Human Development Report 2019

9 December 2019

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Just Released: #HDR2019

Dear Colleague, Today, UNDP launches the 2019 Human Development Report (HDR), “Beyond income, beyond averages, beyond today: inequalities in human development in the 21st Century” . The report argues that a new generation of inequalities is opening up, around education, and around technology and climate change which could trigger a ‘new great divergence’ in society. For example, in countries with very high human development, subscriptions to fixed broadband are growing 15 times faster and the proportion of adults with tertiary education is growing more than six times faster than in countries with low human development. Inequalities are entrenched in our societies. Parents’ advantages in income, health and education shape their children’s lives, often leading to “hoarding” of opportunities across generations, the report shows. For example, children in professional families in the United States are exposed to three times as many words as children in families receiving welfare benefits, with a knock-on effect on test scores later in life.

A new “social norms index” in the Report also says that in half of the countries assessed, gender bias has grown in recent years. About fifty per cent of people across 77 countries, said they thought men make better political leaders than women, while more than 40 per cent felt that men made better business executives. But inequality is not beyond solutions, the report says, and presents a broad suite of policy options that can help tackle it in various forms, going:

BEYOND INCOME,

BEYOND AVERAGES,

BEYOND TODAY,

for example to change social norms that perpetuate discrimination and reinforce the importance of early childhood education.

to get a clearer picture of the whole inequality story, for example to understand which groups of people are most disadvantaged and why.

by recognizing that the climate crisis and rapid technological change have profound implications for inequality.

I would like to invite you to read the report and its overview here (available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian) and share it with your friends and colleagues. You can also access the press package here and join the conversation on social media with #HDR2019 with a full social media package.   Thank you, Pedro Conceição Director, Human Development Report Office, UNDP.