Back to the future? Health and the World Bank's human capital index

The ecological impact assessment of globalization dimensions and human capital: a dynamic approach in the case of selected fossil fuel-rich countries

The aggravation of climatic damage, the rise in pollution, and global warming have prompted investigation of factors leading to the increase in human demand on natural resources. Numerous studies have dealt with the connections linking human action with the environmental impact, but this research field remains insufficiently documented. Human resources constitute the center of decision to reduce the ecological footprint, but studies on the impact of human capital and the social and human dimension of globalization on environmental sustainability have been insufficiently analyzed. Therefore, the aim of this study is to verify the capacity of human capital and the social dimension of globalization in addition to its political and economic ones to mitigate environmental degradation. The study referred to the FMOLS, DOLS, and PMG-ARDL methods applied to 13 fossil fuel-rich countries spanning the period 1992-2017 and applied a set of robustness tests based on the cross-section dependence test, unit root tests, and Johansen combined test. The findings, based on FMOLS and DOLS techniques, demonstrate that human capital exerts positive long-term influence upon ecological footprint in the case of fossil fuel-rich countries. Globalization does not significantly impact ecological footprint: only political globalization is able to decrease deterioration in the environment, and neither economic nor social globalizations have an effect. When applying the PMG-ARDL approach, the results supported those derived from FMOLS and DOLS methods and revealed that human capital positively affects ecological footprint in the long term but without significant short-term effects. Our results also showed that globalization is beneficial for high-income countries and harmful for middle-income countries in terms of mitigating environmental degradation. So, the reduction of the ecological footprint in the fossil fuel-rich economies remains dependent on the actions taken by political decision-makers at the international level and on the awareness of human capital of the urgency of mitigating environmental degradation. A set of recommendations in favor of environmental sustainability, in particular those relating to human action and which can serve decision-makers, were formulated in this study.

A Mental Wealth perspective: crossing disciplines to understand the value of collective mental and social assets in the post-COVID-19 era

BACKGROUND

A reconceptualised global strategy is key as nations begin to shift from crisis management to medium- and long-term planning to rebuild and strengthen their economic, social and public health systems. Efforts towards measuring, modelling, and forecasting Mental Wealth could serve as the catalyst for this reconceptualization. The Mental Wealth approach builds systemic resilience through investments which promote collective cognitive and emotional wellbeing. This paper presents the theoretical foundations for Mental Wealth. It presents, for the first time, literature across the disciplines of health and social sciences, economics, business, and humanities to underpin the development of an operational metric of Mental Wealth.

DISCUSSION

An approach which embeds social and psychological dimensions of prosperity, alongside the economic, is needed to inform the effective allocation of investments in the post-pandemic world. The authors advocate for a transdisciplinary framework of Mental Wealth to be applied in innovating population-level policy interventions to address the growing challenges brought on by COVID-19. Mental Wealth highlights the value generated by the deployment of collective mental assets and supporting social infrastructure. In order to inform this position, a review of the literature on the concepts underpinning Mental Wealth is presented, limitations of current measurement tools of mental and social resources are evaluated, and a framework for development of a Mental Wealth metric is proposed.

CONCLUSION

There are challenges in developing an operational Mental Wealth metric. The breadth of conceptual foundations to be considered is extensive, and there may be a lack of agreement on the appropriate tools for its measurement. While variability across current measurement approaches in social resources, wellbeing and mental assets contributes to the difficulty creating a holistic and generic metric, these variations are now clearer. The operationalisation of the Mental Wealth metric will require comprehensive mapping of the elements to be included against the data available.

Measuring, Modeling, and Forecasting the Mental Wealth of Nations

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the deep links and fragility of economic, health and social systems. Discussions of reconstruction include renewed interest in moving beyond GDP and recognizing "human capital", "brain capital", "mental capital", and "wellbeing" as assets fundamental to economic reimagining, productivity, and prosperity. This paper describes how the conceptualization of Mental Wealth provides an important framing for measuring and shaping social and economic renewal to underpin healthy, productive, resilient, and thriving communities. We propose a transdisciplinary application of systems modeling to forecast a nation's Mental Wealth and understand the extent to which policy-mediated changes in economic, social, and health sectors could enhance collective mental health and wellbeing, social cohesion, and national prosperity. Specifically, simulation will allow comparison of the projected impacts of a range of cross-sector strategies (education sector, mental health system, labor market, and macroeconomic reforms) on GDP and national Mental Wealth, and provide decision support capability for future investments and actions to foster Mental Wealth. Finally, this paper introduces the Mental Wealth Initiative that is harnessing complex systems science to examine the interrelationships between social, commercial, and structural determinants of mental health and wellbeing, and working to empirically challenge the notion that fostering universal social prosperity is at odds with economic and commercial interests.

