Freedom, agency and material conditions: human development in MENA

484

Paul Makdissi
June 24, 2025

Conventional approaches to measuring human development, which are primarily centred on income, health and education, provide an incomplete assessment of people’s opportunities to improve their lives. As this column explains, it is essential to understand how institutional and social environments influence individuals’ agency over their development outcomes. Analysis of the diverse recent experiences of Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia illustrates how such an approach can inform policy-making.

In a nutshell

Development policies require multidimensional approaches that integrate social and institutional constraints alongside income, education and health; improving material conditions is insufficient when such constraints limit individuals’ ability to convert resources into valued outcomes.

Increasing access to education alone may not be enough to close gaps in individuals’ autonomy, particularly among disadvantaged populations; policies must also ensure that educational achievements lead to meaningful empowerment across all social strata.

Expanding human development requires addressing barriers to enhancing individual freedom and agency; for example, consistent gender effects across countries suggest that promoting women’s economic and social participation can help to dismantle broader institutional constraints.

Conventional approaches to measuring human development, which are primarily centred on income, health and education, provide an incomplete assessment of individuals’ capabilities to transform available resources into social functionings. This limitation becomes particularly evident when institutional constraints restrict individual autonomy, thereby affecting the conversion of material, health and educational endowments into actual achievements that people have reason to value in life.

Understanding how institutional and social environments influence human development outcomes represents a critical analytical gap in contemporary development measurement.

Individual outcomes are determined not only by material conditions but also by institutional and social constraints that shape the extent to which people can exercise agency in economic and social spheres. While traditional development indicators effectively capture resource availability, they systematically underestimate the role of institutional and social constraints in determining how individuals convert these resources into capabilities.

This is particularly relevant in the Arab context, where Abu-Ismail et al (2019) suggest that some educational systems may reflect prevailing conservative norms that prioritise social cohesion and respect for authority, sometimes at the expense of promoting innovation and individual agency.

Such institutional characteristics suggest that educational attainment alone may not translate into enhanced individual capabilities without corresponding changes in institutional environments. This suggests a need for measurement approaches that incorporate both institutional and social dimensions alongside traditional indicators.

A notable example of such an approach is proposed by Khawaja et al (2021), who propose a Palestinian national multidimensional poverty index (MPI) that includes indicators capturing individuals’ ability to convert resources into achievements. These indicators include safety and security, obstructed access to own assets, freedom of movement and women’s empowerment.

This perspective, grounded in Amartya Sen’s capability framework, suggests that comprehensive human development assessment requires attention to institutional and social constraints that determine the scope of individual choice sets.

To understand human development patterns across different regional contexts, our analysis employs a measurement approach that extends beyond traditional income-based indicators. We examine four countries selected to represent different regional experiences: two from the Levant (Jordan and Lebanon) and two from North Africa (Morocco and Tunisia). These four countries have experienced diverse institutional and economic paths over the last few years.

The methodology draws on Wagstaff’s (2002) health achievement approach, building on Makdissi and Yazbeck (2016), who demonstrate that Wagstaff’s health achievement index can be viewed as one component of a rank-dependent, multidimensional human development index. We employ this rank-dependent human development achievement measurement approach that considers both average achievement and inequality across socio-economic groups.

The framework examines three critical dimensions of human development:

Income sufficiency, which measures individuals’ perception of their income as adequate for their needs, capturing both material security and relative deprivation.

Education, measured through years of schooling normalised to reflect educational achievement relative to university education.

Autonomy, a composite index measuring individual agency and autonomy values, including attitudes toward the role of religion in public affairs, gender equality and democratic governance. This dimension captures the freedom and self-determination that constitute a fundamental component of human capabilities, yet is often overlooked in traditional development assessments.

The analysis incorporates an innovation by Khaled et al (2023), which uses socio-economic ranks based on multidimensional rankings, rather than income-based hierarchies alone, thereby providing a more comprehensive picture of individual socio-economic positions.

Analysing data from Arab Barometer Waves V (2018-19) and VIII (2023-24) reveals striking differences in human development trajectories across the four countries (see Figure 1). Despite leading the group in Wave V, Lebanon experienced a significant decline by Wave VIII, a pattern that is likely to reflect the country’s severe economic and political crises. Conversely, Jordan showed improvement in overall human development achievement, while Morocco and Tunisia remained relatively stable.

Figure 1: Human development achievement

But these aggregate trends mask important dimensional variations that carry distinct policy implications.

The income sufficiency dimension reveals the most dramatic changes (see Figure 2). Lebanon experienced a catastrophic decline in income sufficiency achievement, reflecting the country’s economic collapse and currency devaluation. This finding aligns with reports of widespread poverty and erosion of the middle class following the 2019 financial crisis (see Makdissi et al, 2023 and 2025).

Figure 2: Income sufficiency achievement

Jordan demonstrated improvement in income sufficiency achievement, possibly reflecting recent economic reforms and international assistance programmes. Morocco and Tunisia exhibited modest declines, although these changes lack statistical significance due to small sample sizes.

