United Nations Development Programme Reports Research Articles

Public Expenditure and Economic Development in Nigeria

This study empirically investigated the effect of public expenditure on economic development in Nigeria from 1970-2020. To achieve this objective theoretical, conceptual and empirical literature on public expenditure and economic development were reviewed. Public expenditure was proxied by capital and recurrent expenditure while economic development was proxied by gross domestic product and human development index. Secondary data was obtained from central bank statistical bulletin and United Nations development programme reports various years. The study adopts the used of ordinary least square regression statistical tools to test the formulated hypotheses with the aid of Eviews 10 econometric statistical software. The findings show that capital expenditure has positive and significant effect on gross domestic product in Nigeria. Empirical evidence revealed that recurrent expenditure has positive and significant effect on gross domestic product in Nigeria. Empirical evidence shows that capital expenditure has positive and significant impact on human development index in Nigeria. Empirical evidence indicates that recurrent expenditure has positive and insignificant effect on human development index in Nigeria. The study concludes that public expenditure has positive and significant effect on economic development in Nigeria. The study recommends among others that government should improved macroeconomic policies through creation of stable economic policies of low inflation and positive economic growth. The government should ensure free market supply site policies through deregulation, lower taxes, privatization and less regulation to stimulate private sector investment in Nigeria. The government should implement interventionist supply site policies through increase spending on public goods such as health care, education, public transport and massive infrastructural development. Government should ensure diversification from oil and gas to manufactu

Effect of Disaggregated Government Expenditures on Human Development in Nigeria

This study empirically investigated the effect of government expenditure on human development in Nigeria from 1981 to 2019. Government expenditure is proxied with government capital and recurrent expenditure on health, government capital and recurrent expenditure on education and government capital and recurrent expenditure on other social and community services while human development is proxied with human development index. The study employed ex-post facto research design and secondary data were utilized. The Secondary data were obtained from Central Bank Statistical bulletin and United Nations development programme report of various years. The study tested for stationarity, and it was found that the variables are stationary at mixed order. Based on this, the study adopted Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model as the estimation technique. The study found that government capital and recurrent expenditure on health has weak and insignificant effect on human development. The study also revealed that government capital and recurrent expenditure on education has significant positive effect on human development in Nigeria. The study likewise revealed that government capital and recurrent expenditure on other social and community services has significant positive effect on human development in Nigeria. The study concluded that government expenditure through investment in education and other social and community services influence human capital development in Nigeria positively. Thus, the study recommended amongst others that the Nigeria government should increase funding of the education sector to meet education, scientific and cultural organization minimum requirement. Government should invest more on other social and community services.

Social & Spatial Analysis, and Economic Indicators of Mongolia

This paper aims to investigate Mongolia’s economic indicators, including social and spatial analysis such as international relations, population, infrastructure, and other analysis of economic indicators. There are not enough scientific papers that addressed about Mongolian economy thus, data are collected and analyzed based on United Nations Development Programme reports, Asian Development Bank reports, Wikipedia, and other open-resource materials. Data are drawn from the official National Statistics Office of Mongolia from 1995 to 2020 by quantitative technique such as document screening.

The Impact of Covid-19 on Migrant’s Workers Employment and Livelihood in India

The pandemic (covid-19) has adversely affected the entire world especially in terms of economic shock,labour market shock and health shock which has impacted both demand and supply. It has created anunsuitable environment by creating severe challenges amongst important sectors mainly trade, hotels,restaurant, tourism, hospitality and real estate. The worst affected are the micro small medium enterprises.Across the globe, 2.7 billion i.e. 81% of the workforce are affected by covid-19. As per InternationalLabour Organization (ILO)93% of the world’s workers are experiencing workplace closure. The immediateeffect of covid-19 on the young population has led to multiple shocks like employment and income losses,disruption in education and training etc. It has been more vulnerable to migrant workers who face constraintin both work places as well as in return to their families. Workers in the unorganized sectors especially selfemployed, casual and dig workers are likely to disproportionately hit. A study by the Oxford Poverty andHuman Development Initiative (OPHI) in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programmereports that more than 270 million people in India were lifted out of poverty from 2005-2016, the largest byany country. But, unfortunately measured at International Poverty Line of $ 1.90 per day covid-19 will push71 million population into extreme poverty as per World Bank Projection of covid-19.

A Global View on Prevalence of Hypertension and Human Develop Index.