Striving towards environmental sustainability: how natural resources, human capital, financial development, and economic growth interact with ecological footprint in China

On the economic side, China has attained rapid development; yet, the ecological aspects pose threats to its sustainable development. The nexus between economic growth, natural resources, human capital, and financial development has an important inference for the environment, and therefore, this endeavor examines the influence of said variables on the ecological footprint in China via adopting the novel dynamic simulated ARDL approach by utilizing the data from 1985 to 2018. The outcomes of the analysis confirm that natural resources and financial development have a considerable positive short- and long-run relation with the ecological footprint. Besides, this depicts that natural resources and financial development lead to an upsurge in ecological footprint in China. Furthermore, human capital also upsurges the negative influence on the environment. Economic growth also upsurges the ecological footprint; however, the outcomes also yielded an interesting insight lending credence to the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve in China. So, it is important to offer awareness sessions to the community as well as to human resources working in different sectors regarding the significance of sustainability by giving training related to the reduction of the excessive consumption of scarce resources. Moreover, a watchful deliberation must be given while implementing strategies about sustainability concerning the specified factors and their potential impact on ecological footprints so that the targets of Sustainable Development Goals 7, 8, and 13 could be accomplished by the Chinese economy.

Risky business: COVAX and the financialization of global vaccine equity

BACKGROUND

During the first year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic, COVAX has been the world's most prominent effort to ensure equitable access to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Launched as part of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (Act-A) in June 2020, COVAX suggested to serve as a vaccine buyers' and distribution club for countries around the world. It also aimed to support the pharmaceutical industry in speeding up and broadening vaccine development. While COVAX has recently come under critique for failing to bring about global vaccine equity, influential politicians and public health advocates insist that future iterations of it will improve pandemic preparedness. So far COVAX's role in the ongoing financialization of global health, i.e. in the rise of financial concepts, motives, practices and institutions has not been analyzed.

METHODS

This article describes and critically assesses COVAX's financial logics, i.e. the concepts, arguments and financing flows on which COVAX relies. It is based on a review of over 109 COVAX related reports, ten in-depth interviews with global health experts working either in or with COVAX, as well as participant observation in 18 webinars and online meetings concerned with global pandemic financing, between September 2020 and August 2021.

RESULTS

The article finds that COVAX expands the scale and scope of financial instruments in global health governance, and that this is done by conflating different understandings of risk. Specifically, COVAX conflates public health risk and corporate financial risk, leading it to privilege concerns of pharmaceutical companies over those of most participating countries - especially low and lower-middle income countries (LICs and LMICs). COVAX thus drives the financialization of global health and ends up constituting a risk itself - that of perpetuating the downsides of financialization (e.g. heightened inequality, secrecy, complexity in governance, an ineffective and slow use of aid), whilst insufficiently realising its potential benefits (pandemic risk reduction, increased public access to emergency funding, indirect price control over essential goods and services).

CONCLUSION

Future iterations of vaccine buyers' and distribution clubs as well as public vaccine development efforts should work towards reducing all aspects of public health risk rather than privileging its corporate financial aspects. This will include reassessing the interplay of aid and corporate subsidies in global health.

Interrogating the World Bank's role in global health knowledge production, governance, and finance

Background

In the nearly half century since it began lending for population projects, the World Bank has become one of the largest financiers of global health projects and programs, a powerful voice in shaping health agendas in global governance spaces, and a mass producer of evidentiary knowledge for its preferred global health interventions. How can social scientists interrogate the role of the World Bank in shaping ‘global health’ in the current era?

Main body

As a group of historians, social scientists, and public health officials with experience studying the effects of the institution’s investment in health, we identify three challenges to this research. First, a future research agenda requires recognizing that the Bank is not a monolith, but rather has distinct inter-organizational groups that have shaped investment and discourse in complicated, and sometimes contradictory, ways. Second, we must consider how its influence on health policy and investment has changed significantly over time. Third, we must analyze its modes of engagement with other institutions within the global health landscape, and with the private sector. The unique relationships between Bank entities and countries that shape health policy, and the Bank’s position as a center of research, permit it to have a formative influence on health economics as applied to international development. Addressing these challenges, we propose a future research agenda for the Bank’s influence on global health through three overlapping objects of and domains for study: knowledge-based (shaping health policy knowledge), governance-based (shaping health governance), and finance-based (shaping health financing). We provide a review of case studies in each of these categories to inform this research agenda.

Conclusions

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage, and as state and non-state actors work to build more inclusive and robust health systems around the world, it is more important than ever to consider how to best document and analyze the impacts of Bank’s financial and technical investments in the Global South.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12992-021-00761-w.