Abstract: This paper examines the components and structure of the UNDP’s Human Development Index and briefly reviews the criticisms of this index in the literature. It suggests some improvements on the components of the index as well as proposing a dierent structure for the index itself. These result in a set of alternative indices, based on the same components, for measuring human development. Data from the Human Development Report 1995 are used to test and compare the robustness of all the measures discussed. Furthermore it attempts to establish whether the developed indices based on the components of the HDI have the expected properties of an index or whether they are ‘redundant ’ as proposed by some literature. # 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1

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Income per capita and most widely reported, non- or non-exclusively income based human well-being indicators are highly correlated among countries. Yet many countries exhibit higher achievement in the latter than predicted by the former. The reverse is true for many other countries. This paper commences by extracting the inter-country variation in a composite of various widely-reported, non-income-based well-being indices not accounted for by variations in income pre capita. This extraction is interpreted inter alia as a measure of non-economic well-being. The paper then looks at correlations between this extraction and a number of new or less widely-used well-being measures, in an attempt to find the measure that best captures these achievements. A number of indicators are examined, including mea-sures of poverty, inequality, health status, education status, gender bias, empowerment, governance and subjective well-being. 1.

Despite the renewed commitment over the past 15 years to poverty reduction as the core objective of international development discourses and policies, progress to this end remains disappointing. This is particularly evident in the extent to which the world is off track to

Following Amartya Sen, this paper contends that the capability approach provides a better framework for thinking about human well-being and development than more traditional approaches which typically focus on utility or resources. This is illustrated by drawing on the results of a survey which investigated how ordinary people in South Africa view human well-being (a ‘good ’ form of life). However, the results of this exercise indicate that the capability approach overlaps with both utility (happiness, pleasure, etc) and resource-based concepts of well-being. The distinctions between commodities (and their characteristics), human functioning and utility is less robust than Sen implies. In particular, the capability approach needs to make more space for the role of utility (defined broadly to include all valuable mental states) and say more about the material basis of well-being.

This article critically reviews the role of participatory theory in managing development projects and programmes in poor countries. Participation has emerged in response to global demands for greater individual and social control over the activities of state and private agencies, and especially to the manifest failures of traditional ‘top-down ’ management systems in LDCs. Claims made on behalf of these participatory methodologies are critically reviewed and a distinction is drawn between strong and weak versions of the theory. Empirical evidence is then considered to evaluate the effectiveness of these methodologies, using long-standing insights of social science theory to show that participation can succeed for specific kinds of projects and programmes in favourable circumstances, but is unsuitable for many others. It commonly fails in contexts where local conditions make co-operative and collective action very difficult, or where it is manipulated by implementing agencies to justify their own actions or poor performance. Neither the strong nor the weak understandings of participation in current literature take full account of the fact that these problems can only be avoided by combining hierarchy and expertise with participation in management systems. Participation will only be successful in producing good organisational performance when it is operationalised through institutional arrangements which maximise the accountability of agencies to

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Princeton on "International Differences in Well-Being". This version is intended to become a chapter in an Oxford University Press volume of the same name, edited by Kahneman, Diener and Helliwell. We are grateful to conference participants for comments and advice. In revising the paper we have been especially aided by the post-conference review by Richard Layard. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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