Inequality will be under the laser focus of the HLPF this year. Many institutions will provide their view of what is inequality in the 21st century and how to tackle it.
The UNDP is preparing The 2019 Human Development Report that will provide a comprehensive picture of the many forms of inequality that are shaping the 21st Century. The Report will be highly informed by the developments in implementing Agenda 2030, that is a new milestone of global development.
Agenda 2030 offers a roadmap to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy lasting peace and prosperity. It inspires a new generation of analysis, measurement and decision making to revolutionize global development. It provides new insights in the analysis of inequality. “While many believe inequality is critically important, there is much less agreement on why it matters and what to do about it.
We need to sharpen measurement to better describe what inequality looks like and to have a deeper understanding of how inequality will change given the economic, social and environmental transformations that are unfolding worldwide. Only then can we design the policy options that could effectively tackle it.” – said Pedro Conceição, Director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP.
In the 90s the global community made an important step towards revisiting the concept and measurement of global developments with the single metrics of the size of the GDP. That first HDR in 1990 marked a new era in which progress was not defined by economic growth alone, but by giving people opportunities and freedoms to live the lives they would value.
The 2019 report is promising to go further and beyond the dominant discourse focused on income disparities to also consider inequalities in other dimensions such as health, education, access to technologies, and exposure to economic and climate-related shocks. It will use new data and methods that will highlight, in a way that measures based on averages cannot, how inequality affects people’s lives; and it will take a long-term view towards 2030 and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and beyond.
“We are witnessing both convergence and divergence in human development. For instance, in many countries today, gaps have closed when we talk about access to primary education. But differences between children in poor and wealthy households are widening in both early childhood and quality of education. These inequalities will have lifetime consequences, particularly given the rapid technological changes, which are likely to impact labour markets. This is just one example of why our analysis of inequality must go beyond income, beyond averages and beyond today,” explained Mr. Conceição.
The 2019 report builds upon the rich history of human development reporting in pioneering new measures of development and upon new partnerships with global experts at the World Inequality Lab, the LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourgand others.
