Human Welfare and Emerging Markets

None of the problems and opportunities facing emerging markets can be resolved without sustained growth. And sustained growth will not be achieved without successful attacks on issues of human welfare that constitute the soft underbelly of emerging market economies. The litany of inter-related problems (poverty, inequality, ignorance, sickness, isolation) recited for over a century in high income countries, is familiar. As are opportunities to address them (through education, training, healthcare, social care, sanitation, housing, infrastructure).

Every emerging market has recognized the need to address its problems and capture opportunities to resolve them. Some have channeled growing prosperity in to giant improvements in human services. Others have relied less on the state and more on the market. Most have chosen hybrids. But very few emerging markets (or for that matter high income countries) have recognized the need for joined-up policies to address different aspects of human welfare (e.g. youth policies, ageing policies). Very few have recognized the need for coordinated action (e.g. healthcare, social care) to address welfare issues. And very few have recognized the value of life-course perspectives in policies and actions that address the age-specific needs of population cohorts (e.g. maternal nutrition).

Solutions to problems of human welfare continue to evade wealthy countries that have had time and resources to understand the issues and act on them. Given that the challenges for emerging markets are vastly greater, it is not surprising that many of them are unaddressed and unresolved and must be met in extraordinarily difficult and rapidly changing conditions. Insofar as the benefits of growth are shared some will at least in part, solve themselves. But the problems will not melt and constitute what may be the most formidable agenda in human history.