UN Contributions to Development Thinking and Practice

10 The Record of Performance

247 10 The Record of Performance • Economic Growth and Development • Human Development • The Contributions of the UN • UN Goals and Development Performance • Country Action and Alternative Strategies • Concluding Observations As has become clear from previous chapters, the process of development in the poorer countries over the last half-century has been unprecedented— in terms of economic expansion, human development, the advancement of human rights, and poverty reduction. In the long record of human history, there have never been changes on such a scale, let alone in only half a century. Moreover, taken as a whole, the rate of change in economic growth, lengthening life expectancy, reducing child mortality, expanding education, and reducing the numbers and proportions in poverty exceeds considerably the speed of advance attained in the industrial countries in the nineteenth century or the early years of the twentieth. Everyone should be impressed by this record.At the same time, there is not the slightest room for complacency. By historical standards, the story is one of extraordinary advance. But in relation to the possibilities that have been opened by new technologies and by the soaring wealth in the world as a whole, the record is much diminished. There have been missed opportunities on the grand scale, major failures to live up to expectations, and failures to fulfill commitments clearly made. Worse still, though the lives of the poor have seen significant improvements in at least some respects in most countries, the better -off sections of the population in both richer and poorer countries have generally enjoyed the bigger benefits, absolutely and relatively, especially during the last two decades. The richer countries have also pulled ahead economically , and the gaps have widened in terms of absolute income between 248 Outcomes and the Future the richer countries and almost all others. Between the richest and the poorest countries, the gaps have also widened in relative terms. Economic Growth and Development All this can now be quantified—the result of worldwide improvements in the availability of economic and social data, much of which has been stimulated by fifty-five years of statistical work by the United Nations.1 From  to , GDP expanded in real terms by  percent per year, five times its estimated growth of  percent per year for the years between  and .2 In developing countries, the increase in growth rates per capita was even greater: income per capita grew by . percent per year in the first half of the twentieth century and by . percent per year in the second half—an astounding tenfold increase, a truly gigantic leap. In spite of this remarkable economic progress, there were many negative items on the balance sheet, especially over the last two decades of the twentieth century.The advances made by developing countries over this period were neither steady nor well balanced,either temporally or geographically.The s saw the fastest growth in the postwar period at about  percent per year, but the rate of growth slackened to less than  percent in the s—barely  percent per capita. Latin America and the Caribbean region grew rapidly in the Table 10.1. Growth of Gross World Product by Decade, 1951–2000 Growth of Gross World Product (percent) 1951– 1961– 1971– 1981– 1991– Region 1960 1970 1980 1990 20001 World 4.7 5.3 3.7 3.0 2.4 Developed Market Economies 4.3 4.9 3.1 2.8 2.3 Economies in Transition 6.3 6.5 5.0 2.3 –3.8 Developing countries 5.3 6.0 5.1 3.8 4.9 Latin America 5.5 5.8 5.4 1.5 2.7 North Africa 5.3 11.0 4.1 2.3 3.4 Sub-Saharan Africa 4.0 4.5 2.4 1.4 2.8 West Asia 5.2 8.0 4.7 –0.6 3.3 South and East Asia 4.2 5.2 6.2 6.4 4.7 Mediterranean 6.4 6.1 5.0 2.4 1.5 China 8.2 4.7 5.9 8.8 8.8 1 Estimates. Source: Development Policy Analysis Division of the United Nations Secretariat, based on Statistics Division of the United Nations, National Accounts Statistics, and other national and international sources. The Record of Performance 249 first three decades but also experienced a sharp slowdown in the last two. The Middle East and North Africa followed a similar...