Background:The incidence of hypertension has been increasing in the past decade. Little is known regarding the relationship between hypertension and human development index (HDI).Objectives:The objective is to identify the relationship between the prevalence of hypertension and human development index (HDI).Methods:An ecological study was conducted. The data from World Health Organization reports and United Nations Development Programme reports for 182 countries, including the HDI values, rates of tobacco use, physical inactivity, alcohol use, and salt intake. The Generalized Additive Models were implemented to assess the association between the prevalence of hypertension and the HDI.Results:Among 182 countries, the prevalence of hypertension ranged from 13% to 41%. The highest HDI value was 0.949 and the lowest was 0.352. In model 1, statistically significant associations were found in three populations, the largest R2 was 0.245. In model 2, the largest R2 was 0.485. In linear part, there was negative relationship in female population, while HDI was associated with prevalence of hypertension in all three populations, which was explained by spline function. The curve indicated that there were three intervals from low to high HDI. From 0 to 0.6 and 0.8 to 1, an evident decreasing trend of prevalence was found, while the rate increased when HDI was in the interval of 0.6 to 0.8.Conclusions:In this study, we identified the association between the prevalence of hypertension and the HDI and the underlying pattern of the relationship. The findings will aid the planning of hypertension control priorities and provide suggestions for interventions.

Digital divide in Nigeria: The role of regional differentials

This study empirically analyzed the spatial distribution of Internet usage in Nigeria and identified its key determinants using data on the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory from 2016 to 2018. In contrast to previous studies, the approach is disaggregated and spatial to better reflect state level disparities in Internet usage and its associated determinants. The data were obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics, United Nations Development Programme Report and other official sources, and were analyzed using stepwise linear regression and Global Moran’s I. The study showed evidence of disparities in Internet usage among the various regions in Nigeria, with noticeable clusters of high values for Internet usage in Lagos, Oyo, Ogun, Kaduna, Kano and Abuja. In contrast, Ekiti, Ebonyi and Bayelsa states had low concentrations of Internet users. Across the nation, between the north and south and its urban and rural areas, Internet usage followed various clear economic and social contours. Market size, employment, income, access to electricity, urbanization, gender (female), age (60 years and above) and telephone density were significant factors in Internet usage. The results of this study can provide basis for regional specific policies in order to increase Internet penetration in disadvantaged locations.

Identifying developmental trajectories of worldwide road traffic accident death rates using a latent growth mixture modeling approach.

Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) are a major worldwide public health problem. The aim of this study was to use the growth mixture model for clustering countries on the basis of the mortality rate patterns of RTAs from 2007 to 2013. We obtained the data on RTA death rates from World Health Organization reports and Human Development Index (HDI) of United Nations Development Programme reports for the years 2007, 2010 and 2013. Simple Latent Growth Models (LGM) in 181 countries were applied to estimate overall RTA mortality rate growth trajectories and the latent growth mixture modeling utilized to cluster them. According to non-linear LGM, the overall mortality rate of RTAs showed a decrease from 2007 to 2010 followed by an increase from 2010 to 2013. The HDI covariate had a significant negative and positive effect on intercept and slope of the LGM, respectively. The extracted mixture model appeared to have seven classes with different trends in RTA mortality rates. The worldwide countries were clustered into seven classes. Further studies on each of the seven classes are suggested to provide recommendations for reducing the mortality rate of the RTAs. Additionally, increasing HDI in some countries could have a significant effect on reducing the RTA death rates.

Millennium Development Goals: progress in Oceania

For the purposes of this commentary, Oceania is understood to encompass the Pacific Island states of Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia including Papua New Guinea (PNG) (but excluding the western half...

Human Development Status and Regional Disparity in China

The 2010 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Global Human Development Report introduced a new methodology to calculate Human Development Index (HDI). Three dimensions of HDI i.e. income, education, and health are adjusted for inequalities in attainments across people. The paper uses the new methodology to estimate 2010 China's national and provincial HDI. Compared with UNDP global report, all the data used here are from China's domestic sources. The education indicator estimated here by referring to detailed local statistics and documents are higher than that in UNDP's global report, thus contributing a slight higher overall HDI estimate. Based on the estimation results here and UNDP's report, China is located in between high human development and low human development, in other words, placed around the half position among all 169 countries. To facilitate a cross-country comparison, the indices are normalized with reference to the goalposts outlined in the HDR 2010. When ranked according to global goalposts, Beijing's rank is 31 whereas the least developed Tibet only ranks 114. Most of the regional disparity is driven by their income differences. The findings of this paper try to shed light on the status of China's human development and also gain insights on China's regional disparity. Further research is required to explore the inter-linkages between inequalities across various dimensions and to examine the factors behind these inequalities.

