The World Bank President Jim Young Kim has said that 100 million people fall into poverty each year while 400 million others around the world lack access to essential health services. He said that globally 155 million children are stunted and only one-third of the world’s poor are covered by social safety nets.
He said this in his opening address to delegates who converge in Washington DC for the 2017 IMF/World Bank Group Annual meetings. He said “unless we act decisively, by 2030, 167 million children will still be living in poverty. We desperately need these investments now, because we’re facing several human capital crises: We have to fundamentally change the way world invests in building human capital. Last week, I announced the Human Capital Project – an accelerated effort to help countries invest more – and more effectively – in their people.
“And looking forward, surely investing in people will become more important in the increasingly digital economy of the future. Some studies estimate that as many as 65 per cent of primary school children today will work in jobs or fields that don’t yet exist. We know that countries have had to make tough choices on how to spend scarce public funds. But we believe, and the evidence suggests, that the more – and more effectively – you invest in health, education, and social protection, the better you’ll do as an economy.
“This idea has been around for some time. But with better data; greater transparency in sharing that data; and new, more powerful analytic tools, we’re now understanding that the relationship between human capital and economic growth could be far more profound than we ever imagined. Soon, we’ll publish a document called The Changing Wealth of Nations, and for the first time, we’re looking at human capital as part of the overall wealth of nations. It turns out that it’s more than 65 percent of the wealth of all nations in the world.
According to him “In rich countries, human capital is a much larger proportion of overall wealth; in low-income countries, it’s a much smaller proportion. So developing countries have a long way to go. The Human Capital Project will involve three efforts; we will accelerate innovative and results-based financing for human capital investments; we will continue to dig into the data linking investments in people to economic growth. We’re looking for new patterns and new answers; and we’re forming a broad coalition that includes all stakeholders – other MDBs, International Financial Institutions, Governments, Civil Society Organisations, and the private sector.
Eventually, the Project will include rankings: one focusing on the stock of human capital, and another where we measure the flow – the investments countries are making today to build human capital. We’re trying to create conditions where heads of state and finance ministers cannot resist investing in their people. We’re trying to create an environment where investing in people is not only the moral thing to do, but in fact it’s something they absolutely must do – with great urgency to drive economic growth.
