''Development as Freedom'' is a 1999 book about international development by Indian economist and philosopher

Amartya Sen Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, econom ...

. The American edition of the book was published by

Alfred A. Knopf Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...

Summary

Amartya Sen was the winner of the 1998

Nobel Prize in Economics The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...

. Development as Freedom was published one year later and argues that ''development'' entails a set of linked ''freedoms'': * political freedoms and transparency in relations between people *freedom of opportunity, including freedom to access credit; and *economic protection from abject poverty, including through

income supplement Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...

s and unemployment relief. Poverty is characterized by lack of at least one freedom (Sen uses the term ''unfreedom'' for lack of freedom), including a ''de facto'' lack of political rights and choice,

vulnerability Vulnerability refers to "the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally." A window of vulnerability (WOV) is a time frame within which defensive measures are diminished, com ...

to coercive relations, and exclusion from economic choices and protections. Based on these ethical considerations, Sen argues that development cannot be reduced to simply increasing

basic income Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive an unconditional transfer payment, that is, without a means test or need to work. It would be received independently of a ...

s, nor to rising average per capita incomes. Rather, it requires a package of overlapping mechanisms that progressively enable the exercise of a growing range of freedoms. A central idea of the book is that freedom is both the end and a means to development. A key observation in this book is that, "no famine has ever taken place in a functioning democracy." Canadian social scientist Lars Osberg wrote about the book: "Although ''Development as Freedom'' covers immense territory, it is subtle and nuanced and its careful scholarship is manifest at every turn."

Kenneth Arrow Kenneth Joseph Arrow (23 August 1921 – 21 February 2017) was an American economist, mathematician, writer, and political theorist. He was the joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with John Hicks in 1972. In economics ...

concluded "In this book, Amartya Sen develops elegantly, compactly, and yet broadly the concept that economic development is in its nature an increase in freedom."

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Further reading