Progress measurement needs new vision

Jonathan Power, Columnist, Copenhagen

By now it is fair to say that only the economists and newspaper headline writers are still in love with Gross National Product (GNP) as a way of measuring progress. Everyone in any country that has experienced rapid economic growth, whether it be a mature economy like the United States or Sweden or an up and coming one like Taiwan or Brazil knows from their own bitter experience that it doesn't tell you that much about a society. It gives a kind of useful bench mark of aggregate economic momentum. But, beyond that, the more one looks at it the more misleading it can become.

For most people health, security and love are the three important things in life, and how many people can put their hands on their heart and say they are sure that in their own lives these three things are eternally spoken for. Besides, income is a means not an end. It may be used for essential medicines or narcotics, for parks and green spaces or for extra wide thoroughfares and multi-story car parks, for sitting in a luxury car in a traffic jam or for resting in a high speed train link as I am now, as I rush from a UN Development Program press conference in Copenhagen on how to measure human development, convinced that the Scandinavians have come nearer this ideal than the Americans and the British.

Once a year the UNDP delivers its snapshot on human progress in an exercise pioneered by the former minister of finance in Pakistan, the late Mahbub ul Haq. He was long convinced that our attempt to measure progress by statistical aggregates and technical prowess was unpersuasive.

We overlook that the main goal of life is to insure survival and, beyond that, to enable the pursuit of well being, achievement and, as the prescient American constitution (not without a great debate at the time) so aptly puts it, of happiness. (The opposition wanted the "pursuit of wealth".)

This debate reaches back, in European thought at least, to the ancient Greeks and the time of Aristotle. "Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else."

Haq was convinced that the contemporary obsession with increased income per head blinded both observers and participants to the tremendous advances that could be made in social well being, even in quite poor countries, with only a modest rise in incomes. In today's report the UN singles out Sri Lanka which, poor as it was in 1945, managed by 1953 to increase life expectancy by 12 years.

During the 1990s Ghana reduced the percentage of its people suffering from hunger from 35 percent of its population to 12 percent. Haq produced sophisticated tables in which countries were not ranked by income per head but on yardsticks which he considered more telling-longevity, knowledge and a decent standard of living. (Alas, he never got round to measuring love, security and happiness, although his widow, Barnie, with whom he spent a very fulfilled marriage, has continued his work by publishing today Pakistan's own internal human development report.)

In those early tables Japan came out top, followed by Canada, Norway, Switzerland and Sweden. Later he factored in the status of women and produced an even more accurate profile of well being. Sweden and Norway came out top with Denmark not far behind. Japan fell to 17th place.

Then he did the same exercise for Third World countries. Barbados came out first a triumph that Africa should look to. It was followed by Hong Kong, Cyprus, Uruguay, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and South Korea. They, poor until relatively recently, have dramatically lowered infant mortality rates that used to be at present day African rates and assured life spans, only two generations ago 50 years or less, that today are up to the levels of the richest countries.

In 15 years not much in the pecking order has changed. Those that used to do well still do very well. Those that did particularly badly are still on the downward slope. But in the middle ground some things have changed. India and China and other parts of East Asia that account for nearly 75 percent of the Third World's population have made rapid strides forward in the human development index.

One can also say with confidence that contrary to our often tormented images of emaciated children, economies overwhelmed by a tide of debt and mismanagement and even the weather a hostile force whose spite seems to worsen over time, the truth for most countries and most people is that life over the last 30 years has become more livable and probably, too, more fulfilling. Brazil, for one, the power house of Latin America, has made enormous steps forward.

What is most disturbing about this year's report, however, is how many countries are slipping back, mainly in Africa, many in the countries of the former Soviet Union, also some in Latin America and even a handful in Asia. Since 1990, 21 countries have seen a decline in their human development index.

In 14 countries more children are dying before the age of 5 than they were a decade ago. The fact that a majority of the world is going forward simply underlines how unnecessary such a tragedy is. But given the way the world is going we can expect more casualties like these, not less.