The UNDP,the World Bank and Human Development through the World Market

This article offers a critical review of the UNDP's understanding of human development, and of recent Human Development Reports, with a principal focus on those from 2010 to the present. It argues that they show that the UNDP is now fully aligned with the World Bank in its overall policy stance and its underlying logic, and that this marks the end of the project of setting market‐led growth in a broader conception of human development that began with the first report (1990). The idea that the UNDP/HDR conception of human development represents an alternative to World Bank orthodoxy is a myth.