Human capital is a central determinant of economic well-being and social advancement in the modern world economy. The concept of human capital covers the knowledge, skills, nutrition, and health that people accumulate over their lives, enabling them to realize their potential as productive members of society. Because of the vital importance of human capital for economic growth, the World Bank has launched the Human Capital Project (HCP), which includes the Human Capital Index (HCI). The objective of the HCP is to accelerate human capital development around the world. The HCI is a cross-country metric designed to measure and forecast a country’s human capital. Sri Lanka is a lower-middle-income country seeking to become an upper-middle-income country. Developing human capital to a new and higher level will be central to achieving this development goal. After the country’s 26-year secessionist conflict ended in 2009, Sri Lanka’s economy enjoyed rapid growth at an average rate of almost 6 percent between 2010 and 2017, reflecting a peace dividend and a determined policy thrust toward reconstruction and growth. However, in more recent years there have been signs of a slowdown. The economy is transitioning from a predominantly rural economy to a more urbanized one. In the context of the HCP and the HCI, Sri Lanka Human Capital Development analyzes the main achievements and challenges of human capital development in this East Asia and Pacific island country in health and nutrition—including stunting—and in education—including the challenges posed by Sri Lankans’ low participation in higher education. The report concludes with a look at the importance of building a consensus among the public and other stakeholders to launch an ambitious human capital development program in Sri Lanka.

Human capital is an important factor for economic growth in South Asia. Between 1981 and 2010, human capital contributed about 22% of annual gross domestic product per worker growth in India. During the same period, it contributed around 21% in Bangladesh, and 16% in Sri Lanka. However, education and skills remain the binding constraint. Raising the quality of education and skills in South Asia's workforce can play a critical role in catching up to the level of development of the People's Republic of China, the Republic of Korea, and other successful Southeast Asian economies. This study reviews the development of human capital in South Asia and analyzes contributing factors to human development including policies and strategies that countries in South Asia follow.

Sri Lanka has shown remarkable persistence in low female labor force participation rates—at 36 percent from 2015 to 2017, compared with 75 percent for same-aged men—despite overall economic growth and poverty reduction over the past decade. The trend stands in contrast to the country’s achievements in human capital development that favor women, such as high levels of female education and low total fertility rates, as well as its status as an upper-middle-income country. This study intends to better understand the puzzle of women’s poor labor market outcomes in Sri Lanka. Using nationally representative secondary survey data—as well as primary qualitative and quantitative research—it tests three hypotheses that would explain gender gaps in labor market outcomes: (1) household roles and responsibilities, which fall disproportionately on women, and the associated sociophysical constraints on women’s mobility; (2) a human capital mismatch, whereby women are not acquiring the proper skills demanded by job markets; and (3) gender discrimination in job search, hiring, and promotion processes. Further, the analysis provides a comparison of women’s experience of the labor market between the years leading up to the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war (2006†“09) and the years following the civil war (2010†“15). The study recommends priority areas for addressing the multiple supply- and demand-side factors to improve women’s labor force participation rates and reduce other gender gaps in labor market outcomes. It also offers specific recommendations for improving women’s participation in the five private sector industries covered by the primary research: commercial agriculture, garments, tourism, information and communication technology, and tea estate work. The findings are intended to influence policy makers, educators, and employment program practitioners with a stake in helping Sri Lanka achieve its vision of inclusive and sustainable job creation and economic growth. The study also aims to contribute to the work of research institutions and civil society in identifying the most effective means of engaging more women— and their untapped potential for labor, innovation, and productivity—in Sri Lanka’s future.

Human capital—the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives—is a central driver of sustainable growth, poverty reduction, and successful societies. More human capital is associated with higher earnings for people, higher income for countries, and stronger cohesion in societies. Much of the hard-won human capital gains in many economies over the past decade is at risk of being eroded by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Urgent action is needed to protect these advances, particularly among the poor and vulnerable. Designing the needed interventions, targeting them to achieve the highest effectiveness, and navigating difficult trade-offs make investing in better measurement of human capital now more important than ever. The Human Capital Index (HCI)—launched in 2018 as part of the Human Capital Project—is an international metric that benchmarks the key components of human capital across economies. The HCI is a global effort to accelerate progress toward a world where all children can achieve their full potential. Measuring the human capital that children born today can expect to attain by their 18th birthdays, the HCI highlights how current health and education outcomes shape the productivity of the next generation of workers and underscores the importance of government and societal investments in human capital. The Human Capital Index 2020 Update: Human Capital in the Time of COVID-19 presents the first update of the HCI, using health and education data available as of March 2020. It documents new evidence on trends, examples of successes, and analytical work on the utilization of human capital. The new data—collected before the global onset of COVID-19—can act as a baseline to track its effects on health and education outcomes. The report highlights how better measurement is essential for policy makers to design effective interventions and target support. In the immediate term, investments in better measurement and data use will guide pandemic containment strategies and support for those who are most affected. In the medium term, better curation and use of administrative, survey, and identification data can guide policy choices in an environment of limited fiscal space and competing priorities. In the longer term, the hope is that economies will be able to do more than simply recover lost ground. Ambitious, evidence-driven policy measures in health, education, and social protection can pave the way for today’s children to surpass the human capital achievements and quality of life of the generations that preceded them.

This book explores the impact of education and learning on our societies and lives and examines what countries are doing to provide education and training to support people throughout their lives.

