Issues in Global Human Inequality: Recent Episodes
A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi
We live in a complex world of unparallelled affluence and immense deprivation. Yet cutting across this complexity, there are a set of key areas of focus for the contemporary policy agenda of states seeking to bring about improvements in human development: climate change; population structures; conflict and complex emergencies; gender and development; the role of employment in livelihoods; and social protection. Issues in global human inequality explores these key policy debates, connecting the global to the local and portraying our individual connection to social change and development.
With waged employment becoming increasingly precarious, social protection is the phrase that we use to describe what states can do to seek to ensure that human capabilities continue to flourish. Social protection has a long history, but has changed in significant ways over the past 20 years, in ways that will shape the future course of the lives of many across the course of this century.
Social protection is remarkably cost-effective, which begs the question - why is there not more of it?
With waged employment becoming increasingly precarious, social protection is the phrase that we use to describe what states can do to seek to ensure that human capabilities continue to flourish. Social protection has a long history, but has changed in significant ways over the past 20 years, in ways that will shape the future course of the lives of many across the course of this century.
In the developing world social protection mechanisms include cash transfers, cash transfers alongside measures to facilitate the accumulation of assets by households, and integrated poverty reduction programs.
With waged employment becoming increasingly precarious, social protection is the phrase that we use to describe what states can do to seek to ensure that human capabilities continue to flourish. Social protection has a long history, but has changed in significant ways over the past 20 years, in ways that will shape the future course of the lives of many across the course of this century.
In the 21st century social protection consists of social insurance, social assistance and employment and labour market interventions.
With waged employment becoming increasingly precarious, social protection is the phrase that we use to describe what states can do to seek to ensure that human capabilities continue to flourish. Social protection has a long history, but has changed in significant ways over the past 20 years, in ways that will shape the future course of the lives of many across the course of this century.
After World War Two developed and developing countries sought to build social welfare states. These were extensively restructured during the 1980s and 1990s.
With waged employment becoming increasingly precarious, social protection is the phrase that we use to describe what states can do to seek to ensure that human capabilities continue to flourish. Social protection has a long history, but has changed in significant ways over the past 20 years, in ways that will shape the future course of the lives of many across the course of this century.
Originating in late 19th century Germany, social protection spread rapidly in the early 20th century in the developed countries.
With waged employment becoming increasingly precarious, social protection is the phrase that we use to describe what states can do to seek to ensure that human capabilities continue to flourish. Social protection has a long history, but has changed in significant ways over the past 20 years, in ways that will shape the future course of the lives of many across the course of this century.
Social protection mitigates risks, meets needs, and helps to realize rights.
Enlarging human capabilities can require access to employment that is safe, secure and fairly paid. But around the world we are seeing an increasing share of employment being unsafe, insecure, and poorly paid. Can employment that supports the ability of people to live the life to which they aspire be promoted?
Transforming precarious work into decent work requires recognizing the jobs the people are uniquely qualified to do, and which cannot be automated.
Enlarging human capabilities can require access to employment that is safe, secure and fairly paid. But around the world we are seeing an increasing share of employment being unsafe, insecure, and poorly paid. Can employment that supports the ability of people to live the life to which they aspire be promoted?
How did precarious employment emerge in the developed world?
Enlarging human capabilities can require access to employment that is safe, secure and fairly paid. But around the world we are seeing an increasing share of employment being unsafe, insecure, and poorly paid. Can employment that supports the ability of people to live the life to which they aspire be promoted?
Agriculture is still the single most important source of employment in the world. Around the world, manufacturing jobs are a declining source of employment, but service jobs are growing, everywhere.
Enlarging human capabilities can require access to employment that is safe, secure and fairly paid. But around the world we are seeing an increasing share of employment being unsafe, insecure, and poorly paid. Can employment that supports the ability of people to live the life to which they aspire be promoted?
A great deal of global work is unpaid. A large share of the globally-employed work informally, without legal status. These are the realities of work in the 21st century.
