Abstract
At the onset of the new millennium and well into the UN Fifth Development Decade, most of humanity, including the two-thirds of the population living in poverty, have not yet reaped the benefits of development, although they have heard plenty of rhetoric, and some impressive statistics. For modern-day followers of the optimistic Dr. Panglos of Voltaire’s Candide, even if the present is not the “best of all possible worlds,” there have been some remarkable improvements. For instance, global life expectancy since the 1950s has moved from an average of slightly over 50 years to well over 60. This has been underscored by notable advances in sanitation, communication, and transportation technologies, and particularly in medicine and in combating perinatal and chronic diseases. Per capita incomes in constant dollars have risen more than three-fold. The most significant improvements have taken place in the area of basic education, in particularly literacy: in the twenty-first century illiteracy is much more the exception than the rule.
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© 2007 O.P. Dwivedi, R. Khator, J. Nef
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Dwivedi, O.P., Khator, R., Nef, J. (2007). Some Reflections on the Well-being of Nations. In: Managing Development in a Global Context. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230627390_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230627390_12
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