Protecting human development: a search for an effective policy - a comparative cross country study of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia

Abstract

Protecting the human development of the young population of a country from aggregate economic shocks requires a rigorous empirical analysis of the effects economic crises have on human development. Individual country studies are available in this area, but regional aggregate studies are rare. This study tries to fill this gap by analysing the effects of business cycles on the human development of the young population in the Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asian region. Using cross sectional and panel data, the basic conclusion of the empirical analysis of this paper is that economic crises generally have a tendency to affect the human development through the incomes of the people as well as through decreases in public expenditure. The impact, however, differs across the regions. But one thing is clear – there has to be a new policy which decreases the burden of public expenditure on human development, such as through policies like CCTs. So, a new policy model has been suggested in this paper in order to decrease the burden on the government as well as introduce some self-sustaining mechanisms in those policies.