File photo by AFP/Jiji THE BIG STORY TROUBLED FUTURE As Asia confronts the post-pandemic era of war and rising inequality, is economic development really making lives better? MICHAEL PEEL Nikkei Asia executive editor War-torn Syria, pictured in 2016. Quantitative measures of human progress such as the U.N.’s Human Development Index may not account for the impact of crises like war on people’s quality of life. Nikkei Asia - Special excerpt from Nov. 14-20, 2022 Print edition. Nikkei Inc. No reproduction without permission. THE BIG STORY Displaced families from flood-hit areas in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province board vehicles to move to a safe place in August. Is global development stalling after 30 years of growth? (Human Development Index* score for world) 1.0 Very high 0.8 “We have got so used to being safe,” Chan Heng Chee, ambassador-at-large for Singapore’s foreign ministry, told Nikkei Asia. “There was a time when everybody looked at the AsiaPacific, and Southeast Asia, to say ‘it’s one of the fastest-growing regions.’ Now it’s not such a stable place.” AP DOES MORE DEVELOPED MEAN MORE SECURE? The sharp shift in perspective has raised questions about whether statistically rooted confidence in the ever-improving human condition was always flawed. Did it over-extrapolate past events into the future, such as when analysts like Francis Fukuyama predicted liberal democracy’s worldwide ideological triumph? Or is the number-based positivity faulty because benchmarks such as economic gross domestic product are poor proxies for the complexities of human well-being? “We all know that GDP and other measures are not enough -- and also that they are imperfect,” said Shun Wang, a professor at South Korea’s KDI School of Public Policy and Management, who has a special focus on happiness and well-being. “As a government, if you miss those other important aspects of life, your policies may be misdirected.” The debate highlights a conundrum that lies at the heart of the age of precarity. Traditional development measures suggest “We have got so used to being safe. There was a time when everybody looked at the Asia-Pacific, and Southeast Asia, to say ‘it’s one of the fastest-growing regions.’ Now it’s not such a stable place 6of 7 ” Chan Heng Chee Ambassador-at-large for Singapore’s foreign ministry minister of one of the world’s richest nations per capita, reflected the mood in his National Day of Singapore speech in August. He noted how “suddenly and quickly” things had gone wrong in Europe, where war now rages after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Lee said Singaporeans must “get ourselves prepared psychologically” in case things “go wrong like that” in their own region, too. Asia, where a large majority of the world’s people live, is a crucible for global disruption. It is on the front line of supply chain upsets, superpower tensions and the impact of climate change. The fear is that the problems nations have seen so far, including the coronavirus pandemic, are only the beginning. Nikkei Asia - Special excerpt from Nov. 14-20, 2022 Print edition. Nikkei Inc. No reproduction without permission. Singapore Press/AP TOKYO Hans Rosling, the late Swedish statistician, had a magician’s eye for presenting numbers. One of his most striking performances can be seen in a 2010 video called “200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes.” It has been watched 10 million times on the BBC’s YouTube channel. In the clip, Rosling conjures an animated graph on which colored bubbles show average incomes and life expectancies in the nations of the world. As a counter ticks toward the 21st century, many of the circles rise up the screen, with Asian states prominent after World War II. It is a powerful demonstration of how humanity has grown better off than ever before -- at least according to the measures Rosling chose. Rosling, whose fans included Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, concludes his presentation with a bold prediction: “We have become an entirely new converging world and I see a clear trend into the future,” he proclaims, as a giant blue arrow points his capsules of human well-being ever upward. “With aid, trade, green technology and peace, it’s fully possible that everyone can make it to the healthy, wealthy corner.” Those confident words now seem to belong to another era. Instead of dreams about progress, our times are plagued by a pandemic, conflict and climate change. The data-driven buoyancy of Rosling’s video feels far removed from the age of precarity now gripping us. A sense of dread has spread even among the wealthiest and strongest countries, not least in Asia. Lee Hsien Loong, prime people in a survey from 74 countries and territories said they have felt moderately or very insecure, even in the years leading up to the coronavirus pandemic Source: Report from the United Nations Development Program High Medium 0.6 Low 0.4 0.2 0 1990 ‘95 2000 ‘05 ‘10 ‘15 ‘21 *Composite index calculated for 191 countries and