Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom (1999) brings the thoughts of a Nobel Prize-winning economist—and his concern for the global poor—to a wider audience. This book has its origins in six lectures he gave in 1996 and 1997 to the World Bank, which is one of the most significant institutions for development work across the world. Sen adapts those lectures for a lay audience because he believes that his argument about how to approach international aid and welfare should be part of the public discourse on ideas to improve the world. Sen says that freedom must be the primary aim of development, rather than simply aiming for higher average income. The interconnected nature of freedom also makes it the primary means of development while empowering marginalized people, as well as its end.

Sen brings a rich array of experience and knowledge to this task. He grew up in colonial India and witnessed its ups and downs as it moved from periods of famine under the British to increasing prosperity after independence. He is a pioneering figure in welfare economics and has been professor of economics at Cambridge and Harvard. He earned a Nobel Prize for his work on social choice theory and the complex ways in which democratic preferences and human capabilities can be modeled (though he omits the technical mathematics from this book). He also brings a strong moral sensibility grounded in a deep knowledge of philosophy. This unique convergence of expertise makes Amartya Sen a powerful voice in the modern global development community. Several countries around the world have honored him with their highest awards, including India’s Bharat Ratna and France’s Legion of Honor. His many books and articles are required reading for those interested in alleviating global poverty and oppression. Development as Freedom helps make his thoughts accessible to a wider variety of people.

This study guide uses the 1999 hardcover edition from Alfred A. Knopf.

Summary

Amartya Sen opens with an anecdote about how, as a young boy growing up in pre-independence India, he witnessed the horrific sight of a poor Muslim laborer named Kader Mia dying on Sen’s family’s doorstep. Kader Mia had been knifed to death for entering a Hindu neighborhood to find work; the man must have known he was in danger, but economic desperation drove him to take the risk. His lack of freedom to find work elsewhere killed him. That “unfreedom” only existed, however, because of other unfreedoms: his hunger, the violent instability of the region, and the social and religious prejudices against him. That memory offers the first piece of evidence for Sen’s central claim in this book, which is that freedom should be both the aim of development and the instrument to achieve it. Simply trying to improve the economic status of someone like Kader Mia is insufficient; the social and political factors that endangered his life also need to be addressed since freedoms are interconnected.

Chapter 1 explains how freedom should be placed at the center of development. Sen lays out a range of concerns that affect a person’s wellbeing and suggests that freedoms, as measured in capabilities, offer the best way of evaluating society’s success in giving people the opportunity to lead a good life. In Chapter 2, he elaborates on the capabilities approach to development. He shows that wealth is not a sufficient measure of development. A simple look at the ways in which life expectancy does not follow income proves this: If people with higher incomes die sooner than people in other regions who have lower incomes, then clearly income alone fails to measure quality of life.

Chapter 3 examines three philosophies that offer different goals for development and different criteria for evaluating it: utilitarianism, libertarianism, and Rawlsian justice. Sen finds value and limitations in all three. He instead argues for using a broad informational base in evaluating development. A good evaluation of development centered on freedom would equally weigh liberties, inequalities, utility (preferences), and concrete economic consequences. Chapter 4 dives more deeply into issues of inequality. It argues that conceiving of poverty as the deprivation of capabilities offers a way to address this issue by making the restoration of freedom central to public policy.

Chapter 5 examines the role of free markets and the state. Sen argues that both have a role in development. The central criterion should be empowering individual people. Democracy, as he argues in Chapter 6, offers the best way to do so. Allowing multiple voices into public discussion means that problems and solutions will be better identified. In a democracy, voters can hold the powerful accountable.

The example of famines in Chapter 7 underlines this point. Sen demonstrates that famines result more from inequalities and lack of purchasing power than from a simple lack of food. No modern democracy has suffered a famine because voters will not allow elected leaders to tolerate such an extreme deprivation of people’s capabilities. Chapter 8 offers another example of how prioritizing freedom in development matters. Women suffer discrimination globally, and, according to Sen’s calculations, millions of women are “missing” because they died as children due to resources being reserved for boys or because they were targeted for sex-selective abortion. In places where empowering women in education, business, or politics is prioritized, empirical studies have shown dramatic improvements in the wellbeing of women and children.

In Chapters 9 and 10, Sen challenges the claims of East Asian authoritarian leaders that they can produce better development outcomes by disallowing political freedoms. China, especially, is famous for fighting overpopulation through a draconian One Child Policy. Sen argues that the fear that the population is outstripping the food supply is in fact a myth. He says that to reduce overpopulation, educating women and providing them with contraception in a democratic society works just as well to reduce fertility rates as coercion. He also rejects claims that the rhetoric of rights and liberty is a Western neocolonial imposition on Asia. Sen argues that many contemporary Asians value liberty and that diverse Asian traditions support them.

In the final two chapters, Sen returns to the subject of democracy. He makes a passionate defense that it is the best way to form public policy and values. Open public debate allows a society to develop ideas of justice that influence people’s behaviors. Rational consensus is possible in a free society. Given the complex array of different freedoms that need to be weighed along with concerns such as inequality, democratic debate may be the only way to form a consensus and make strides in development.