over the past three decades. We identify the four best HD performers in each of the regions, taking their level of life expectancy and infant mortality, as well as improvements in these dimensions over time, as the indicators.

Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: An Introduction and some Hypotheses

Violent conflict within multiethnic and multireligious countries is a major problem in the world today — from the former Yugoslavia and USSR to Northern Ireland and the Basque country, from Rwanda to Darfur, Indonesia to Fiji, numerous bitter and deadly conflicts are fought along ethnic or religious lines. In addition to the direct injuries and loss of life both on and off the battlefield that result, violent organized conflict is also a major cause of poverty, often leading to economic regress, with much the highest incidence of such conflict found in the poorest countries of the world. Seeking a way of preventing these conflicts is thus of paramount importance.