amartya sen development as freedom summary

The importance of pluralist informational frameworks.

These proposals reflect a number of central recurring themes including: Sen’s contributions include proposals for incorporating individual entitlements, capabilities, freedoms and rights into the conceptual foundations and technical apparatus of economics and social choice.

Civil and political rights can reduce the risk of major social and economic disasters by empowering individuals to complain, keeping government informed and precipitating a policy response.Statistical studies give no support to the claim that there is a conflict between political rights and economic performance.Poverty, poor economic opportunities and neglect of public facilities all represent lack of freedom.Equality and inequality may be best assessed in terms of capabilities rather than in terms of GDP, consumption or utility, while poverty may be characterised as the absence of certain capabilities to do this or to be that.Economic growth and income can be poor predictors of the capability to live to a mature age.This is not because of overall food shortages but because some people are unable to trade their skills. There is often an asymmetry in the incidence of starvation deaths among different population groups.In the past, poverty and hunger were often excluded from dominant discourses on fundamental freedoms and human rights. It has increased awareness of the importance of respect for human rights for socio-economic outcomes, challenging the proposition that growth should take priority over civil and political rights, while highlighting the role of human rights in promoting economic security, and the limitations of development without human rights guarantees. In contrast, Sen’s research has highlighted the central idea that market outcomes and government actions should be judged in terms of valuable human ends. Emphasis was placed on economic efficiency with no explicit role given to fundamental freedoms, individual agency and human rights. In the past, dominant approaches have characterised development in terms of GDP per capita, food security in terms of food availability and poverty in terms of income deprivation. There has been a move away from approaches that focus exclusively on income, growth and utility, with an increased emphasis on individual entitlements, capabilities, freedoms and rights.

What are the central tenets of the work of the Nobel Prize winning economist Professor Amartya Sen? How have these changed development approaches? This review, by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), shows how his work has contributed to important paradigm shifts in economics and development.

Amartya sen development as freedom summary