1 - A Global Perspective Flashcards
Do richer (developed) or poorer (developing) countries have faster growth
Developing countries have faster growth but unevenly
Four stylised living standards strata
1) Poorest of the strata
2) Second-lowest strata
3) Second-highest strata
4) Highest of the strata
Conditions of the poorest strata
- Majority live below $1.90 per day extreme poverty line
- Shelter made by those who use them
- Live in remote rural areas
- No education, hospitals or electricity
- Water collected from sources (stream, spring) in buckets, often contaminated
- Lack of nutrients in food, same food
Conditions of second-lowest strata
- Live on twice the $1.90 per person
- Employment likely to be informal, no worker protections, companies not registered
- Water from tap, typically outdoors, still unsafe without boiling
- Disrupted sleep from noise
Conditions of second-highest strata
- Could have $15 per person per day
- Considered middle income
- Live in urban areas typically
- Cook on manufactured burners (hob)
- Attend secondary school, not complete it
- Water typically from a tap in house
Conditions of highest of the strata
- Around $75 per person per day
- Comfortable suburban house with a yard
- Full indoor plumbing
- Central heating
- Children probably be healthy
- Access to fresh food all year round
- Life expectancy close to 80
What happens when someone is born into a stratum
They’re most likely spending their lives in that strata
- Sometimes transformative progress is highly visible and takes form in the course of a single persons life
Economic measures of development
- Gross national income (GNI)
- Income per capita
- Utility of that income?
New economic view of development
Leads to improvement in wellbeing, more broadly understood
Amartya Sens “Capabilities” approach
- Functionings as an achievement
- Capabilities as freedoms enjoyed in terms of functionings
- Development and happiness
- Well-being in terms of being well and having freedoms of choice
- “Beings” and “doings”
Details on Amartya Sen’s capability approach
- Sen: “Economic growth cannot be treated as an end. Development must be more concerned with enhancing lives we lead and freedoms we enjoy”
- What matters is not things a person has or feelings these provide - but what a person is, or can be and does or can do
- “Functionings” = About the uses a consumer can and does make of commodities
Important “Beings” and “Doings” in capability to function
- Able to live long
- Well-nourished
- Healthy
- Literate
- Well-clothed
- Being mobile
- Being happy - as a state of being - may be valued as a functioning
Details on Amartya Sen’s capability approach (continued)
Why does measuring well-being by level of consumption of goods/services confuse the role of commodities
Give example
- Measuring well-being by levels of consumption of goods and services confuses role of commodities by regarding them as ends in themselves rather than a means to an end
- For nutrition, the end is health and what one can do with good health, as well as personal enjoyment and social functioning
Overall what are functionings and commodities
“Functioning of a person is an achievement, it’s what the person succeeds in doing with the commodities”
- Riding a bike (commodity), (parts that make a bike), the functioning is happiness
What are capabilities
“Freedom a person has in terms of functioning’s, given his personal features and his command over commodities”
