Development as Freedom Read online

  Acclaim for AMARTYA SEN and

  DEVELOPMENT AS FREEDOM

  “Indispensable.… Informed, insightful, compassionate and optimistic.”

  —The Nation

  “Remarkable.… The overall argument—that freedom is the principal goal and purpose of development—gets full elaboration here.… This is a book that rewards a reader’s effort, not least for the calm, practical wisdom Mr. Sen brings to difficult subjects.… Eloquent and probing.”

  —The New York Times

  “[Sen] proposes a theory of global economic development that is powerful, grand, and eloquently simple at the same time.… An exhilarating work by one of the great masters of the social sciences.”

  —The Boston Book Review

  “Development as Freedom turns decades of economics on its head.… Readable and enjoyable by a wide audience.… Development as Freedom is a classic in its own time.”

  —The Toronto Globe and Mail

  “It is hard to disagree with Sen.… Together [his arguments] constitute a useful corrective to the conventional wisdom, and should feature increasingly in current debate.”

  —Financial Times

  “Unlike most Nobel Prize-winning economists, Sen has focused on the well-being of those at the bottom of society, not the efficiency of those at the top.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Amartya Sen harks back to the older and richer tradition of evaluating the considerations of economic efficiency—which dominate most modern economic analyses—with respect to their general social consequences.… His thesis has radical implications.”

  —Foreign Affairs

  “[Development as Freedom] exudes a refreshing reasonableness and a willingness to acknowledge rival points of view.”

  —The Atlantic Monthly

  AMARTYA SEN

  DEVELOPMENT AS FREEDOM

  Amartya Sen is the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science.

  Also by AMARTYA SEN

  Collective Choice and Social Welfare

  On Economic Inequality

  Employment, Technology and Development

  Poverty and Famines:

  An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation

  Choice, Welfare and Management

  Resources, Values and Development

  Commodities and Capabilities

  The Standard of Living

  On Ethics and Economics

  Hunger and Public Action (with Jean Drèze)

  Inequality Reexamined

  India: Economic Development

  and Social Opportunity (with Jean Drèze)

  FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, AUGUST 2000

  Copyright © 1999 by Amartya Sen

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1999.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to The New York Times for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Birth Control in China” by P. Tyler (The New York Times, June 25, 1995), copyright © 1995 by the New York Times Co. Reprinted by permission.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint previously published material: Bank of Italy: Excerpt from “Inflation, Growth and Monetary Control: Non-linear Lessons from Crisis and Recovery” by Michael Bruno, Paolo Baffi Lecture (Rome: 1996).

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:

  Sen, Amartya Kumar.

  Development as freedom / Amartya Sen. – 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  I. Economic development. 2. Liberty. I. Title.

  HD75.S455 1999

  330′.01—dc21 99-31061

  eISBN: 978-0-307-87429-0

  Author photograph by Kris Snibbe

  Graphs by Mark Stein

  www.anchorbooks.com

  v3.1

  To Emma

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  List of Illustrations

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: Development as Freedom

  1 The Perspective of Freedom

  2 The Ends and the Means of Development

  3 Freedom and the Foundations of Justice

  4 Poverty as Capability Deprivation

  5 Markets, State and Social Opportunity

  6 The Importance of Democracy

  7 Famines and Other Crises

  8 Women’s Agency and Social Change

  9 Population, Food and Freedom

  10 Culture and Human Rights

  11 Social Choice and Individual Behavior

  12 Individual Freedom as a Social Commitment

  Notes

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  FIGURE 1.1 Variations in Male Survival Rates by Region

  1.2 Variations in Female Survival Rates by Region

  2.1 GNP per Capita (U.S. Dollars) and Life Expectancy at Birth, 1994

  2.2 Improvements in Life Expectancy in England and Wales, 1901–1960

  2.3 Growth of GDP (U.K.) and Decadal Increases in Life Expectancy at Birth (England and Wales), 1901–1960

  4.1 Mortality Rate Ratios of Blacks to Whites (Aged 35–54), Actual and Adjusted for Family Income

  4.2 Female-Male Ratios in Total Population in Selected Communities

  7.1 Food Grains Availability in Bangladesh, 1971–1975

  9.1 Food Prices in Constant 1990 U.S. Dollars

  TABLE 4.1 India and Sub-Saharan Africa: Selected Comparisons (1991)

  9.1 Indices of Food Production per Head by Regions

  9.2 Food Prices in Constant 1990 U.S. Dollars: 1950–1952 to 1995–1997

  PREFACE

  We live in a world of unprecedented opulence, of a kind that would have been hard even to imagine a century or two ago. There have also been remarkable changes beyond the economic sphere. The twentieth century has established democratic and participatory governance as the preeminent model of political organization. Concepts of human rights and political liberty are now very much a part of the prevailing rhetoric. People live much longer, on the average, than ever before. Also, the different regions of the globe are now more closely linked than they have ever been. This is so not only in the fields of trade, commerce and communication, but also in terms of interactive ideas and ideals.

