9/1/2020

The United Nations came out with its first Human Development Report in 1990. It was a breakthrough: it provided a more substantial method than GNP and GNP per capita (the dominant measures then) to compare the performance of nations against each other and to track performance of individual nations over time. The Human Development Index (an absolute number directly associated with a corresponding ranking within the 180-odd nations tracked. ), HDI, has been very widely used over the intervening years. The Human Development Report includes a table with the Human Development Index for each country. The goal of the first HDR was "neither to preach nor to recommend any particular model of development", but to come up with an index that combined three readily obtainable indicators for each country, life expectancy, income and education.

In 2010 three new measures were introduced to supplement the original HDI. They are the Inequality adjusted HDI, the Gender Inequality Index and the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index

The 2019 Human Development Report, released late last year with data for 2018, has as its theme, "Beyond Income, beyond averages, beyond today: Inequalities in human development in the 21st century". Inequality is the overriding message. HDR2019 has discovered "a new generation of inequalities" in "a new set of capabilities" (p. 7). The "old" or basic capabilities include the original indicators, life expectancy at birth, income and education and the "new" or "enhanced" capabilities are chosen, apparently arbitrarily, to include life expectancy at age 70, and access to pre-primary and tertiary education (but not primary or secondary education).

HDR2019, in its voluminous 366 pages finds inequality everywhere in these enhanced capabilities. According to Firefox's count, the word "inequality" occurs in the document more than 1,000 times (with the plural "inequalities" occurring a further 619 times). The comparable figures for HDR2016, which we reviewed, are 203 and 51. A lot more inequality has been discovered in the last three years! This fixation with inequality runs along with a hazy definition of it and loose, unclear usage. The report, quoting the HDR founder Amaryta Sen does ask at one point, "Inequality of what?" and answers "Inequality of capabilities", but then "capabilities" is not well defined either. How does one decide what is a "capability" and what is not? HDR2019 has discovered "a new set of capabilities". Might there be yet more? If capabilities can be discovered by the editors of HDR2019, might a different set of editors come up with a different set of capabilities? "Capabilities" are variously defined in the report as: (1)"the freedoms for people to be and do desirable things such as go to school, get a job or have enough to eat" - who decides what is a "desirable thing" is not specified (2)"freedoms to make life choices"    (3)"people's freedom to choose what to be and do". If capabilities are people's freedoms there must be thousands and thousands of them out there, based on the manifold desires of humanity. And if capabilities are so subjective ("continuously moving targets", acknowledges the report), might it be possible that each country has its own, unique set of capabilities, rendering invalid the HDR premise of a common measurement yardstick for all countries?

To return to "inequality", which is often used in the report with "capabilities", but much more often used without, this term is almost always used in a pejorative sense in the report. The overview states, "Inequalities do not always reflect an unfair world. Some are probably inevitable,…" (p. 1). Many many most certainly ARE inevitable. Inequality is all about us and it’s by no means all bad. People who save more as a group tend to be more wealthy than people who save less. That’s an inequality. Older people, at least up to a certain age, tend to be wealthier than younger peope. That’s an inequality. People who work hard tend to be wealthier than lazy people. That’s an inequality. Hardworking students get better results than lazy students. That’s another inequality. Secondary school students have greater knowledge than primary school students. There’s another inequality. Men are physically stronger than women. There’s another inequality and a gender inequality to boot. Inequality is a key driver of investment in all its forms, hard work and thrift. A world without inequality is a world without incentive, suspiciously similar to the communist fantasy.

Reams of human experience tell us that if you give people the same starting opportunities they will ALWAYS end up unequal. In your old high school class of thirty or forty, someone was always at the top and someone always at the bottom. The class NEVER ended up all equal in results and capabilities. What would HDR2019 have the teacher do? Adjust all marks for equality? Absurd! Twins from the same womb, with identical genes, NEVER end up in the same condition. Singapore and Sierra Leone were roughly at the same stage of development at Independence. Now Singapore is light years ahead. Is this somehow Singapore’s fault? Doesn't Sierra Leone carry responsibility for its present condition? Should the world economic order somehow pull Singapore back or dole out handouts to Sierra Leone in order to make the two equal? Ridiculous! Inequality is the signal that tells us that Singapore did the right things and Sierra Leone the wrong things and that encourages Sierra Leone to change course.

In its mission to eliminate inequality, HDR2019's message is strikingly similar to the worldwide liberal movement's, which has equality as one of its central tenets. Other liberal favorites included in HDR2019:

Gender Inequality is amply highlighted: "...gender discrimination is one of the greatest barriers to human development" (p. 12). HDR2019 sees discrimination in the social construct of much of the world: "Women often face strong conventional societal expectations to be caregivers and homemakers; men similarly are expected to be breadwinners…Discriminatory social norms and stereotypes reinforce gendered identities and determine power relations that constrain women’s and men’s behaviour in ways that lead to inequality.” (p. 152) HDR2019 wants to change those "societal expectations" that are in fact supported by large numbers of men and women. Does HDR2019 think we don't need caregivers and homemakers, in which case it's saying all those women are doing worthless jobs, or do they think we MUST have equal numbers of men and women doing these jobs, an entirely political argument which HDR2019 masquerades as a human rights/development issue? The report contains numerous unfocussed references to gender inequality and gender equality. What do these terms mean? Clearly men do not bear children and women do. That's a gender inequality. Does HDR2019 wish to have men and women bear equal numbers of children?

Reproductive Freedom HDR2019 supports contraception and reproductive freedom for adolescent girls (p. 160), but perhaps exercising editorial prudence, does not directly mention abortion, another liberal cause célèbre.

LGBTI rights HDR 2019 places the rights of LGBTI groups high on its list of priorities, right up there with other, more traditional minorities - "Not all social injustices are seen, much less acknowledged, by social institutions, and this is often the case for indigenous or ethnic groups; migrants; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people; and other socially stigmatized groups that suffer abuse and discrimination" (p. 24) - and apparently supports "driving out discrimination against sexual diversity" (p. 26).

Distrust of the wealthy  "When wealthy people shape policies that favour themselves and their children - as they often do..." (p. 11)  "When institutions are captured by the wealthy..." (p. 11) "Far too often a person’s place in society is still determined by ethnicity, gender or his or her parents’ wealth." (Back page)

Ploughing through its long-winded, repetitive, sometimes tortured phrasing (sample: "These drivers of the distribution of capabilities in the 21st century are considered without implying that others, such as demographic changes, are unimportant or that they are the only two that matter, but to allow for a treatable elaboration of the arguments showing the relevance of analysing the inequality dynamics in both basic and enhanced capabilities" - p.32) one sees a strong liberal hand behind what was, in its original iteration, an apolitical attempt to measure the development of nations. True, the initial index remains, and is as important as ever, but the liberal influence that permeates much of the United Nations system appears to have entrenched itself in the Human Development Reports. This liberal influence has profound implications for the quality of advice and range of options presented by the United Nations to its client states in Africa.