Sudhir Anand and Amartya Sen

38 Pages·2012·0.88 MB·English

CONSUMPTION AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT:
CONCEPTS AND ISSUES
Sudhir Anand and Amartya Sen
1. Introduction
"Tell me what you eat," remarked Anthelme Brillat -Savarin
nearly two hundred years ago, "and I will tell you what you aye."
The idea that people can be known from their consumption behaviour
has some plausibility. Eating enough and well nourishes us; over-
eating renders us obese and unfit; education can make us wiser (or
at least turn us into learned fools); reading poetry can make us
sensitive; keeping up with the Joneses can overstretch our
resources; and an obsession with fast cars may make us both "quicke
and dead." There are few things more central than consumption to
the lives that people variously lead.
AIrrr~ ~nsumption is not the ultimate end of our lives. We
seek consumption for a purpose, or for various purposes that may be
simultaneously entertained. The role of consumption in human lives
// cannot be really comprehended without some understanding of the
ends that are pursued through consumption activities." tlur ends
are enormously diverse, varying from nourishment to amusement, from
living long to living well, from isolated self-fulfilment to
interactive socialization.
The priorities of human development, with which the Human
Development Reports are concerned, relate to some basic human ends,
For a general introduction to the contemporary literature on
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consumption, see Angus Deaton and John Muellbauer, Economics and
Consumer Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
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and there is scope for scrutinizing how the prevailing consumption
act i vi ties serve those ends. This is, however, an extremely
difficult subject, and when entering this field there is a need for
humility and forbearing. It is fair to presume that people know
what they are doing when they opt for one consumption pattern over
another. Even when a person may not be all that well informed, the
idea that some other person can judge her choices and decisions
better than she can is not, as a general rule, easy to accept.
Indeed, pontifications of the development specialist on the
implications of alternative patterns of consumption may be hard to
savour or even tolerate. And yet the process of human
development is so deeply affected by the nature and characteristics
of consumption behaviour that the relation between the two is a
matter of some general interest. No matter how we ultimately
assess issues of legitimacy and status, the subject matter of
consumption calls for analysis and scrutiny by the persons
themselves as well as by others.
People entertain various objectives, and the chosen
consumption patterns may reflect this plurality. Many of these
objectives fit well into the ends of human developm2nt, while
others do not. That distinction need not be seen as ground enough
for paternalistic correction, but it is important to understand the
connections involved. Decisions on public policy will, of course,
also require analyses of ethics and politics (including, among
other things, the value of autonomy and liberty in choosing
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consumption patterns and the importance of immunity from
interference) But a closer understanding of relations between
consumption patterns and the lives that people lead -- or fail to
lead -- can be an important contribution to policy analysis at an
informed level.
To illustrate (with some simple examples), in the choice over
guns and butter (both of which are widely sought), the human-
development perspective is distinctly on the side of butter, rather
than guns. Given the importance attached to living long, this is
natural enough, and for much the same reason a less lethal food
than butter may even end up getting higher marks in the human-
development evaluation of consumption patterns. Smoking may be a
much sought after consumption activity, but this does not give it
a hallowed status In assessments of human development; the
merchants of death who place luscious ads, urging youths in the
Third World to smoke more, cannot be seen as promoting human
development. There is an issue here that calls for We
scrut~ny.
cannot take the subject of consumption as being "beyond" the reach
of development analysis.
The human development perspective suggests particular ways of
thinking about consumption, and this study is concerned with the
investigation and clarification of those ways. Since human
development In not a negligible perspective for policy analysis,
the connections have general policy relevance, without being the
immediate basis for any ready-made programme of public
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intervention. Part of the object is to place the investigation of
consumption patterns and their implications onto the social agenda.
This is the motivation for the inquiries that follow.
2. The Domain of Human Development
In the analytical and policy implications of viewing
e~amining
consumption in the human development perspective, we must have a
clear idea of the content of this perspective. The approach of
human development has been explored and applied in previous Human
Development Reports. The empirical analysis has taken the form of
presenting a variety of relevant information related to the lives
that people are able to live.' The focus has been on the
achievement, expansion and shortfall of some basic capabilities
that people have reason to value, such as living long and well,
being lettered and educated, being healthy and well-nourished,
taking part in the life of the community, and so on.
The informational thrust of the analysis of human development
has been in the detailed discussions (afforced by a great many
tables) covering a wide variety of general fields that are of
relevance to the lives that people are actually able to lead. A
few of these achievements and deficiencies are also put together
and reflected in aggregate indicators such as the Human Development
On this see particularly Human Development Report 1990 (New
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York: Oxford University Press, 1990). See also Amartya Sen,
Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1985);
Mahbub ul Haq, Reflections on Human Development (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995); Paul Streeten, [[reference]].
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Index (HDI) and the Human Poverty Index (HPI). There are also
additional aggregative calculations related to gender inequality,
yielding gender-related indicators of human development in the form
of GDI and GEM. A variant of the Human Poverty Index that is of
particular relevance to the richer and more accomplished countries
is also presented in this report.
These aggregative indicators are useful in their particular
contexts, but it is extremely important to emphasize that these
indicators have specific and limited focus, and do not exhaust the
domain of human development in general. In analyzing the role of
consumption in human development, we have to go well beyond these
specialized indicators. An indicator, such as the HDI or HPI, is
only one real number, and the more that is packed into that one
number, the less becomes the weight and importance of each
constituent of the index. The selection of an aggregate index is
inevitably one of "tragic choice."
