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The Day after Tomorrow
All individuals should have equal opportunity to expand their individual capabilities, shape their futures, and pursue a life path of their choosing. Universal access to key goods and services such as clean water, minimum nutrition, basic education, basic health services—at acceptable quality standards—and citizenship are critical steps toward a world of justice, fairness, and equal opportunity—goals that few societies would disagree with. But all over the world, and particularly in the developing world, access to key goods and services is far from universal. Moreover, the ability to access key goods and services is correlated with circumstances that are beyond the control of individuals, such as gender, parental background, race, or ethnicity. For example, in Chile, a poor child is half as likely to finish sixth grade on time as a well-off child, and in Brazil, a poor child is only one-tenth as likely to do so (figure 15.6). An equitable development process should seek to ensure that opportunities are allocated equally and are not detrimental to any particular social group. The ultimate goal should be universality. If universal access to basic goods and services is to be considered a major development goal, then it is critical to measure progress toward its accomplishment. The Human Opportunity Index (HOI), presented by Barros and others (2009) and Molinas and others (2010), considers two aspects of opportunity: first, how far a country is from the goal of providing universal access to a set of key goods and services to all (specifically, access to basic education, clean water, sanitation, and electricity); and second, the degree to which each child has an opportunity to access those goods and services, irrespective of circumstances: gender, parental education and income, area of residence, and family structure. It shows that in Latin America, beyond the huge inequalities in income and living standards, there are also huge inequalities in opportunities. Access to services is limited to a fraction of the population, and variables such as gender, family background, and area of residence matter in explaining that access. The HOI, which ranges from 0 to 1, varies from 0.95 in relatively opportunity-egalitarian Chile to around 0.55 in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. But it also shows progress, with very fast increases in Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico. Still, at the current pace of growth, on average it will take about a generation to universalize access to those key goods and services. The analysis