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United Nations

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Global Reports

Human Development Report 2025

A matter of choice: People and possibilities in the age of AI

The 2025 Human Development Report explores the implications of artificial intelligence for human development and the choices we can make to ensure that it enhances human capabilities. Rather than attempting to predict the future, the report argues that we must shape it—by making bold decisions so that AI augments what people can do.

Human Development Perspectives

2024 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)

Poverty amid conflict

The 2024 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report overlays violent conflict data with multidimensional poverty data to better understand their interlinkages across countries and over time.

Global Reports

Human Development Report 2023-24

Breaking the gridlock: Reimagining cooperation in a polarized world

The 2023/24 Human Development Report assesses the dangerous gridlock resulting from uneven development progress, intensifying inequality, and escalating political polarization, that we must urgently tackle. The report emphasizes how global interdependence is being reconfigured and proposes a path forward where multilateralism plays a pivotal role.

Human Development Perspectives

2023 Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI)

Breaking down gender biases: Shifting social norms towards gender equality

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Background Papers

This background paper examines how conflict affects horizontal inequality. While a large literature looks at how horizontal inequality is linked to the onset of armed conflict, we know very little about if, and how, conflict in turn affects such inequality.
Background Papers

There is nothing new about the nature and scope of inequality engulfing the world today. Still, notwithstanding the ‘starving artist’ mantra—which has become an acceptable truism—inequality in the arts is rarely examined.
Report Writing Toolkit
Human development and biodiversity are inextricably linked. The degradation of our environment, coupled with significant declines in biodiversity, is very much a human development problem.
National Reports

In Kazakhstan, as in many other nations around our planet, more and more citizens are choosing to live in cities, as they often offer more diverse services and greater opportunity for personal development and economic advancement than rural areas do.
Background Papers

Human development is about putting people at the centre of the development debate. The human development approach traditionally goes beyond economic growth to assess human development around the world. The present paper explores how inequalities emerge, interact and persist throughout generations. It will present literature arguing that income inequality adversely affects four constitutive areas of human development that are connected to one another.
National Reports
As Cambodia continues its transition to a higher level of development, it faces a historic opportunity to manage its natural resources for the benefit of both people and the environment. Cambodia can mitigate mounting pressure on forests and other essential natural resources by diversifying patterns of access and use, while building the foundation for an economy that continues to be strong and fair, and, crucially, more sustainable.
Background Papers

A country’s levels of well-being and social cohesion are largely stable over long periods of time. Two key determinants of well-being—equality and education—follow this ‘path dependence’. This paper reviews these relationships and then move to a discussion of how early levels of education influence contemporary well-being. It finds that education matters for social cohesion, and that historical levels of education are mostly more important than contemporary enrolments.
Background Papers

This paper examines the potential of education to act as the ‘great equalizer’ and reduce the negative effects of economic inequality on health and other social outcomes, such as crime, educational proficiency and, in particular, social mobility. In the first part, we examine the relationship between economic inequality, education and 10 social outcomes across 153 countries at a macro level.