The Concept of Human Development

Background

Unfortunately reality did not turn out that way. The 1960s saw many countries reporting phenomenal increases in their per capita incomes at the same time witnessing intensifying poverty for large portions of their populations. It was clear that growth had not solved the problem of deprivation in many countries.

The emergence of poverty alleviation as an objective of development raised the issue of the adequacy of per capita income as a measure of development. For income, as encompassing as it is, have severe shortcomings as a measure of development. It is notoriously unequally distributed, masking extreme for large groups of the population. It hides the exclusion of some members of the population, say women and children, from the enjoyment of certain goods and services because of one reason or another. It ignores various conditions primitive of development such as a good and healthy environment. Are there alternative measures? What measure can best describe development?

The indicator movement pioneered at UN Research Institute for Social Development attempted to respond to these questions by examining various other possible measures of development such as changes in mortality, morbidity, urbanization, and other socio-economic factors. However it was stymied by the difficulty of consolidating these various measures into a single index. The solution to that problem then became the objective of subsequent work. The result was the Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI). The PQLI chose three indicators: infant mortality, life expectancy at age one, and literacy. A substantial advance from previous efforts, the PQLI however suffered from a shortcoming: the first two indicators overlap, as they both relate to longevity, and are highly correlated.

What Human Development Is

Building on the findings of earlier works, the United Nations Development Program in 1990 introduced the concept of human development to deal with many questions posed by the concern for poverty alleviation and overall improvement in human existence. It gave a broad definition of human development, for the first time expressing development in terms of the choices and opportunities those human beings can take advantage of if they are appropriately positioned to do so.

The first Human Development Report (1990) defined the term in the following words: "Human development is a process of enlarging people’s choices. In principle, these choices can be infinite and change over time. But at all levels of development, the three essential ones are for people to lead a long and healthy life, to acquire knowledge and to have access to resources needed for a decent standard of living. If these choices are not available, many other opportunities remain inaccessible."

The concept of human development is thus wider and deeper than any that has previously been given. It focuses on three fundamental choices: opportunities for a long and healthy life, opportunities for education, and opportunities to have command over commodities and wealth-choices without which human beings cannot enjoy other opportunities, such as those relating, to a sound physical environment or political freedom.

What Human Development Is Not

At first blush the concept of human development would seem to be anti-growth, sectional, and valid only for poor societies, anti-growth because its concentration is distribution rather than production, sectional because it is concerned with narrow issues such as education, health and so forth and irrelevant to industrial societies because its focus is poverty alleviation. A more thorough examination of the concept, however, suggests that these misgivings be without solid basis. Human development is concerned with enhancing human capabilities and with mobilizing these for productive purposes. The enhancement of human capabilities requires investment in people that in turn improves the capacity for productive work.

The concern for the potential of the human being for a wide range of creative pursuits is encompassing, ranging from the production of material goods and services to the achievement of scientific goals, and the attainment of artistic heights of excellence. This is not sectional.

Human survival may be the goal of development in the poorest of societies but in the richer ones other objectives may be over-riding. They can include improvement in the quality of life, attainment of artistic, and technological excellence, and strengthening of political freedom. In other words, the choices open to people differs at different stages of development.