Economic and Social Development

This discussion paper reviews the extensive literature on sanitation to show that inadequate access to this basic service prevents the realization of a range of human rights and of gender equality. This paper was featured at an event on Emerging Issues in Gender and WASH held during the 60th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women in 2016.

This paper uses harmonized collections of national labor force datasets to compare the size and shape of the paid care sector around the globe. The paper then explores the relationship between the size of the care sector and various measures of need for care, finding very little evidence of relationship. Finally, the paper explores wages and working conditions for paid care workers in a subset of countries for which data is available.

UNDP has been tracking debt vulnerabilities across developing economies and the availability and appropriateness of international relief measures. Accompanying UNDP's latest Debt Insights update, this UNDP Development Futures Series policy brief presents a snapshot of the current situation and outlook and discusses the needed international policy priorities. Central debt vulnerability indicators remain highly elevated and have continued to worsen across many countries, thereby intensifying a trade-off between development spending and a high and rising debt service burden, with especially devastating consequences in the poorest of countries. For countries that have restructured debt, economic costs have been substantial due to protracted negotiations pending a more formalized and predictable restructuring regime, and deals have delivered inadequate and uncertain relief. If support for debt relief is not stepped up, the situation could easily morph into longer-term solvency crises in more countries. The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) this year is an opportunity to tackle debt by focusing on ensuring easier access to an effective debt restructuring process, agreeing to a large-scale debt relief initiative for the poorest countries and on ways to lower the cost of borrowing. If the conference fails to deliver, poor countries could be in for another lost decade of development.

In the three decades that preceded the Covid-19 pandemic, more than one billion people escaped extreme income poverty. As the health and economic upheavals brought on by Covid-19 and subsequent crises have made evident, however, progress towards poverty eradication is fragile. With only a few years remaining before the target date of 2030 for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there is a renewed commitment to accelerate progress towards poverty eradication. In 2025, the United Nations will convene the Second World Summit for Social Development to give momentum towards the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, with a focus on poverty eradication and the other two pillars of social development. The Summit should strengthen the international community’s resolve to end poverty everywhere between now and 2030. Helping people escape extreme poverty is the first step towards achieving SDG 1. However, growing evidence on the poverty trajectories of families shows that escapes from poverty are seldom a straightforward path. Many people lift themselves out of poverty but fall back into it when a shock hits. A sharper policy focus on preventing impoverishment is needed to sustain progress and avoid setbacks.

This UNDP Development Futures Series policy brief explores the potential of leveraging cultural and creative industries, especially through music, to assist in the recovery from crisis and post-crisis settings. It focuses on music, not to elevate it above other art forms, but because engaging with it provides lessons and tactics, understanding and benefits across all other performative art forms and forms of intellectual property (IP). This study emphasizes the pivotal role of music and cultural participation and its engagement as a coping strategy, adding resilience to affected communities, and the expansive impact of music if it is regarded as an economy and an ecosystem. The policy brief proposes an innovative approach: to incorporate music and cultural production into programmes and strategies to support affected communities for livelihood recovery. The objective is to explore how music, and the wider creative economy, can be a powerful tool in supporting economic diversification in a non-extractive manner, by leveraging potential passive income streams inherent in music and cultural intellectual property.

In the lead up to the 2023 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit (18-19 September, New York), the Secretary-General urged all Member States and stakeholders to present forward looking commitments to accelerate sustainable development in the coming years. A total of 39 Member States and 1 non-member observer state submitted 141 commitments via the SDG Summit Acceleration and Accountability Platform. This policy brief reviews these national commitments from the 2023 SDG Summit, focusing on how countries are translating the leaving no one behind (LNoB) concept into different policies across various country settings.

Population ageing is a global phenomenon, a shift towards an increasing share of older persons in the population. Even the least developed countries (LDCs) are beginning to experience the progressive ageing of their populations, and this process is expected to accelerate during the second half of the current century (United Nations, 2023). Despite its far-reaching consequences, the emergence of this trend in LDCs has attracted only limited attention from both national policymakers and the international community. Most LDCs are still early in the decades-long process of population ageing, which is a direct consequence of the demographic transition towards longer lives and smaller families. Population ageing begins with a slowdown in the growth of the younger population but eventually involves the rapid growth of the older population. Early in this process, countries have an opportunity to benefit from the demographic dividend – a faster rate of economic growth on a per capita basis due to an increasing share of the working age population (and thus a falling dependency ratio) caused by a sustained decline in the fertility level. Although temporary, this opportunity often lasts for several decades. It comes to an end once the older population begins to grow more rapidly, leading to a rising old-age dependency ratio. Preparing for population ageing in LDCs will be critical for achieving sustainable development and ensuring that no one is left behind. Maximizing the benefits from the demographic dividend will provide an opportunity for these countries to develop economically before their populations become much older. It is also consistent with a pledge of “working together to support the acceleration of the demographic transition, where relevant”, as agreed in the Doha Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2022–2031 (United Nations, 2022).

The rapid adoption of renewable energy technologies and the transition away from fossil fuels are vital for combating climate change. Achieving net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050 will require much faster deployment of clean energy technologies, including wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles (EVs) and battery storage systems. This shift is fueling a sharp rise in demand for critical energy transition minerals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, nickel, and rare earth elements, particularly as developing countries work to achieve universal energy access and diversify their economies. For instance, an onshore wind power plant requires nine times more mineral inputs than a gas-fired plant of the same capacity, while an EV needs six times more minerals than a conventional car. Additionally, the average mineral requirement for new power generation capacity increased by 50 per cent during the 2010s, driven by the growing share of renewables in total capacity additions. Against this backdrop, countries rich in critical mineral resources have an opportunity to unlock significant development benefits. These minerals can attract foreign and domestic investment, create jobs, and boost fiscal revenues, exports, and overall economic growth. However, quantifying the economic scale of the mining industry remains challenging, especially due to the volatility of mineral prices, which directly impact valuations.

Converging crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, climate change and various conflicts, have become a defining challenge of our time. Crises that might have previously been contained within a specific geographic space are now propagated rapidly through globally interconnected systems and networks in areas such as economics, finance, the environment and health. This Policy Brief highlights the following: (a) converging crises have reversed and exposed the fragility of global SDG progress and imposed high costs on developing countries, (b) reducing inequality and poverty is critical to building resilience against the impact of shocks and crises, and (c) investment in the SDGs, particularly those that underpin social development, can help build resilience of developing countries to multiple crises, as seen in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed an acute deficiency in care services, highlighting the unfair and unsustainable model on which the care system traditionally relies. Recent surveys indicate that more than three quarters (76.4%) of unpaid domestic care work worldwide is done by women, hindering their access to other opportunities. Simultaneously, increasing care needs due to rising dependency ratios are challenging the viability and sustainability of the traditional care provision system. To meet the growing care demand among the young, old, ill and disabled, societies must move away from such a system and invest in a sustainable care economy to provide affordable, high-quality care services while recognizing, reducing and redistributing (“3Rs”) the unpaid care burden borne by women. Besides emphasis on SDG 5, this policy brief focuses on opportunities and challenges in scaling a sustainable care economy to create new sources of fair jobs and reshape current economic and financial systems to make it more equitable, contributing to a broader range of SDGs, including SDG 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11 and more. While the research is built on data mostly from China, the findings may benefit a wide range of emerging economies with similar development contexts.