Human development (economics)
Human development involves studies of the human condition with its core being the capability approach. The inequality adjusted Human Development Index is used as a way of measuring actual progress in human development by the United Nations. It is an alternative approach to a single focus on economic growth, and focused more on social justice, as a way of understanding progress
The United Nations Development Programme defines human development as "the process of enlarging people's choices", said choices allowing them to "lead a long and healthy life, to be educated, to enjoy a decent standard of living", as well as "political freedom, other guaranteed human rights and various ingredients of self-respect".[1] Thus, human development is about much more than economic growth, which is only a means of enlarging people's choices.[2]
History[edit]
Human Development has roots in ancient philosophy and early economic theory. Aristotle noted that "Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful for something else", and Adam Smith and Karl Marx were concerned with human capabilities. The theory grew in importance in the 1980s with the work of Amartya Sen and his Human Capabilities perspective, which played a role in his receiving the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics. Notable early active economists who formulated the modern concept of human development theory were Mahbub ul Haq, Üner Kirdar, and Amartya Sen.[3] The Human Development Index developed for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) stems from this early research.[4] In 2000, Sen and Sudhir Anand published a notable development of the theory to address issues in sustainability.[5][6]
Martha Nussbaum's publications in the late 1990s and 2000s pushed theorists to pay more attention to the human in the theory, and particularly to human emotion.[7][8] A separate approach stems in part from needs theories of psychology which in part started with Abraham Maslow (1968). Representative of these are the Human-Scale Development approach developed by Manfred Max-Neef in the mid-to-late 1980s which addresses human needs and satisfiers which are more or less static across time and context.[9]
Anthropologists and sociologists have also challenged perspectives on Human Development Theory that stem from neoclassical economics. Examples of scholars include, Diane Elson, Raymond Apthorpe, Irene van Staveren, and Ananta Giri. Elson (1997) proposes that human development should move towards a more diverse approach to individual incentives. This will involve a shift from seeing people as agents in control of their choices selecting from a set of possibilities utilizing human capital as one of many assets. Instead, theorists should see people as having more mutable choices influenced by social structures and changeable capacities and using a humanistic approach to theory including factors relating to an individual's culture, age, gender, and family roles. These extensions express a dynamic approach to the theory, a dynamism that has been advocated by Ul Haq and Sen, in spite of the implicit criticism of those two figures.[10][11]
In an attempt to promote human development, the United Nations supports decennial Earth Summits where UN members discuss a plan of action called Agenda 21 – an agenda to make sure humanity will still be around after the year 2100. Thousands of cities now have a local Agenda 21 and more and more companies and organisations also align their strategic plan with the strategic plan of Agenda21. With the approaching of the year 2000, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was compelled to develop something that existed in the private sector: setting out a long term plan, a mid term plan and a short term planning. This endeavour supports on Agenda21 and was named the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which ran from 2000–2015. The United Nations made a commitment to accomplish these goals by 2015 and thus make an attempt to promote human development.[12] As the experience of this exercise was perceived successful, a follow-up program was developed and named as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September 2015, calls for a new vision to address the environmental, social and economic concerns facing the world today. The Agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 4 on education.[22][23] The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is leading SDG 4, covering all aspects of education.[24] Through initiatives, projects, conventions and events, UNESCO addresses issues related to education and shapes its future. The UN agency has established the Convention against Discrimination in Education, the Convention on Higher Education Qualifications and the Futures of Education initiative. In September 2022, the Transformation Education Summit sounded the alarm on the need for global solutions.[25] On this occasion, UNESCO published a report on a "new social contract for education", calling for a "peaceful, just and sustainable" future and underlining the importance of education in profound societal changes.[26]
Since 1909, the percentage of children in the developing world attending school has increased. Before then, a small minority of boys attended school. By the start of the twenty-first century, the majority of children in most regions of the world attended some form of school.[27] By 2016, over 91 percent of children are enrolled in formal primary schooling.[27] However, a learning crisis has emerged across the globe, due to the fact that a large proportion of students enrolled in school are not learning. A World Bank study found that "53 percent of children in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple story by the end of primary school."[28] While schooling has increased rapidly over the last few decades, learning has not followed suit.
Universal Primary Education was one of the eight international Millennium Development Goals, towards which progress has been made in the past decade, though barriers still remain.[29] Securing charitable funding from prospective donors is one particularly persistent problem. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute have indicated that the main obstacles to funding for education include conflicting donor priorities, an immature aid architecture, and a lack of evidence and advocacy for the issue.[29] Additionally, Transparency International has identified corruption in the education sector as a major stumbling block to achieving Universal Primary Education in Africa.[30] Furthermore, demand in the developing world for improved educational access is not as high as foreigners have expected. Indigenous governments are reluctant to take on the ongoing costs involved. There is also economic pressure from some parents, who prefer their children to earn money in the short term rather than work towards the long-term benefits of education.
A study conducted by the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning indicates that stronger capacities in educational planning and management may have an important spill-over effect on the system as a whole.[31] Sustainable capacity development requires complex interventions at the institutional, organizational and individual levels that could be based on some foundational principles:[31]