IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/8586.html

Human Development in Africa: A Long-run Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Prados de la Escosura, Leandro

Abstract

Long-run trends in Africa?s well-being are provided on the basis of a new index of human development, alternative to the UNDP?s HDI. A sustained improvement in African human development is found that falls, nonetheless, short of those experienced in other developing regions. Within Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa has fallen steadily behind the North since mid-20th century. Human development improvement is positively associated to being coastal and resource-rich and negatively to political-economy distortions. Contrary to the world experience, in which life expectancy dominated, education has driven progress in African human development during the last half-a-century and, due to the impact of HIV/AIDS on life expectancy and the arresting effect of economic mismanagement and political turmoil on growth, advances in human development since 1990 have depended almost exclusively on education achievements. The large country variance of the recovery during the last decade suggests being cautious about the future?s prospects.

Suggested Citation

  • Prados de la Escosura, Leandro, 2011. "Human Development in Africa: A Long-run Perspective," CEPR Discussion Papers 8586, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8586
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP8586
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andreas Exenberger & Simon Hartmann, 2013. "How Does Institutional Change Coincide with Changes in the Quality of Life? An Exemplary Case Study," Working Papers 2013-09, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    2. Emanuele Felice & Michelangelo Vasta, 2015. "Passive modernization? The new human development index and its components in Italy's regions (1871–2007)," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 19(1), pages 44-66.
    3. Boima M. Bernard & Yanping Song & Sehresh Hena & Fayyaz Ahmad & Xin Wang, 2022. "Assessing Africa’s Agricultural TFP for Food Security and Effects on Human Development: Evidence from 35 Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-21, May.
    4. Nicola Amendola & Giacomo Gabbuti & Giovanni Vecchi, 2023. "On some problems of using the Human Development Index in economic history," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 27(4), pages 477-505.
    5. Hillary Chijindu Ezeaku & Ifeoma C. Nwakoby & Obiamaka P. Egbo & Josaphat U. J. Onwumere, 2019. "On the Dynamic Effect of Bilateral Concessional Debts on Living Standards in Sub-Saharan Africa," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(3), pages 21582440198, September.
    6. Broadberry, Stephen & Gardner, Leigh, 2016. "Economic Development In Africa And Europe: Reciprocal Comparisons," Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(1), pages 11-37, March.
    7. Leandro Prados de la Escosura, 2015. "World Human Development: 1870–2007," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(2), pages 220-247, June.
    8. Nicola Amendola & Giacomo Gabbuti & Giovanni Vecchi, 2018. "On the use of composite indices in economic history. Lessons from Italy, 1861-2017," HHB Working Papers Series 11, The Historical Household Budgets Project.
    9. Prados de la Escosura, Leandro, 2019. "Human Development in the Age of Globalisation," IFCS - Working Papers in Economic History.WH 28450, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Instituto Figuerola.
    10. Jutta Bolt & Jan Luiten Zanden, 2014. "The Maddison Project: collaborative research on historical national accounts," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 67(3), pages 627-651, August.
    11. Meier zu Selhausen, Felix P. & van Leeuwen, Marco H.D. & Weisdorf, Jacob L., 2015. "Social Mobility among Christian Africans: Evidence from Ugandan Marriage Registers 1895-2011," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 239, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    12. Marian Leimbach & Niklas Roming & Gregor Schwerhoff & Anselm Schultes, 2016. "Development perspectives of Sub-Saharan Africa under climate policies," EcoMod2016 9336, EcoMod.
    13. Andersson, Jens & Andersson, Martin, 2019. "Beyond Miracle and Malaise: Social Capability in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal during the Development Era 1930-1980," Lund Papers in Economic History 202, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    14. Van Leeuwen, Bas & van Leeuwen-Li, Jieli & Foldvari, Peter, 2012. "Education as a driver of income inequality in twentieth-century Africa," MPRA Paper 43574, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Emanuele Felice, 2016. "The Misty Grail: The Search for a Comprehensive Measure of Development and the Reasons for GDP Primacy," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 47(5), pages 967-994, September.
    16. Andersson, Jens, 2018. "Tax Stabilisation, Trade and Political Transitions in Francophone West Africa over 120 Years," African Economic History Working Paper 41/2018, African Economic History Network.
    17. Alfani, Guido & Tadei, Federico, 2017. "Income Inequality In Colonial Africa: Building Social Tables For Pre-Independence Central African Republic, Ivory Coast And Senegal," African Economic History Working Paper 33/2017, African Economic History Network.
    18. Sinan Erdogan & Ali Acaravci, 2022. "On the Nexus Between Institutions and Economic Development: An Empirical Analysis for Sub-Saharan African Countries," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(4), pages 1857-1892, August.
    19. Lucilla Maria Bruni & Jamele Rigolini & Sara Troiano, 2016. "Forever Young?," World Bank Publications - Reports 24996, The World Bank Group.
    20. Leander Heldring & James A. Robinson, 2012. "Colonialism and Economic Development in Africa," NBER Working Papers 18566, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General
    • N37 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Africa; Oceania
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8586. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.