The UN believes this “capabilities approach” to development offers a more useful metric than GDP or GNI because, in addition to income, health and education affect development as well. Years of schooling per adult and expected schooling of childrenĮach part is indexed on a scale from 0 to 1 the three scores are then averaged to get a single score from 0 to 1. With Sen’s help, the United Nations established the Human Development Index, which provides a more comprehensive metric of welfare than just income. Sen’s work on redefining poverty, which earned him the Nobel in 1998 and led to the publication of Development as Freedom in 1999, has affected policy-making.
Sen contends that poverty is harmful and unjust because it deprives people of the ability to lead the lives they want, and development is valuable because it allows people to improve their lives as they see fit. Conversely, development is about more than simply increasing wealth it’s about increasing opportunity. As such, poverty is about more than low income it’s about a lack of opportunity. Sen contends that income and wealth are only important as a means to something else, not for their own sake. In redefining development as freedom, Sen takes a holistic view of poverty and characterizes it as impeding people’s ability to lead the lives they want. Redefining Poverty and Economic Development 1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Development as Freedomĭevelopment as Freedom by Nobel Prizewinning economist Amartya Sen draws on the works of moral philosophers and economists, from Aristotle to Adam Smith, to argue that economic development goes beyond increasing wealth-it’s about expanding freedom.
0 kommentar(er)