During recent decades, Korea has been one of only a handful of countries that have made the successful transformation to become a developed nation by simultaneously achieving persistent economic growth combined with a democratic political system. Experts and political leaders worldwide have attributed this achievement to investments in people or, in other words, the power of education. Whilst numerous books have highlighted the role of industrial policies, technological growth, and international trade in Korea’s development process, this is one of the first to focus on the role of human capital. It shows how the accumulation of human capital aided transformation and helps explain the policies, strategies and challenges that Korea faces now and in the future.

Human capital is a central determinant of economic well-being and social advancement in the modern world economy. The concept of human capital covers the knowledge, skills, nutrition, and health that people accumulate over their lives, enabling them to realize their potential as productive members of society. Because of the vital importance of human capital for economic growth, the World Bank has launched the Human Capital Project (HCP), which includes the Human Capital Index (HCI). The objective of the HCP is to accelerate human capital development around the world. The HCI is a cross-country metric designed to measure and forecast a country's human capital. Sri Lanka is a lower-middle-income country seeking to become an upper-middle-income country. Developing human capital to a new and higher level will be central to achieving this development goal. After the country's 26-year secessionist conflict ended in 2009, Sri Lanka's economy enjoyed rapid growth at an average rate of almost 6 percent between 2010 and 2017, reflecting a peace dividend and a determined policy thrust toward reconstruction and growth. However, in more recent years there have been signs of a slowdown. The economy is transitioning from a predominantly rural economy to a more urbanized one. In the context of the HCP and the HCI, Sri Lanka Human Capital Development analyzes the main achievements and challenges of human capital development in this East Asia and Pacific island country in health and nutrition-including stunting-and in education-including the challenges posed by Sri Lankans' low participation in higher education. The report concludes with a look at the importance of building a consensus among the public and other stakeholders to launch an ambitious human capital development program in Sri Lanka.

Drawing on contributions from leading academics in the field, this volume within the Routledge Series in Human Resource Development specifically focuses on Global Human Resource Development (HRD). Specifically, the volume provides an overview of 17 regions, 85 countries and includes one emerging market grouping, CIVETS. This book examines the role of the state in HRD, the relationship between HRD and the level of economic development in the country or region, the influence of foreign direct investment within the country or region, and firm-level HRD practices within countries or regions. Global Human Resource Development analyzes HRD from institutional and cross-cultural perspectives, making it possible, for the first time, to analyze trends across countries and regions and to draw conclusions about the value of institutional and cross-cultural perspectives in the HRD context. There is currently no book on the market that conceptualizes the discipline of global HRD in this way, making this a definitive book on HRD across the globe of particular interest to researchers and reflective practitioners.

In many low and middle income countries, dismal failures in the quality of public service delivery such as absenteeism among teachers and doctors and leakages of public funds have driven the agenda for better governance and accountability. This has raised interest in the idea that citizens can contribute to improved quality of service delivery by holding policy-makers and providers of services accountable. This proposition is particularly resonant when it comes to the human development sectors – health, education and social protection – which involve close interactions between providers and citizens/users of services. Governments, NGOs, and donors alike have been experimenting with various “social accountability” tools that aim to inform citizens and communities about their rights, the standards of service delivery they should expect, and actual performance; and facilitate access to formal redress mechanisms to address service failures. The report reviews how citizens – individually and collectively – can influence service delivery through access to information and opportunities to use it to hold providers – both frontline service providers and program managers – accountable. It focuses on social accountability measures that support the use of information to increase transparency and service delivery and grievance redress mechanisms to help citizens use information to improve accountability. The report takes stock of what is known from international evidence and from within projects supported by the World Bank to identify knowledge gaps, key questions and areas for further work. It synthesizes experience to date; identifies what resources are needed to support more effective use of social accountability tools and approaches; and formulates considerations for their use in human development. The report concludes that the relationships between citizens, policy-makers, program managers, and service providers are complicated, not always direct or easily altered through a single intervention, such as an information campaign or scorecard exercise. The evidence base on social accountability mechanisms in the HD sectors is under development. There is a small but growing set of evaluations which test the impact of information interventions on service delivery and HD outcomes. There is ample space for future experiments to test how to make social accountability work at the country level.

Future growth in the countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) will increasingly depend on innovation. And innovation requires skills. This makes it important, as countries plan for recovery, to undertake reforms to reduce the skills shortages that the previous growth episode exposed. Education systems have a very important role to play in creating the right skills. But education systems in the region fall short of the demands of their economies in two major ways. The first is that despite high levels of enrollment they do not produce enough graduates with the right skills. Students graduate with diplomas, not with skills, because the quality of the education for many students is poor. In large part this is because education systems remain focused on providing an excellent education to a few at the expense of improving the quality of learning for the majority. Moreover, the systems are still making the transition from teaching the basics to inculcating higher order skills such as critical-thinking and problem solving. The second way in which education systems fall short is that outside of a few countries in the EU there are few opportunities for adults to retrain, or acquire new skills. This book argues that generating more of the right skills requires a fundamental change of approach in the education systems in the region so that they aim for, and deliver, higher quality education for the vast majority of students (“not just diplomas but skills”). To start with, education systems need to “turn the lights on” and take seriously the measurement of what students actually learn as opposed to measurement of the inputs into the education process on the implicit assumption that learning follows. Policy makers also need to move away from the focus on inputs and processes and increase the emphasis on incentives.