territories, measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living Source: United Nations Development Program Even in developed nations, most people feel insecure (Perceived security levels in 2022 of countries/regions grouped by Human Development Index score, in percent) Security level: Very insecure 8 64 Low or medium HDI Moderately insecure Secure 14 29 55 High HDI 37 31 23 Very high HDI 40 Figures do not add up to 100 due to rounding Source: United Nations Human Development Report Office people’s lives were broadly improving until recently: The United Nations’ flagship Human Development Index hit a record high in 2019, just before the pandemic. Yet that masked a growing divide between those encouraging numbers and citizens’ more negative reported feelings about their lives. A U.N. report published in February laid out the central contradiction starkly. The research, called “New threats to human security in the Anthropocene,” found that in most places, people were on average richer and longer-lived -- and yet, they felt ever more troubled. The report describes as “startling” the contrast between “improvements in well-being achievements and declines in people’s perception of security.” Most strikingly, the research described an anxiety that cut across regions and income levels. It used data from 74 countries and territories, accounting for more than four-fifths of the world’s population. The survey covered everyday citizen security, socioeconomic security and violent conflict. More than 6 Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, front and second from left, at a National Day Observance Ceremony on Aug. 8. THE BIG STORY “People were, on average, living healthier, in 7 respondents said they felt moderately or very insecure, even before the coronavirus pandemic. This included more than threequarters of people in nations deemed to have very high levels of human development. “People were, on average, living healthier, wealthier and better lives for longer than ever,” the report concludes. “But under the surface a growing sense of insecurity had been taking root.” The worry that underpins the new age of precarity features ever larger in the public discourse. A book of the moment is the economist Nouriel Roubini’s “MegaThreats,” which is a far cry from Hans Rosling’s hopes for universal upward mobility. Roubini argues that the world risks plunging into economic catastrophe due to interconnected dangers ranging from trade disruption to U.S.-China competition. The planet is now in a state of “polycrisis,” the historian Adam Tooze has argued. Events that “would once have seemed fanciful are now facts,” from rivers running dry to the push for U.S.-China economic uncoupling, he wrote in the Financial Times in October. “In the polycrisis the shocks are disparate, but they interact so that the whole is even more overwhelming than the sum of the parts,” Tooze warned. “At times one feels as if one is losing one’s sense of reality.” In Asia, the age of precarity’s political impact is increasingly evident. Spikes in the cost of living have driven public anger and sometimes unrest in countries as diverse as Sri Lanka, Laos and Indonesia. China’s growing power and economic influence across the region is a further source of tension, including controversies over Beijing-backed infrastructure projects in nations such as Pakistan. Now China’s overall growth rate is falling and threatening fallout across Asia. The World Bank forecast in September that rises in China’s GDP would this year lag the rest of the region, excluding Japan, for the first time in decades. This is likely to have an impact on all those around Asia who work to supply goods to China, or consume products from it. “Countries in the region, whether they like it or not, have witnessed China’s remarkable economic growth, and much of their economies are intrinsically linked to it,” said Huong Le Thu, principal policy fellow at Australia’s Perth USAsia Center think tank. “It would be the first time in living recent memory to see stagnation in this giant -- and the ripple effects of that may create a shock wave in developing Asia too.” Other disturbing trends in Asia include rising hunger and the impact of conflict, even as many countries register strong headline economic growth rates. More than 424 million people in the region were undernourished last year, up from 398 million in 2020 and 340 million in 2019, according to the U.N. South Asia had the highest number of people affected by conflict in 2021, at a time when people are being forcibly displaced in record numbers worldwide. Citizens angry about a recent hike in fuel prices protest outside Indonesia’s presidential palace in Jakarta in September. FACTS ARE NOT ENOUGH All these developments jar with the data-driven confidence about human development that has long gripped the imagination of the public and, perhaps wealthier and better lives for longer than ever [when the covid -19 pandemic began.] But under the surface a growing sense of insecurity had been taking root ” A U.N. report titled “New threats to human security