lec_2_(human_development) - Lecture 2 Human Development A Change in Focus For a long time the focus is

Lecture 2: Human Development A Change in Focus • For a long time, the focus is on economic growth or national incomes (measured by gross domestic product); increased material wealth of a nation implies improved human welfare (McMichael, chapter 1 lays out the case) • Recently, a strong switch within the UN and its agencies to look at quality of life, as Sen suggests that it is important for the individual to have real choices that can assist them to realize their potentials. The basis for real choices is to have a sufficient income, good education, good health, and living in a country that allows one to exercise choices • This perspective of development has been gaining ground as the world has been seeing unprecedented increases in material wealth in both developed and developing countries • But such prosperity coincides with the impoverishment of a growing share of the world’s population, their lack of real choices because of poverty, and the depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation, thus causing a rethinking of the goals of development • The question is, of course, whether this change at the theoretical, moral level and at the level of the UN, causes any change in government behavior or the behavior