The Human Development Index (HDI), developed by the United Nations, was the primary metric used to assess the social and economic development of countries over time. The gains in wellbeing throughout the world were particularly dramatic from 1980 to 2014, and the driving forces behind the gains were many and varied. All the regions in the world experienced significant improvements in life expectancy, health, education and poverty reduction.
Category : Supplemental Material
The Pursuit of Human Well-Being
Sharing major findings & discoveries from the “Pursuit of Human Well-being”
Life Expectancy
Today, two things are true: there is a continuing high rate of child fertility combined with high rate of population aging. The dramatic increase in life expectancy during the 20th century ranks as one of the world’s greatest accomplishments.
Infant/Child Mortality
Infant and child mortality, which have posed major threats to child survival worldwide, are now at historically low levels, down over 90% from 1990. Vaccinations against crippling childhood diseases—now reach nearly 80% of the world’s infants and children.
Education
Education is a cornerstone that advances individual and community wellbeing. Governments today are now investing more resources to educate their citizens. One of the most remarkable results in education is the progress in adult literacy. Global adult literacy reached 85.3% in 2012.
Poverty
40% of the world lived in poverty in 1990. Twenty-five years later poverty dropped to 10% in the world. Imagine… poverty was reduced by 1 billion people in 25 years! Poverty fell yesterday by 137,000 people and it fell every day by 137,000 people for the past 25 years.
Happiness & Life Satisfaction
The biggest gains in life satisfaction are found among African countries. This is likely related to access to energy, health, education and infrastructure services. According to the Gallup World Happiness Report,10 of the top 11 happiest countries in the world are in Latin America.
Working class white Americans are now dying in middle age at faster rates than minority groups
In 2015, Princeton Professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton made global headlines after documenting a shocking rise in the proportion of white non-Hispanic Americans dying in middle age.
This year, as part of the Spring 2017 edition of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Professors Case and Deaton are following up on that research to further investigate the rise and its causes, examining midlife mortality rates of white non-Hispanics in the U.S. by geography, education, birth cohort, and more. You can read the full paper here.
Dividing the country into 1,000-plus regions, the authors find that the rate of “deaths of despair” (deaths by drugs, alcohol, and suicide) in midlife for white non-Hispanics rose in nearly every part of the country and at every level of urbanization—from deep rural areas to large central cities—hitting men and women similarly.
In 2000, the epidemic was centered in the southwest. By the mid-2000s it had spread to Appalachia, Florida, and the west coast. Today, it’s country-wide.
To read more, click here.
2016 Halloran Annual Report
The Pursuit of Human Well-Being was a three year landmark book project of Halloran Philanthropies which tells the remarkable story of the journey of human wellbeing throughout the world. The Pursuit of Human Wellbeing uncovered extraordinary findings in human wellbeing which have occurred primarily since the end of World War II.
The Human Development Index (HDI), developed by the United Nations, was the primary metric used to assess the social and economic development of countries over time. The gains in wellbeing throughout the world were particularly dramatic from 1980 to 2014, and the driving forces behind the gains were many and varied. All the regions in the world experienced significant improvements in life expectancy, health, education and poverty reduction.