Growth Patterns, International Finance and human Development: the experience of the last two decades

Abstract

While the concept of human development has gained considerable academic and political acceptance, most indicators in this field recorded during the last twenty years slower rates of improvement than over 1960-80, while exhibiting a marked divergence both between and within countries. Improvements mainly benefited the middle and high-income urban groups and favored some regions and countries while the disadvantaged areas, social groups and nations recorded limited or no improvements. These only partially satisfactory trends appear to be related in many countries to a stagnation or decline in household incomes, a rise in their volatility, their increasingly more unequal distribution and growing problems in the international financing of development in poor countries. There is no general evidence, in contrast, that a worsening in the amount and distribution of public social expenditure contributed to the above trends.