Twenty five years ago the first Human Development Report in 1990 began with a simple notion: that development is about enlarging people’s choices— focusing broadly on the richness of human lives rather than narrowly on the richness of economies. Work is a major foundation for both the richness of economies and the richness of human lives but has tended to be conceptualized in economic terms rather than in human development terms.

The 2015 Human Development Report goes beyond that convention in directly linking work to the richness of human lives.