  And yet we also live in a world with remarkable deprivation, destitution and oppression. There are many new problems as well as old ones, including persistence of poverty and unfulfilled elementary needs, occurrence of famines and widespread hunger, violation of elementary political freedoms as well as of basic liberties, extensive neglect of the interests and agency of women, and worsening threats to our environment and to the sustainability of our economic and social lives. Many of these deprivations can be observed, in one form or another, in rich countries as well as poor ones.

  Overcoming these problems is a central part of the exercise of development. We have to recognize, it is argued here, the role of freedoms of different kinds in countering these afflictions. Indeed, individual agency is, ultimately, central to addressing these deprivations. On the other hand, the freedom of agency that we individually have is inescapably qualified and constrained by the social, political and economic opportunities that are available to us. There is a deep complementarity between individual agency and
social arrangements. It is important to give simultaneous recognition to the centrality of individual freedom and to the force of social influences on the extent and reach of individual freedom. To counter the problems that we face, we have to see individual freedom as a social commitment. This is the basic approach that this work tries to explore and examine.

  Expansion of freedom is viewed, in this approach, both as the primary end and as the principal means of development. Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency. The removal of substantial unfreedoms, it is argued here, is constitutive of development. However, for a fuller understanding of the connection between development and freedom we have to go beyond that basic recognition (crucial as it is). The intrinsic importance of human freedom, in general, as the preeminent objective of development is strongly supplemented by the instrumental effectiveness of freedoms of particular kinds to promote freedoms of other kinds. The linkages between different types of freedoms are empirical and causal, rather than constitutive and compositional. For example, there is strong evidence that economic and political freedoms help to reinforce one another, rather than being hostile to one another (as they are sometimes taken to be). Similarly, social opportunities of education and health care, which may require public action, complement individual opportunities of economic and political participation and also help to foster our own initiatives in overcoming our respective deprivations. If the point of departure of the approach lies in the identification of freedom as the main object of development, the reach of the policy analysis lies in establishing the empirical linkages that make the viewpoint of freedom coherent and cogent as the guiding perspective of the process of development.

  This work outlines the need for an integrated analysis of economic, social and political activities, involving a variety of institutions and many interactive agencies. It concentrates particularly on the roles and interconnections between certain crucial instrumental freedoms, including economic opportunities, political freedoms, social facilities, transparency guarantees, and protective security. Societal arrangements, involving many institutions (the state, the market, the legal system, political parties, the media, public interest groups and public discussion forums, among others) are investigated in terms of their contribution to enhancing and guaranteeing the substantive freedoms of individuals, seen as active agents of change, rather than as passive recipients of dispensed benefits.

  The book is based on five lectures I gave as a Presidential Fellow at the World Bank during the fall of 1996. There was also one follow-up lecture in November 1997 dealing with the overall approach and its implications. I appreciated the opportunity and the challenge involved in this task, and I was particularly happy that this happened at the invitation of President James Wolfensohn, whose vision, skill and humanity I much admire. I was privileged to work closely with him earlier as a Trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and more recently, I have also watched with great interest the constructive impact of Wolfensohn’s leadership on the Bank.

  The World Bank has not invariably been my favorite organization. The power to do good goes almost always with the possibility to do the opposite, and as a professional economist, I have had occasions in the past to wonder whether the Bank could not have done very much better. These reservations and criticisms are in print, so I need not make a “confession” of harboring skeptical thoughts. All this made it particularly welcome to have the opportunity to present at the Bank my own views on development and on the making of public policy.

  This book, however, is not intended primarily for people working at or for the Bank, or other international organizations. Nor is it just for policy makers and planners of national governments. Rather, it is a general work on development and the practical reasons underlying it, aimed particularly at public discussion. I have rearranged the six lectures into twelve chapters, both for clarity and to make the written version more accessible to nonspecialist readers. Indeed, I have tried to make the discussion as nontechnical as possible, and have referred to the more formal literature—for those inclined in that direction—only in endnotes. I have also commented on recent economic experiences that occurred after my lectures were given (in 1996), such as the Asian economic crisis (which confirmed some of the worst fears I had expressed in those lectures).

