The Changing Wealth of Nations :
Measuring Sustainable Development in the New Millennium

This book is about development and
measuring development progress. While precise definitions
may vary, development is, at heart, a process of building
wealth, the produced, natural, human, and institutional
capital which is the source of income and wellbeing. A key
finding is that it is intangible wealth, human and
institutional capital, which dominates the wealth of all
countries, rising as a share of the total as countries climb
the development ladder. The book is divided into two parts.
The first part provides the big picture of changes in wealth
by income group and geographic region, with a focus on
natural capital because it is especially important for
low-income developing countries. The second part presents
case studies that illustrate particular aspects of wealth
accounting, including accounting for climate change, the
role of intangible capital in growth and development,
measuring human capital, and the use of wealth accounting to
improve transparency and governance in resource-rich
economies. The final chapter reports on the implementation
of wealth accounting by countries. The appendixes provide
the full wealth accounts for individual countries and for
aggregations by income group and geographic region.