Introduction: Human Security at 20 – Lysøen Revisited

The 1994 Human Development Report, published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), introduced and formalized the concept of human security. The UN agency argued that the concept of security should be expanded beyond the traditional state-centric, politico-military dimension. According to the Report, human security means economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political security. The concept is generally defined as “freedom from fear” (from direct physical violence) and “freedom from want” (from indirect and nonphysical or structural violence) (UNDP 1994). Although the idea of human security was not entirely new, the UNDP Report made a global impact on intellectual and policy thinking. Sorpong Peou (2014) argues that the study of human security has now emerged as an academic field. However, as David Black, Astri Suhrke and others point out in their respective articles in this special issue, human security as a normative concept has lost much of its persuasive power among policymakers. Our purpose here is not to ignore this policy challenge but to assess the progress the human security agenda has made, identify remaining obstacles, and continue the search for more creative ways that would help us build a more humane world. How has the concept of human security evolved? More can be learned from the various papers presented in this special issue, but a brief discussion is necessary. While the UNDP and the UN Secretariat under the leadership of Kofi Annan played an instrumental role in pushing the human security agenda forward, it was a group of individual intellectuals and government officials who pioneered this agenda. Although the UNDP championed the new security agenda, it was a Pakistani government official, Mahbub ul Haq (after his appointment in 1989 as Special Advisor to the UNDP Administrator) who led a Asian Journal of Peacebuilding Vol. 2 No. 2 (2014): 143-149 Special Issue Article

Using Space Time Approaches to Understand Regional Inequality in Mongolia: Implications for Sustainable Development Goals

This paper responds to a growing literature on sub-national inequality and uses a spatial decomposition of the Gini coefficient to illustrate changes in regional inequality over time. Typically, countries present data at the sub-national level, but do not present them using measures that account for adjacency or nearness. Data from China, Mongolia, and Russia's United Nations Development Programme Reports are used as case studies on how to analzye changes in sub-national inequality over time. Data show that the Human Development Index (HDI) may for the country as a whole, but some HDI subscales may cluster with neighbours suggesting that inequality at the sub-national level may still be issue. As the United Nations' sustainable development goals (SDGs) are phased into the MDGs, we propose that this spatial decomposition of the Gini coefficient be considered to measure progress decreasing regional inequality.

Analyzing the Effects of Sectoral Public Spending On Human Development in Nigeria: Evidence from Panel Data

This paper analyzed the effects sectoral public spending on human development in Nigeria using data from 20 states for the period1999-2012. Data on each state were generated from various issues of the Accountant-Generals’ Reports, Central Bank of Nigeria Annual Report and Statement of Accounts and United Nations Development Programme Reports. For robustness of the analysis, total, recurrent and capital public spending on education, health, agriculture, rural development, energy, housing, environmental protection and portable water resources are employed as predictors of human development. The result depicted that there is a positive functional relationship between education, health, agriculture, rural development, energy, housing, environmental protection and portable water resources expenditure and human development; an indication that expenditure on these sectors fosters human development. Beside, the efficacy of education, health, agriculture, rural development and portable water in improving human development is greater than that of energy, housing and environmental protection. A further analysis of recurrent and capital expenditures reveals that recurrent and capital expenditure has both positive and negative effects on human development across states and period under consideration. However, the relative effect of capital expenditure in improving human development was greater than that of recurrent expenditure.

GAS FLARING IN THE NIGER DELTA OF NIGERIA: A VIOLATION OF THE RIGHT TO LIFE AND COMMENT ON THE CASE OF JOHNAH GBEMRE V SHELL PETROLEUM DEVELOPMENT COMPANY OF NIGERIA LIMITED

The relationship between the protection of the environment and human rights was first established in the Stockholm Declaration of 1972. Since then, it has become acknowledged that human rights such as the right to life can only be enjoyed in a pollution free environment. It is on this premise that this paper seeks to examine how gas flaring, being one of the major environmental challenges in the Niger Delta, is affecting the right to life of the inhabitants. Materials are sourced from both primary and secondary sources to analyse the issues in contention. Data and information are extracted from the Amnesty International Report, United Nations Environmental Programme Report, and the United Nations Development Programme Report. Also, an analysis of the case of Johnah Gbemre v Shell Petroleum Development Company Of Nigeria Limited is done in order to evaluate the judicial response on this perspective.