It is worth noting that in terms of GDP per capita in current dollars for 2022, the most recent year available for all four countries, Jordan ranks highest ($4,332), followed by Tunisia ($3,678), Lebanon ($3,654) and Morocco ($3,455), according to World Bank data.

Yet, despite having the lowest GDP per capita among the four countries, absolute concentration curve analysis (see Figure 3) reveals that Morocco dominates the others in terms of income sufficiency achievement. This finding holds regardless of assumptions about aversion to socio-economic inequality (see Khaled et al, 2018), suggesting that Morocco has had relative success in ensuring income sufficiency across its population.

Figure 3: Income sufficiency absolute concentration curves

The autonomy dimension yields particularly relevant insights for understanding how institutional and social constraints determine development outcomes (see Figure 4). Lebanon leads in both survey waves, indicating relatively higher levels of individual agency and autonomy values. Tunisia showed improvement between waves, while Morocco experienced a decline.

Figure 4: Autonomy achievement

The absolute concentration curve analysis for autonomy (see Figure 5) provides a complete ranking: Lebanon, followed by Tunisia, then Jordan and finally Morocco. This hierarchy remains valid across different assumptions about aversion to socio-economic inequality (see Khaled et al, 2018), offering robust empirical guidance about relative institutional performance.

Figure 5: Autonomy absolute concentration curve

The autonomy findings are particularly significant from an analytical perspective, as institutional and social constraints are systematically excluded from traditional development measurement, despite their fundamental role in determining conversion rates from resources to capabilities.

Analysing socio-economic achievement separately within each dimension offers a key advantage: it allows for the use of econometric modelling (Bchi et al, 2024) to construct counterfactual scenarios and ultimately evaluate the impact of policies through natural experiments or randomised control trials. While each dimension is examined independently, their interconnections are preserved through rank-dependent measures that rely on individuals’ socio-economic rankings.

These econometric tools can be used to conduct a series of simple thought experiments. The choice of counterfactual scenarios is guided by ESCWA (2018), which notes that while autonomy gaps in many parts of the world are primarily driven by educational differences, in the Arab region, generational divides appear more prominent.

Motivated by this observation, the first two counterfactual exercises focus on education and age. But since the results from these dimensions do not yield uniform improvements, a third thought experiment is added to explore gender differences, a dimension that ultimately appears far more promising.

Counterfactual analysis reveals important insights into the sources of autonomy gaps. If the entire population had the same relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and autonomy as university graduates (see Figure 6), Tunisia would see the most significant improvement, especially among higher socio-economic groups. Jordan and Lebanon would experience more modest gains, mainly among the better off.

Figure 6: All citizens with returns as university graduates

These findings suggest that expanding access to education alone may not be enough to close autonomy gaps, particularly among disadvantaged populations. Instead, policies must also ensure that educational achievements lead to meaningful empowerment across all social strata.

Applying the same approach to age-related differences (see Figure 7) shows that only Tunisia would benefit substantially if older generations shared the same relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and autonomy as those under 30. This indicates that generational change may be a key driver of autonomy gains in Tunisia, while in other countries, more persistent institutional or cultural constraints limit progress. For policy-makers, this implies that age-targeted interventions may be especially effective in Tunisia, whereas broader institutional reforms may be necessary elsewhere.

Figure 7: All citizens with returns as citizens below 30

Perhaps most strikingly, extending the analysis to gender (see Figure 8) reveals that all four countries would experience gains in autonomy if men exhibited the same relationship between their socio-demographic profiles and autonomy-related values as women currently do. This suggests that women demonstrate different patterns in autonomy-related attitudes and behaviours within existing institutional constraints.

Figure 8: All citizens with returns as women

The gender dimension presents an empirically significant avenue for analysis, as policies affecting women’s economic and social participation may generate broader effects on institutional development and human development outcomes.

The analysis highlights several strategic implications. Development policies should adopt multidimensional approaches that integrate income, education and health with social and institutional constraints. Improving material conditions alone is insufficient when such constraints limit individuals’ ability to convert resources into valued outcomes.

Expanding human development, therefore, requires addressing these barriers to enhance individual freedom and agency. The consistent gender effects across countries suggest that promoting women’s economic and social participation can help to dismantle broader institutional constraints.

Each country faces distinct challenges. Lebanon requires urgent economic stabilisation and institutional rebuilding. Jordan should build on income sufficiency gains while strengthening autonomy. Morocco must reduce autonomy deficits while maintaining income sufficiency achievements. Tunisia needs to preserve autonomy progress and prevent reversals in income sufficiency.

Although limited by the variables available in the Arab Barometer survey, this analysis illustrates the value of incorporating institutional dimensions such as autonomy into human development metrics.

Additional information on security, freedom of movement and women’s empowerment (dimensions used in the MPI proposed by Khawaja et al, 2021) would be essential to include where available. Integrating such data improves measurement and supports more effective and inclusive policy design by revealing the institutional and social barriers that restrict individual capabilities.

The Forum ERF

ERF