in the Anthropocene” people in Asia went short of food last year, up from 398 million in 2020 and 340 million in 2019 Source: United Nations EPA/Jiji 424 million life,” he declares. “Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.” Dickens’ parody suggests something of the way in which facts are often neither neutral nor fully representative. The U.N.’s annual Human Development Index is a case in point. It has long been a widely used standard for measuring the welfare of citizens of countries across the world. It is based on assessing “three basic dimensions” -- life span and health, knowledge, and standard of living. The 32-year-old index has played an important role as a yardstick of basic aspects of quality of life. It has demonstrated remarkable progress over decades in crucial areas such as cutting infant mortality and improving girls’ access to education. It was only in 2021, with the world in the grip of COVID-19, that the index fell for two successive years for the first time. But the methodology has significant limitations that the age of precarity has made increasingly obvious. The U.N. itself acknowledges that its data “does not reflect on inequalities, poverty, human security, empowerment, etc.” Some of these hard-to-quantify dimensions, including corrosive psychological burdens, can have a critical impact on people’s sense of wellbeing. The U.N. has rolled out other statistical measures in an effort to complement the index and reflect factors including inequality, gender rights and environmental pressures. Syria is an example of the gaps in what the main development index assesses. The country registered a higher score in 2019 than in 1990, despite a sharp fall in the early 2010s due to the Nikkei Asia - Special excerpt from Nov. 14-20, 2022 Print edition. Nikkei Inc. No reproduction without permission. An internally displaced woman walks between tents after heavy rain at the Kafr Arouk camp in Idlib, Syria, on Dec. 20, 2021. Reuters More than especially, the powerful. The approach found a ready audience in TED talks and elite gatherings such as the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. As late as 2019, a WEF document proclaimed how the global multilateral system had “underpinned decades of remarkable human progress.” The paper led on numbers showing falls in absolute poverty and war deaths, and heralded improvements in managing trade, infectious diseases, and peace and security. High-profile advocates of the view that life generally has been getting better are still holding their ground, despite the barrage of disturbing world events. One is Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker, whose admirers include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Pinker has long attacked what he branded in 2019 a “negativity bias in news” that “can corrode commitment to progress” and foster nihilism and demagoguery. Lately, he has urged people not to tilt too hard toward pessimism. “Bad things happen, and they will appear to come in clusters,” he told the BBC in August. “But it doesn’t mean that we’re being punished for our collective sins or that we’re in a uniquely dangerous moment.” The appeal of this hyperpositivity to the beneficiaries of the global system is obvious. If things are getting better for people on average, the status quo must be justifiable. At its crudest, the focus on selected development statistics has echoes of the teacher Thomas Gradgrind in Charles Dickens’ novel “Hard Times.” Gradgrind sees himself as an objective thinker but fails to realize how narrow his vision is. “Facts alone are wanted in THE BIG STORY Approximately Inequality is rising for more than 70% of people worldwide 1children billion (Percentage of total global population by trend in the Gini coefficient*) Source: UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Index Uncontrollable disasters, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, add to people’s growing sense of insecurity worldwide. civil war. Did Syrians really have better lives on average in 2019, after eight years of devastating conflict, than they did almost three decades previously? THE DOWNSIDES OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Other similarly undermeasured stresses loom large in many Asian countries. They include the intensity of manufacturing work, the patchiness of health insurance and the repressive policies of governments. You can be earning more than your parents or grandparents could have dreamed but still be one accident or knock on the door from the secret police away from disaster. Cambodia is a case in point of how authoritarian regimes can be highly rated on well-being measures that tend to ignore their dark sides. The Southeast Asian country’s Human Development Index score rose steadily between 1990 and 2019. Yet that tells us nothing of how political persecution has deepened and corruption flourished under the government of Hun Sen, prime minister since 1985. “The world has this dilemma,” said Trinh Nguyen, an economist at the French bank Natixis and former