Relative Unimportance of Economic Growth for Human Development in Developing Democracies: Cross-Sectional Evidence from the States of India.

Abstract: This paper examines the relative impacts of economic growth and goodgovernance on human development (HD) performance in the sub-national statesof India from the 1980s to the early 2000s to test whether the strong and positiveimpact good governance has had on HD in the Indian state of Kerala is anomalousor typical. The paper begins with a bounded and theoretically developedconceptualization of good governance to cover the three core dimensions ofleadership priorities, state capacity, and policy implementation. Measures of thesethree core dimensions taken from recent field study in India are then compiled intoa good governance index suited to the specific context of federal India's subnationalstates over the last three decades. Employing cross-sectional regressionanalysis and incorporating checks for robustness, we find that in almost everycase good governance explains more of human development outcomes (ineducation, health, and longevity) than does economic growth, per capitainvestment, or per capita incomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]