Book Report: Development as Freedom

I set out to read the popular books on development, with the goal of forming my own view on what needs to be done. At the time, Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom was not on that list. But, as can happen in New York, someone on the C train noticed I was reading The End of Poverty and told me I should read Development as Freedom also. As he explained the book, I agreed to check it out, but thought I wouldn't like it so much. I didn't see what freedoms had to do with development and I thought the book sounded too liberal for me. I was wrong.

Development as Freedom has drastically changed my world view and is now probably the book that most formed my view on development. The only book I have yet to finish in this series is Muhammad Yanus' Creating a World Without Poverty, which is good but I think its application is more narrow than the other books.

Sen's main point throughout the books is that the goal of development is to create a situation in which all people have basic freedoms / rights / capacities, among which include the freedom from starvation and malnutrition, freedom from preventable death, the right to be literate and numerate, the right to participate in your government, and the right to employment and / or a living wage.

Here is a quote from the book that sums up Sen's argument: "Poverty must be seen as a deprivation of basic capabilities rather than a lowness of income."

However, the efforts of development, and the metrics used to measure success focus almost entirely on GDP or income. While income is one way to help people achieve their basic freedoms, it is not enough, and more importantly one income level will not ensure the same freedoms for all people. Instead of focusing on one of the many means to achieve the ends of freedom for all people, we should be focusing on the ends and all the different ways we can achieve them - or conversely all the ways that people are currently deprived of these capabilities to achieve their freedoms.

This may seem obvious enough, but after reading the other books, this is actually fundamentally different than the other books out there. Now, this book was not easy to read, which is probably one reason why it isn't among the popular books on development right now. However, slogging through it pays off. Sen shows many of the ways countries can and have expanded the freedoms / rights / capacities of their people. He then shows how expanding these freedoms improves individual lives but also leads to GDP growth.

Sen shows why countries should expand access to education before GDP growth (which can then create conditions for growth). He articulates how increasing women's agency also increases money spent on the family and improves child mortality, and especially improves the treatment of girls. He articulates the importance of democracy, especially that famines do not happen in democracies. (In fact, his analysis is that famines are a result of people losing the ability to buy food more than an actual lack of food. Therefore governments can subsidize incomes to prevent famines, and democracies will do that because the politicians will want to avoid losing their jobs.)

The book also contains great analyses of human rights, markets and of social choice. He takes on arguments that human rights are pre-legal rights (and therefore meaningless) and that they do not apply in the East. In his analysis of markets, he argues that people have a basic right to trade in the market (which is denied in communist governments), but governments have a responsibility to educate people so they can participate in markets and to create a system where markets are are fair and efficient. And finally, he looks at, and tears down, the argument that we cannot improve situations through government action because there are always unintended consequences that will thwart our efforts.

As you can see, the book is thorough - and far more so than I am even showing. There is little if any argument against his case that he has left out or left standing. If you have the time and the interest, this book is a must-read. I think it will fundamentally change how you think about development (even here in the US, where Sen compares freedoms and capabilities like mortality and literacy, instead of incomes, of African-Americans and others in developing countries), as it did for me.