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. 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.
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. Emphasis was placed on economic efficiency with no explicit role given to fundamental freedoms, individual agency and human rights. 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. 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 the past, poverty and hunger were often excluded from dominant discourses on fundamental freedoms and human rights. Sen has challenged this approach. His empirical work suggests that:
- There is often an asymmetry in the incidence of starvation deaths among different population groups. This is not because of overall food shortages but because some people are unable to trade their skills.
- Economic growth and income can be poor predictors of the capability to live to a mature age.
- 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.
- Poverty, poor economic opportunities and neglect of public facilities all represent lack of freedom.
- Statistical studies give no support to the claim that there is a conflict between political rights and economic performance.
- 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.
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. These proposals reflect a number of central recurring themes including:
- The importance of pluralist informational frameworks.
- These should take account of the well-being aspect of a person and the agency aspect (relating to the goals that a person values and has reasons to pursue).
- The need to go beyond the assessment of utility and income.
- The importance of approaches giving a central role to freedoms and rights.
- This importance cannot be captured in terms of the utility metric. Freedom and rights should be brought directly into social-economic evaluation.
