**2. Economic growth or social progress**

The Social Progress Imperative has recently formed. This initiative defines social progress as the "capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential" [3]. The main feature of the Social Progress Index (SPI) is that it focuses exclusively on the aggregation of social and environmental output oriented measures. The Social Progress Index sets out to do so by asking three fundamental questions about a society. First of all, does everyone have the basic needs of survival: food, water, shelter, and safety? Secondly, does everyone have the building blocks of a better life: education, information, health, and a sustainable natural environment? And does everyone have the opportunity to improve his or her life, through rights, freedom of choice, tolerance and freedom from discrimination and freedom of mobility, and access to the world's most advanced knowledge? It measures these aspects of inclusion directly using only social and environmental indicators. By excluding traditional economic indicators from the model, it allows to better interrogate the relationship between social progress, and each of its 12 components, and economic growth, and in so doing more richly unpacking their relationships and identifying the true drivers of progress of the society in question. The SPI launched a global index in 2014, analyzing 132 countries using 52 indicators of social and environmental performance. In 2018, the SPI captures outcomes related to 16 of the 17 SDGs in a simple but rigorous framework designed for aggregation, making it an invaluable proxy measure of SDG performance. To translate this definition into a concrete measurement tool, some researchers constructed the Social Progress Index (SPI) [4]. They constructed a SPI and used it together with basic human needs and

#### *Economic, Social, and Environmental Dimensions of Development in Sudan DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90752*

opportunity indictors and find that these social performance indictors strongly affect subjective well-being. Nevertheless, economics, with its all school of thought, has been playing a central role on these advances of definitions, measurements, and determinants of development. For Seligman [5], "economics is both the creature and the creator. It is the creature of the past; it is the creator of the future. Correctly conceived, adequately outlined, fearlessly developed, it is the prop of ethical upbuilding, it is the basis of social progress" (1903, p. 70). The development that took place in the West and the United States in particular was described as a transformation to industrial society with all of its economic, social, and political facts and facets. On this type of development and how it has been achieved, Seligman made six points which differentiate modern industrial society from all its predecessors. In today's less developing countries, these points differentiate success from failure to achieve development. The points are the practical exhaustion of free land, the predominance of industrial capital, the application of scientific methods, the existence of a competitive regime based on the newer conception of liberty, the spread of education and the birth of a distinct public opinion, and a true democratic spirit and the growth of a new idealism. Unless these points take place in today's less developing countries, it is unlikely that they be able to move forward for real socioeconomic development.

Economic growth or more widely some development achieved in low-income countries cannot be attributed to conventional factors of production such as physical capital and formal employment. It is rather an outcome of private investment, social households, and individual behaviors with the use of assets from the natural environment. We give some examples in justification of this argument. Private spending health has always been far larger than government spending on health in low-income countries, including Sudan. Even on primary education, household spending exceeds government spending although primary education is supposed to be free and universal. This can be indicated by a large number of school dropouts, where school-age children go to work in informal jobs so as to help their often poor families. In the political arena, political and personal rights are lacking behind, and individuals are left to themselves to find ways to exercise and express their views and voices. Social media have been playing a major role in providing information to the public replacing the official government media channels. This has typically taken place in Sudan since December 2018. Communications and organization of activities through social media have contributed strongly to massive demonstrations which succeeded in ousting the regime that ruled the country for almost three decades. Thus defective social and political fabrics in less developed countries cannot be disentangled from all types of economic and political corruption which have been the chronic illness in these countries in postcolonial periods. In such cases, it is by no means to expect that economic policies and pure economic factors contribute economic growth and development and social equity. Instead, social and environmental progresses achieved however small have to be attributed to the private and household's behaviors and initiatives and thus are the main contributors to economic growth. Furthermore, economic growth achieved through these channels is always skewed toward the rich who are not necessarily contributing a fair share to its achievement. This can be reflected by a wide and even increasing income gap between the rich and the poor in low-income countries. Also, economic growth can be expected really to resolve and revert environmental degradation in terms of massive resource depletion and accumulation of pollution. Thus, arguably it is not more than luxury to seek a verification of environmental Kuznets curve in low-income countries. Furthermore, environmental policies in these countries are usually lax and lacking behind. This in turn has been pushing low-income countries to trade environment for development and become pollution havens. It is a fact that trade in its export side has been intensive in primary products and natural

of economic and social welfare, particularly among scholars in the field on environmental economics. This literature has been arguing for modification of GDP to include resource depletion and environmental degradation associated with economic growth in a context of sustainable development. The World Bank has adopted and started measuring the so-called genuine savings indicator developed by Pearce and Atkinson [1] and the genuine progress indicator (GPI), as measures of sustainable development. Yet, a massive body of literature had been developing arguing that economic growth is the only way to protect the environment, in the context of the so-called environmental Kuznets curve. Since the early 1990s, the UN Development Programme has adopted and started measuring the human development index pioneered by Sen and Haq. The HDI encompasses measures of economic, health, and education and ranks countries in a scale of 100 points according to their achievements in these dimensions. All these measures have been developed in lines of calls sustainable development following the World Commission on Environment and Development Report in 1987 and the Agenda 21 adopted in Rio 1991. In 2000, the world nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The agreed MDGs had to be achieved by 2015. Many low-income countries failed to achieve the targets, while the world nations went forward to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. In the light of their progress to achieve the MDGs, low-income countries are unlikely to move forward to make progress in achieving the SDGs in a matter of 10 years. However, SDGs remain a guide to economic, social, and environmental policies in all countries but particularly in low-income countries. Detailed discussions on these measures of development in the context of MDGs and SDGs can be found in Chapter 5 of the United

