From SIM

• Absolute Poverty


  A situation of being unable to meet the minimum levels of income, food, clothing, health care, shelter, and other essentials
• Capabilities


  The freedoms that people have, given their personal features and their command over commodities
• Developing Countries


  Countries that are presently characterized by low levels of living and other development deficits. Used in the development literature as a synonym for less developed countries
• Development


  The process of improving the quality of all human lives and capabilities by raising people's levels of living, self-esteem, and freedom
• Freedom


  A situation in which a society has at its disposal a variety of alternatives from which to satisfy its wants and individuals enjoy real choices according to their preferences
• Functionings


  What people do or can do with the commodities of given characteristics that they come to possess or control
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP)


  The total final output of goods and services produced by the country's economy, within the country's territory, by residents and nonresidents, regardless of its allocation between domestic and foreign claims
• Gross National Income (GNI)


  The total domestic and foreign output claimed by residents of a country. It comprises gross domestic product (GDP) plus factor incomes accruing to residents from abroad, less the income earned in the domestic economy accruing to persons abroad
• Self-esteem


  The feeling of worthiness that a society enjoys when its social, political, and economic systems and institutions promote human values such as respect, dignity, integrity, and self-determination
• Social System


  The organizational and institutional structure of a society, including its values, attitudes, power structure, and traditions
• Subsistence Economy


  An economy in which production is mainly for personal consumption and the standard of living yields little more than basic necessities of life—food, shelter, and clothing
• Sustenance


  The basic goods and services, such as food, clothing, and shelter, that are necessary to sustain an average human being at the bare minimum level of living
• Development economics


  One of the newest, most exciting, and most challenging branches of the broader disciplines of economics and political economy
• Development economics often draws on relevant principles and concepts from other branches of economics in either a standard or modified form, for the most part it is a field of study that is rapidly evolving its own distinctive analytical and methodological identity
• Traditional Economics


  Concerned primarily with the efficient, least-cost allocation of scarce productive resources and with the optimal growth of these resources over time so as to produce an ever-expanding range of goods and services
• Traditional neoclassical economics


  • Deals with an advanced capitalist world of perfect markets; consumer sovereignty; automatic price adjustments; decisions made on the basis of marginal, private-profit, and utility calculations; and equilibrium outcomes in all product and resource markets
  • Assumes economic "rationality" and a purely materialistic, individualistic, self-interested orientation toward economic decision making
• Political Economy


  Goes beyond traditional economics to study, among other things, the social and institutional processes through which certain groups of economic and political elites influence the allocation of scarce productive resources now and in the future, either for their own benefit exclusively or for that of the larger population as well
• Political economy is therefore concerned with the relationship between politics and economics, with a special emphasis on the role of power in economic decision making
• Traditional View of Development - Meant as achieving sustained rates of growth of income per capita to enable a nation to expand its output at a rate faster than the growth rate of its population
• New Economic View of Development - Development in this view is conceived as a multidimensional process involving major changes in social structures, popular attitudes, and national institutions, as well as the acceleration of economic growth, the reduction of inequality, and the eradication of poverty.
• The Capability Approach View of Development


  Amartya Sen's capability approach is a moral framework which proposes that social arrangements should be evaluated primarily according to the extent of freedom people have to promote as well as achieving functions they value
• Amartya Sen's view - Poverty cannot be properly measured by income or even by utility as conventionally understood; what matters fundamentally is not the things a person has—or the feelings these provide—but what a person is, or can be, and does, or can do
• According to Sen - Human "well-being" means being well, in the basic sense of being healthy, well nourished, well clothed, literate, and long-lived, and more broadly, being able to take part in the life of the community, being mobile, and having freedom of choice in what one can become and can do
• Three basic components or core values of development

  • Sustenance
  • Self-esteem
  • Freedom
• Sustenance


  The ability to meet basic needs
• Absolute Underdevelopment


  When any of life-sustaining basic human needs (food, shelter, health, and protection) is absent or in critically short supply
• Self-esteem


  A sense of worth and self-respect, of not being used as a tool by others for their own ends. Can also be called authenticity, identity, dignity, respect, honor, or recognition
• Freedom


  To be understood in the sense of emancipation from alienating material conditions of life and from social servitude to nature, other people, misery, oppressive institutions, and dogmatic beliefs, especially that poverty is predestination
• United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals

  Eight goals that all 191 UN member states have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015
• The United Nations Millennium Declaration was signed


  September 2000
• United Nations Millennium Declaration

  Commits world leaders to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women
• The MDGs are derived from the United Nations Millennium Declaration, and all have specific targets and indicators
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

  Replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which started a global effort in 2000 to tackle the indignity of poverty
• The Sustainable Development Goals


  The blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all
• The Sustainable Development Goals aim to achieve each Goal and target by 2030
• Big push


  A concerted, economy-wide, and typically public policy–led effort to initiate or accelerate economic development across a broad spectrum of new industries and skills
• Center


  (In dependence theory) The economically developed world
• Complementarity


  An action taken by one firm, worker, or organization that increases the incentives for other agents to take similar actions. These often involve investments whose return depends on other investments being made by other agents.
• Coordination failure


  A situation in which the inability of agents to coordinate their behavior (choices) leads to an outcome (equilibrium) that leaves all agents worse off than in an alternative situation that is also an equilibrium.
• Dependence


  The reliance of developing countries on developed-country economic policies to stimulate their own economic growth. Dependence can also mean that the developing countries adopt developed-country education systems, technology, economic and political systems, attitudes, consumption patterns, dress, and so on.