Miao Liu

Feb 4, 2020

Selim Jahan states that human development is a process of enlarging human choices. In order to enhance the choices, we need to enable the capabilities of human beings and the opportunities of human beings to use those capabilities. It is the balance between the two that helps maximize human development. In Jahan’s analysis, he claims that human development is development of the people, for the people, and by the people. We wish to develop human capital and human resources while ensure that people directly benefits from human development. We welcome people as active participants in the process which influences their lives. Moreover, human development is a holistic notion. It includes more than basic needs and welfare. Besides, Jahan introduces the Human Development Index. The index aims to cover 3 basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, knowledge, and decent standard of living. The other type of measure is the breadth measure. It contains different indicators of human development and displays broader information. Jahan and his team broaden the scope of human development by including creative work like arts and literature. Nonetheless, they also encounter certain issues. Gender-related work is quite important. Agriculture or rural development requires attention because they provide job opportunities in spite of urbanization. Lastly, the work during crisis or post-crisis matters because life must go on.

From collecting data for the past decades, Rosling maintains that the improvement of health and living standard triggers economic development. Initially, it was only industrialized countries that have low fertility rate with high life expectancy. Gradually, China and Latin-American countries move towards smaller families. Rosling also selects two countries for comparison. The United States was far more advanced than Vietnam when it comes to life expectancy in the 60s. However, after keeping family size and getting longer lives, Vietnam is very close to catching up. It moves towards market economy which increases the nation’s aggregate wealth. The second graph displays the relationship between the child survival rate and GDP per capita. Under this circumstance, Rosling selects South Korea and Brazil. South Korea has made a very obvious advancement in recent dacades, whereas Brazil develops slowly. Furthermore, Rosling contends that using averages to measure a country’s development is dangerous. Average data is inaccurate because there is a huge disparity within countries. When we split Uganda, a big income gap exists in domestic economy. If we want to analyze poverty in Africa, it is unrealistic to obtain a universal access based on unrepresentative figures. We need more details to contextualize socioeconomic problems.

Both Jahan and Rosling has introduced their work on human development with solid examples. However, they also point out that people in this field utilized inappropriate methods to address humanitarian issues. Human development requires more specific policies that target destitute individuals. It is important to put more work on data selection so that every figure is representative. In addition, the concept of human development can be more imaginative and inclusive. Conventionally, human development leans more towards wealth, which actually deprives the core of human development. Jahan and Rosling realized the past limitation of human development work, so they enlarge its definition by humanizing the helping process.