World Bank official. “We haven’t figured out how to benchmark human progress. And by obsessing on measures such as GDP growth, we pay too little attention to sustainable development.” Trinh points to examples across Asia of trends that are important indicators of the human condition but are missed by many traditional development league tables. One is the impact Reuters A family walks along a flooded street following heavy rains during the monsoon season in Nowshera, Pakistan, on Aug. 30. Falling inequality 20.8 Rising inequality 71.0 Based on data for 119 countries from 2018 *Measure of statistical dispersion that represents income inequality Source: United Nations Reuters live in countries classified as extremely high risk from the consequences of climate change No trend 8.2 “The world has this dilemma. We haven’t figured out how to benchmark human progress. And by obsessing on measures such as GDP growth, we pay too little attention to sustainable development ” Trinh Nguyen An economist at the French bank Natixis and former World Bank official of loneliness in high income countries such as South Korea, where a third of all households in 2021 were single person -- an all-time high. Another is the effect of family separation in nations, such as the Philippines, where large numbers of people relocate internally or migrate overseas for work. “We have to define what makes people happy,” Trinh said. “Not just material comforts and health -- but what about social structures?” Another question over traditional human development measures is their lack of accounting for the environmental and other costs underlying increasing income. These are much more salient because they are causing deaths and economic damage. Examples include extreme weather events linked to global heating, such as the devastating floods in Pakistan this year. A further important dimension underplayed in some wellbeing assessments is the uneven distribution of wealth. While inequality between nations has in many cases fallen during the past few decades, the divide within countries has often grown. According to a 2020 U.N. survey, 71% of the world’s population lived in nations where inequality had risen during the previous 30 years. These included China and India, Asia’s two largest countries by far. Growing inequality is increasingly acknowledged as more than a moral matter. It “not only raises social and political concerns, but also economic ones” since it tends to drag down growth, according to a 2015 report by the Organization for Nikkei Asia - Special excerpt from Nov. 14-20, 2022 Print edition. Nikkei Inc. No reproduction without permission. Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 2019, International Monetary Fund researchers Shekhar Aiyar and Christian Ebeke argued that inequality of opportunity often “limits the potential and prospects of low-income earners, and stymies long-term growth.” NEW WAYS TO MEASURE HUMAN PROGRESS The sense of an Asian region and wider world beleaguered by crises has added urgency to efforts to better describe the human condition. The U.N. plans to expand its work on human insecurity and says the need for development indicators to reflect people’s agency over their lives is “critical.” “New measurements of agency are likely to cover political decision making, and discount the effects of authoritarian rule,” Yanchun Zhang, chief statistician at the United Nations Development Program, told Nikkei. “They are also likely to account for cases where people’s lack of control over the narrative of their lives results in anxiety and stress.” The OECD, a club of 38 industrialized countries, runs what it calls the Better Life Index. The project’s criteria include reported life satisfaction, environmental quality and civic engagement. The 2020 edition found that OECD countries with higher average levels of well-being tended to have greater equality between population groups and fewer people living in deprivation. These efforts toward more sophisticated analyses face their own difficulties. Some are distilled in the disagreements over the usefulness of existing league tables such as the World Happiness Report and the Happy Planet Index. Data on people’s feelings can be problematic because they are subjective and thus cannot be externally measured or verified, India-based economist Jairaj Devadiga has argued. Before his death in 2017, Hans Rosling disliked being described as an optimist. He styled himself instead as someone who resisted the “overdramatic worldview.” Now, the age of precarity has brought multiple interlocking and unwelcome crises, with Asia central to many of them. It is imperative we understand the full impact of this storm of events on people’s lives, to give ourselves the chance to best mitigate the damage. If we don’t, the seemingly irresistible rise of Rosling’s bubbles of human health and wealth might be abruptly halted by conflict, disease and environmental collapse. “We only look at part of our world,” said Shun Wang, the KDI School professor. “And we have ignored a lot of important things.”