*Perspectives on Economic Development - Public Policy, Culture, and Economic Development*

The Social Progress Imperative has recently formed. This initiative defines social progress as the "capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential" [3]. The main feature of the Social Progress Index (SPI) is that it focuses exclusively on the aggregation of social and environmental output oriented measures. The Social Progress Index sets out to do so by asking three fundamental questions about a society. First of all, does everyone have the basic needs of survival: food, water, shelter, and safety? Secondly, does everyone have the building blocks of a better life: education, information, health, and a sustainable natural environment? And does everyone have the opportunity to improve his or her life, through rights, freedom of choice, tolerance and freedom from discrimination and freedom of mobility, and access to the world's most advanced knowledge? It measures these aspects of inclusion directly using only social and environmental indicators. By excluding traditional economic indicators from the model, it allows to better interrogate the relationship between social progress, and each of its 12 components, and economic growth, and in so doing more richly unpacking their relationships and identifying the true drivers of progress of the society in question. The SPI launched a global index in 2014, analyzing 132 countries using 52 indicators of social and environmental performance. In 2018, the SPI captures outcomes related to 16 of the 17 SDGs in a simple but rigorous framework designed for aggregation, making it an invaluable proxy measure of SDG performance. To translate this definition into a concrete measurement tool, some researchers constructed the Social Progress Index (SPI) [4]. They constructed a SPI and used it together with basic human needs and

Nation Global Sustainable Development Report [2].

**2. Economic growth or social progress**

**64**

resources, both renewable and nonrenewable. Even this pattern has been a major dragger to economic growth in the sense of the so-called resource curse hypothesis. These facts and accounts are our rationale to model GDP growth against social and environmental performance indicators, rather than the other way around.

Bank 2018 [6] and complemented with other sources. The study variables are

*Economic, Social, and Environmental Dimensions of Development in Sudan*

in the economy expressed in current US dollars and stands for economic growth. Domestic investment (INV): INV is measured by gross capital formation consisting of additions to the fixed assets of the economy plus net changes in the level of inventories. Fixed assets include land improvements (fences, ditches, drains, and so on); plant, machinery, and equipment purchases; and the construction of roads, railways, and the like, including schools, offices, hospitals, private residential dwellings, and commercial and industrial buildings. Inventories are stocks of goods held by firms to meet temporary or unexpected fluctuations in

Gross domestic product (GDP): GDP is the value of all goods and services produced

Unemployment is represented by the total youth unemployment as percentage of total labor force ages (15–24), and it refers to the share of the labor force ages

Life expectancy at birth indicates the number of years a newborn would live if

Average school enrollment (EDU): EDU is measured by net enrollment rate which

prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were to stay the same

is the ratio of children of official school age who are enrolled in school to the population of the corresponding official school age. The World Bank acknowledges that primary education provides children with basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills. These are basics for any progression to secondary and tertiary education. Access to drinking water (ASW): Access to safe drinking water is measured by people using at least basic drinking water services (% of population). It encompasses both people using basic water services and those using safely managed water services. Basic drinking water services are defined as drinking water from an improved source, provided collection time is not more than 30 minutes for a round

trip. Improved water sources include piped water, boreholes or tube wells, protected dug wells, protected springs, and packaged or delivered water.

Access to sanitation facilities (ASF): It is represented by people using safely managed sanitation services (% of population) defined as the percentage of people using improved sanitation facilities that are not shared with other households and where excreta are safely disposed of in situ or transported and treated off-site. Improved sanitation facilities include flush/pour flush to piped sewer systems, septic tanks, or pit latrines: ventilated improved pit latrines, compositing toilets, or

Access to electricity is measured by the average percentage of population with

Carbon dioxide emissions as defined by the World Bank are those stemming from the burning of fossil fuels and the manufacture of cement. They include carbon dioxide produced during consumption of solid, liquid, and gas fuels and gas

Trade openness is measured as the sum of exports and imports of goods and

**Table 1** presents the descriptive statistics of the study variables. From the

Jarque-Bera (J-B) and associated prob. values, all variables look normally

flaring. CO2 emissions are measured in metric tons per capita (CO2P).

services as percentage of gross domestic product.

15–24 without work but available for and seeking employment.

defined as follows:

throughout its life.

pit latrines with slabs.

access to electricity.

**5. Empirical analysis**

**67**

**5.1 Descriptive statistical analysis**

production or sales and work in progress.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.90752*
