Racing Ahead or Lagging behind? Territorial Cohesion in Human Development around the Globe

Nicolai Suppa , Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED), UAB
Iñaki Permanyer, Centre for Demographic Studies and ICREA

The main aim of this paper is to investigate whether the generalized improvements in human development we are observing around the world involve all countries’ regions in a territorially cohesive / equitable way or if, on the contrary, some of them are racing ahead or lagging behind with respect to the corresponding national average. For that purpose, we document within-country variation in human development and multidimensional poverty since the turn of the new Millennium taking advantage of the Subnational Human Development Database and a subnational version of the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index. These databases are used to (i) investigate whether and to what extent some sub-national regions are substantially below or above national average levels in human development and multidimensional poverty, (ii) assess the extent of inequality in human development and multidimensional poverty across the regions within world countries’, and (iii) explore whether population growth has contributed favorably/unfavorably to the dynamics of over and under-development, inequality and poverty within world countries over time.

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 Presented in Session P3. Poster Session Migration, Economics, Environment, Methods, History and Policy