Gender relations shape our everyday lives in ways that we do and do not always see. They have a profound effect on our capacity to live the lives to which we aspire, and so we need to better understand them and the consequences that they foster.
Since the 1990s efforts to transform gender relations in developing countries have been called the Gender And Development approach to social change.
Gender relations shape our everyday lives in ways that we do and do not always see. They have a profound effect on our capacity to live the lives to which we aspire, and so we need to better understand them and the consequences that they foster.
In the 1970s and 1980s efforts to improve the social and economic status of women led to the Women in Development approach to social change.
Gender relations shape our everyday lives in ways that we do and do not always see. They have a profound effect on our capacity to live the lives to which we aspire, and so we need to better understand them and the consequences that they foster.
The basis of gender inequality lies in the patriarchal social norms and institutions that pervade our societies, and which must be challenged if human capabilities are to be enlarged.
Gender relations shape our everyday lives in ways that we do and do not always see. They have a profound effect on our capacity to live the lives to which we aspire, and so we need to better understand them and the consequences that they foster.
The vast majority of the world's women spend a significant part of their working doing work around the home for their families. Why is this work not recognized by state policy?
Gender relations shape our everyday lives in ways that we do and do not always see. They have a profound effect on our capacity to live the lives to which we aspire, and so we need to better understand them and the consequences that they foster.
Gender relations are not natural but are created in our homes, in our schools, in our civic and faith-based organizations, and by state policy.
Conflict clearly diminishes human capabilities. Yet it appears that conflict around the world is an endemic feature of human societies. So if we want to enlarge human capabilities we need to understand ways of mitigating conflict.
Are some of the sources of armed conflict around the world also witnessed in neighbourhoods in the developed countries?
Conflict clearly diminishes human capabilities. Yet it appears that conflict around the world is an endemic feature of human societies. So if we want to enlarge human capabilities we need to understand ways of mitigating conflict.
Does conflict have clearly-defined economic and political causes?
Conflict clearly diminishes human capabilities. Yet it appears that conflict around the world is an endemic feature of human societies. So if we want to enlarge human capabilities we need to understand ways of mitigating conflict.
Is conflict the result of cultural differences that cannot be bridged?
Conflict clearly diminishes human capabilities. Yet it appears that conflict around the world is an endemic feature of human societies. So if we want to enlarge human capabilities we need to understand ways of mitigating conflict.
What are the ways in which conflict throws social change and development into reverse, diminishing human capabilities?
Conflict clearly diminishes human capabilities. Yet it appears that conflict around the world is an endemic feature of human societies. So if we want to enlarge human capabilities we need to understand ways of mitigating conflict.
The character of armed conflict has changed in important ways since the end of World War Two. This has had an effect on the intensity of armed conflict.
There are many who believe that climate change is closely intertwined with the population of the planet, and that the two together will have mutually-reinforcing negative consequences for human capabilities. In fact, the world's population structure is changing, but in ways that throw up a surprising set of challenges that are not obvious.
What are the implications of contemporary urbanization?
There are many who believe that climate change is closely intertwined with the population of the planet, and that the two together will have mutually-reinforcing negative consequences for human capabilities. In fact, the world's population structure is changing, but in ways that throw up a surprising set of challenges that are not obvious.
Migration is far more complex than most people realize, but it is only by understanding its complexity that we can begin to understand ways to more humanely manage the process of migration.
There are many who believe that climate change is closely intertwined with the population of the planet, and that the two together will have mutually-reinforcing negative consequences for human capabilities. In fact, the world's population structure is changing, but in ways that throw up a surprising set of challenges that are not obvious.
What are the consequences of the changes that we are seeing in the structure of the planet's population?
There are many who believe that climate change is closely intertwined with the population of the planet, and that the two together will have mutually-reinforcing negative consequences for human capabilities. In fact, the world's population structure is changing, but in ways that throw up a surprising set of challenges that are not obvious.
Is there any basis by which to support the idea that the world's resources cannot support the world's population?