  In line with the importance I attach to the role of public discussion as a vehicle of social change and economic progress (as the text will make clear), this work is presented mainly for open deliberation and critical scrutiny. I have, throughout my life, avoided giving advice to the “authorities.” Indeed, I have never counseled any government, preferring to place my suggestions and critiques—for what they are worth—in the public domain. Since I have been fortunate in living in three democracies with largely unimpeded media (India, Britain, and the United States), I have not had reason to complain about any lack of opportunity of public presentation. If my arguments arouse any interest, and lead to more public discussion of these vital issues, I would have reason to feel well rewarded.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In doing the research on which this book draws, I had support from John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, in a joint project with Angus Deaton. That investigation followed some work I had done earlier for the Helsinki-based World Institute of Development Economics Research, directed then by Lal Jayawardena. It also links closely with my advisory role for the Human Development Reports of the United Nations Development Programme, under the remarkable stewardship of Mahbub ul Haq of Pakistan (a close friend from my undergraduate days whose sudden death in 1998 is a blow from which I have not yet fully recovered). Harvard University, where I taught until early 1998, has been marvelously supportive of my research work for many years. I have also drawn on logistic support respectively from the Harvard Institute of International Development, the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and the Centre for History and Economics at King’s College, Cambridge University.

  I have been very fortunate in having wonderful collaborators. I have had the great opportunity of working for many years with Jean Drèze and of publishing several books jointly with him, which have influenced the present work (collaboration with Jean has the agreeable feature that he does most of the work while making sure that you get most of the credit). It was also wonderful for me to have the chance to do joint work with Sudhir Anand, on subjects closely related to this book. I have also had very fruitful working relations with Angus Deaton, Meghnad Desai, James Foster and Siddiq Osmani. My collaboration with Martha Nussbaum during 1987–89 was of great importance in investigating the concepts of capability and quality of life, used extensively in this book.

  In helping with Human Development Reports, I have fruitfully interacted with, in addition to Mahbub ul Haq, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Selim Jahan, Meghnad Desai and Paul Streeten, and later on with Richard Jolly, who succeeded Mahbub. Other collaborators, advisors and critics on whose help I have relied include Tony Atkinson (on whose ideas I have often drawn), and also Kaushik Basu, Alok Bhargava, David Bloom, Anne Case, Lincoln Chen, Martha Chen, Stanley Fischer, Caren Grown, S. Guhan, Stephan Klasen, A. K. Shiva Kumar, Robert Nozick, Christina Paxson, Ben Polak, Jeffrey Sachs, Tim (Thomas) Scanlon, Joe Stiglitz, Kotaro Suzumura and Jong-il You. I have received helpful comments on the basic ideas and on various versions of the manuscript from Sudhir Anand, Amiya Bagchi, Pranab Bardhan, Ashim Dasgupta, Angus Deaton, Peter Dimock, Jean Drèze, James Foster, Siddiq Osmani, Ingrid Robeyns and Adele Simmons.

  I have also benefited from very efficient research assistance from Arun Abraham over a long period, and also from Ingrid Robeyns and Tanni Mukhopadhyay, more recently. Anna Marie Svedrofsky has played a most helpful coordinating role with the logistic arrangements.

  As mentioned in the Preface, these lectures were given at the invitation of James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, and I have grea
tly benefited from many discussions with him. The lectures at the Bank were chaired respectively by James Wolfensohn, Caio Kochweser, Ismail Serageldin, Callisto Madavo and Sven Sandstrom, and they each made significant observations on the problems I tried to address. I was, furthermore, very stimulated by the questions that were asked and the remarks that were made in the discussions following my lectures. I also benefited from the opportunity to interact with the staff of the Bank, arranged with impeccable efficiency by Tariq Hussain, who was generally in charge of those lectures.

  Finally, my wife, Emma Rothschild, has had to read different versions of disparate arguments at various times, and her advice has always been extremely valuable. Her own work on Adam Smith has been a good source of ideas, since this book draws a great deal on Smith’s analyses. I had a close relationship with Adam Smith even before I knew Emma (as those familiar with my earlier writings will know). Under her influence, the plot has thickened. This has been important for the work.

  INTRODUCTION

  DEVELOPMENT AS FREEDOM

  Development can be seen, it is argued here, as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. Focusing on human freedoms contrasts with narrower views of development, such as identifying development with the growth of gross national product, or with the rise in personal incomes, or with industrialization, or with technological advance, or with social modernization. Growth of GNP or of individual incomes can, of course, be very important as means to expanding the freedoms enjoyed by the members of the society. But freedoms depend also on other determinants, such as social and economic arrangements (for example, facilities for education and health care) as well as political and civil rights (for example, the liberty to participate in public discussion and scrutiny). Similarly, industrialization or technological progress or social modernization can substantially contribute to expanding human freedom, but freedom depends on other influences as well. If freedom is what development advances, then there is a major argument for concentrating on that overarching objective, rather than on some particular means, or some specially chosen list of instruments. Viewing development in terms of expanding substantive freedoms directs attention to the ends that make development important, rather than merely to some of the means that, inter alia, play a prominent part in the process.