Abstract
In Development as Freedom, Sen (1999) emphasizes that development must be focused on individual entitlements, capabilities, freedom, and rights and that economic growth is the means to these ends. In this approach, expansion of freedom is viewed as both the primary end and the principal means of economic development. It is essential to ensure basic income so that people may be free from poverty and hunger, to provide access to basic health care so that people may live a long and healthy life, and to afford access to education so that people may realize their aspirations. People are both the beneficiaries of development and the agents of the progress and changes that development brings about. This means issues of equity must be central to economic development. The notion of equity includes both income and human capabilities, such as health and education outcomes, equality of opportunities, and gender equality.
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Notes
- 1.
The comparison between China and India is most telling: in China, over 45 % of female adults were literate and the female labor participation rate was over 70 % in the 1980s, compared with 25 % and 32 %, respectively, in India during the same period.
- 2.
US Census Bureau and Population Division (2005).
- 3.
Office for National Statistics. Life expectancy at birth and at age 65 by local areas in the United Kingdom.
- 4.
The leading causes of death include postpartum hemorrhage, hypertension, and embolism for maternal deaths and neonatal trauma, preterm delivery, and low birth weight for child deaths.
- 5.
The health sector reform distorted the incentives of health-care providers, encouraging hospitals to recover costs through high fees on drugs and undertaking expensive medical procedures while reducing the supply of preventive care services.
- 6.
The intergenerational (or social) mobility is commonly measured by intergenerational earnings elasticity—elasticity of earnings between parents and their children (the higher the number, the lower the intergenerational earnings mobility).
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Wang, X., Wang, L., Wang, Y. (2014). Social Disparity and Inequality of Opportunity. In: The Quality of Growth and Poverty Reduction in China. International Research on Poverty Reduction. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36346-7_6
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