There are many who believe that climate change is closely intertwined with the population of the planet, and that the two together will have mutually-reinforcing negative consequences for human capabilities. In fact, the world's population structure is changing, but in ways that throw up a surprising set of challenges that are not obvious.
If the rate of population growth has been declining since 1972, and declining rates of growth of population are driven by declining fertility rates, why are fertility rates in decline around the world?
There are many who believe that climate change is closely intertwined with the population of the planet, and that the two together will have mutually-reinforcing negative consequences for human capabilities. In fact, the world's population structure is changing, but in ways that throw up a surprising set of challenges that are not obvious.
What have been global trends in population over the course of the last 75 years, and what will they be until the end of the century?
The capacity to enlarge human capabilities and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals is severely circumscribed by the climate crisis.
Can the Paris Agreement solve the climate crisis?
The capacity to enlarge human capabilities and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals is severely circumscribed by the climate crisis.
Given the scale of the climate crisis, why have the countries of the world remained wedded to liberal, market-based approaches to global environmental governance?
If the evidence that climate change has accelerated is irrefutable, why do people deny its veracity or downplay its severity?
It is only possible to understand climate change if we understand that global human inequality effects and reflects global carbon inequality.
The capacity to enlarge human capabilities and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals is severely circumscribed by the climate crisis.
If the evidence that climate change has accelerated is irrefutable, why do people deny its veracity or downplay its severity?
The capacity to enlarge human capabilities and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals is severely circumscribed by the climate crisis.
The evidence that climate change has accelerated in the past 30 years and is man-made is irrefutable.
The vast majority of the countries of the world, including Canada, have agreed to the Sustainable Development Goals as the objective of social, economic and environmental policy until 2030. Yet few people in the developed countries know of the Sustainable Development Goals and what they seek to achieve.
The Millennium Development Goals was the framework that was used to seek to enlarge human capabilities in the developing countries between 2000 and 2015.
The vast majority of the countries of the world, including Canada, have agreed to the Sustainable Development Goals as the objective of social, economic and environmental policy until 2030. Yet few people in the developed countries know of the Sustainable Development Goals and what they seek to achieve.
If social change and development is about enlarging human capabilities, are there ways of using these ideas to better understand the successes and failures of state policy?
The world is rapidly changing, but in ways that many of us fail to understand. For many, things are bad. For many, things are getting better. So we need to understand how the world can both be bad and getting better at the same time, and what this means for our understanding of social change and development.
Lying behind an enlargement of human capabilities lies a set of ethical concerns that need to be addressed. One way of addressing these concerns is through realizing human rights.
The world is rapidly changing, but in ways that many of us fail to understand. For many, things are bad. For many, things are getting better. So we need to understand how the world can both be bad and getting better at the same time, and what this means for our understanding of social change and development.
How can we understand social change and development? One way is by seeing it as the capability of people to seek to achieve the live to which they aspire. This is called capabilities, and an enlargement of capabilities has been called central to the enlargement of human freedoms by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen.
The world is rapidly changing, but in ways that many of us fail to understand. For many, things are bad. For many, things are getting better. So we need to understand how the world can both be bad and getting better at the same time, and what this means for our understanding of social change and development.
In the early 2020s we live in a world that is in transition, but to an end point that is not known. How this transition plays out will shape all of our lives, for the rest of the century
The world is rapidly changing, but in ways that many of us fail to understand. For many, things are bad. For many, things are getting better. So we need to understand how the world can both be bad and getting better at the same time, and what this means for our understanding of social change and development.
The world has changed irrevocably over the course of the last 40 years as neoliberalism has come to shape the tenor of our times.
The world is rapidly changing, but in ways that many of us fail to understand. For many, things are bad. For many, things are getting better. So we need to understand how the world can both be bad and getting better at the same time, and what this means for our understanding of social change and development.
It is relatively easy to show that the world is bad. It is relatively easy to show that the world is getting better. We live in a world in motion, which is both bad and getting better at the same time.