Assessing changes in living standards in Southeast Asia in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries -- The colonial period: population and output growth in agricultural and non-agricultural sectors -- The colonial period: measures of welfare and changing living standards -- Confronting the...

According to western views, wealth is unambiguously good, and so human welfare is positive when wealth is in excess of needs, and negative if it is less. Islam has a substantially more sophisticated view of the relation between wealth and welfare. Excess wealth is a trial, which can bring great...

Developing countries start the decade facing two major challenges: to continue the social and economic progress of the past 30 years in an international climate that looks less helpful; and to tackle the plight of the 800 million people living in absolute poverty, who have benefitted too little...

The 2013 Human Development Report – "The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World" – examines the profound shift in global dynamics driven by the fast-rising new powers of the developing world and its long-term implications for human development.China has already overtaken Japan...