Amartya Sen is an Indian and Bengali
economist born in 1933 and winner of a
Nobel prize in economics. Sen is such an
important figure in development that he's
going to get several video units!
When Sen was appointed to Harvard
University, he received a professorship.
Not only in the economics department, but
also in the philosophy department. So
we are going to start with Sen on
philosophy.
Development economists or policy advisors
often find themselves in the position of
having to address, "What really is a good
outcome anyway?"
The typical standard of economics is to
identify a good outcome with greater
wealth or higher GDP.
But Sen made the point that a country can
be wealthy but perhaps not everyone in
that country is very happy, or maybe
people don't live very long, or maybe they
have lives that, are to some standard,
impoverished or lacking.
So Sen has been a consistent critic of
using wealth or GDP as a metric for a good
outcome.
The second common standard is to ask,
"How happy are the people in a given
country or region?"
But Sen makes the point that happiness is
an extremely subjective thing to judge.
It is very hard to say who is happy and
who is not.
Finally, some philosophers, some observers
suggest a basic need standard for a
developing economy.
Look at a region and ask,
"Do people in that place have their basic
needs satisfied?"
But which needs are basic and which are
not basic?
Sen has stressed the point that the basic
needs standard is about what you send
people, not about what they can do with
what they have been sent.
So, for all these reasons, Sen has
rejected 'Wealth', 'Happiness' and basic
needs as the best standards
for a good outcome.
What then? Sen suggests the notion of
capabilities. Capabilities as a positive
option. Which are the choices that people
have which they are free to realize.
What are the things they can do?
What is within their grasp?
What kind of lives do they have?
What kind of possible achievements can
they choose from?
This is Sen's notion of what is a good
outcome. When one outcome offers better
capabilities to the citizens of her region
then another, we can judge that to be the
better outcome. For Sen, capabilities is
an absolute concept, not a
relative concept
It doesn't depend upon comparing the
options of one person to another, and the
notion of capabilities, for Sen, also
respects human diversity. That is it notes
that simply sending people resources
doesn't make their lives good.
The question is, what can people do
with those resources?
So Sen, at one point, makes the example of
a bicycle.
If you send a bicycle to a person who is
disabled, you haven't actually improved
that person's capabilities very much, if
the disabled person does not have
the capacity to ride the bicycle.
This is very abstract and philosophical,
but what does it mean on a concrete level?
Well, people disagree.
But one thing is for sure: Sen developed
these ideas in the 1980's, and it may have
had a big impact on the United Nations
Human Development Index. The Human
Development Index doesn't only look at
wealth, but it looks at life expectancy,
adult literacy, and school enrollment, in
judging how good an outcome is,
in judging how developed a country is.
Sen himself stresses that he does not have
a particular or exact list in mind,
for the relevant capabilities.
From Sen's point of view, it is really
something that an individual country
or region needs to choose using a
democratic process.
But other people who have been influenced
by Sen have talked quite a bit about what
the capabilities should be. Some
philosophers have suggested: health,
play, imagination, gender equality,
autonomy, freedom of speech, all as being
possibly important parts of the
capabilities concept.
Where do we stand with this?
The critics say that Sen's notion of
capabilities make some sense, but it is
very hard to operationalize.
We do have one operationalization:
the UN Development Index, it remains to be
seen how much more useful
we can make Sen's notions
of capabilities. But when it comes to
how do we judge whether one outcome is
better than the other, it does seem that
the idea of capabilities has
important advantages over wealth,
happiness, or basic needs.