Aggregate indicators are chosen as summary information that
can be sensibly used in dealing with some general issues. This
applies to the HDI and HPI too, without any pretension to cover the
entire domain of human development. The relevant have
co~texts
included the improvement of the informational perspectives of the
gross national product, to derive an indicator that would be
sensitive to varying levels of aggregate achievements, of
particular relevance to the poorer countries. This has led to the
Human Development Index (HDI) , which concentrates on average life
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expectancy, sChooling and elementary education, and the income
basis of other basic capabilities. An alternative focus of
interest relates to the informational perspective of poverty and
deprivation, and has been geared to getting a broader measure than
the standard indicators of income poverty. This has led to the
Human Poverty Index (HPI) , with its focus on the proportions of
people who are denied realistic chances of living reasonably long
lives, or being literate, or being adequately nourished, or having
safe water or access to health care.3 These aggregative indicators
have been devised to reflect a limited but contextually important
part of the general concern with human development. Their
relevance is related to the chosen context, and these indicators,
contingently important as they are, must not be confused with the
general perspective of human development.
All this is important to state because there is, clearly, some
temptation to concentrate on the simplicity of aggregate
indicators, as a result of which the richness of the -overall
picture of human development is sometimes lost. It is particularly
worth stating in the present context, because we cannot do justice
to the relationship between consumption and human development if
the concentration is exclusively on the aggregate indicators (such
as the HDI and HPI), rather than on the broader picture of human
development (presented in the detailed discussions In the
On this Human Development ReDort 1997 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997), Chapter 1.
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respective Human Development Reports) .
To be sure, the pattern of consumption and the nature of
consumption behaviour influence the achievements and deficiencies
of the specific components of the aggregate indictors (such as life
expectancy at birth) . But consumption has also other significant
effects on the ability to achieve a high quality of life (for
example, through influencing the ability of people to achieve
happiness, or to take part in the life of the community) These
broader connections will be worth examining, going well beyond the
domain of HDI or HPI. The approach of human development suggests
that the progress of the society be judged by people's real ability
to lead the kind of life they have reason to value, and this
general perspective is not confined to the limited set of variables
on which the summary indicators exclusively concentrate.
3. Consumption as an Activity: Time and Opportunity
We turn now to consumption. What does consumption consist in?
Sometimes consumption is defined as simply having some commodities,
rather than the use that is made of them. But consumption can also
be seen as an activity, involving the use of commodities. On this
operational interpretation, consumption cannot be understood or
assessed without reference to the process of uSlng these
commodities. The distinction may seem like a fine point -- perhaps
even too fussy and definitional -- but that fine point is, in fact,
associated with some very basic distinctions.
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The activity-oriented interpretation immediately draws
attention to the complementary factors that make it possible to
have effective use of commodities, in particular time and repose,
on which may depend a person's ability to get something out of the
commodities that he or she may gather or amass. If the lack of
time in an over-busy life-style points to some deficiency, the
inadequacy to be addressed may involve not merely the paucity of
pure rest, but also the lack of opportunity to utilize and enjoy
one's economic possessions as well as social relations. Thus, in
assessing living standards, attention has to be paid not merely to
the commodities one has, which is reflected in such aggregate
magnitudes as gross national product, or real national income, but
also to the time and opportunity for the actual utilization of what
one does have.
This is not, of course! a new issue in economic evaluation.
Many economists have proposed the inclusion of the value of leisure
in calculating a person's well-being and advantage. -William
Nordhaus and James Tobin have shown how substantial a difference is
made by the inclusion of the value of leisure In assessing an
individual's adjusted real income, and also, correspondingly, in
evaluating national income and its growth (or decline).' Standard
studies of national income statistics tend to proceed without
William Nordhaus and James Tobin, "Is Growth Obsolete?" in
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National Bureau of Economic Research, Economic Growth: Fiftieth
Anniversary Colloquium (New York: NBER, 1972).
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making any such corrections, even though sometimes respectful
references are made to these correctional calculations. There is
a need here to bring the statistical practice more in line with our
evaluative understanding. 5 [[What do you propose to do about this,
Uganda House??]]
This~ consideration is not only of general relevance for
assessing human development, it is also of particular relevance in
some specific contexts. First, the plight of the unemployed has
tended to receive more sympathetic attention than the predicament
of the overworked poor. This is not surprising, and is partly
influenced by the nature of the conventional accounting system
which is deeply influenced by the income perspective. Unemployment
typically entails a loss of income in a way that overworking does
not. And yet an overworked life can be not only joyless, it can
also leave the person with rather little ability to do the things
that she may value doing.
This is, in fact, a persistent problem for particular deprived
groups in poor societies, such as domestic servants. It is very
difficult to get hard data on the working hours of, say, the
domestic servants in most of the poor countries, but beginning
Q
can be made on this. [[What can be done in HDR 199B?]] It is, in
any case, important to flag this issue, both because they can be
discussed In qualitative terms even in the absence of exact
[[New references on the inclusion of leisure beyond
Nordhau8 ~nd Tobin.]]
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quantitative data, and also because the process of searching for
new data can be positively helped by the development of a general
research interest in a particular field.
There are other groups whose members are over-worked and
unrewarded toiling long and awkward hours, and getting very
little personal compensation. This is often the lot of many
housewives in poor economies, frequently reinforced by a rigidly
established sexual division of labour. The work involved is
standardly unpaid and quite often unrecognized and unpraised.
This takes us to the second reason for paying particular
attention to the availability of time and opportunity to make use
of economic resources and social relations. There is a strong case
for integrating the twin issues of over-work and unpaid work, since
the lack of payment (for example, to housewives) often reinforces
the deprivation involved in over-stretched working hours. The
deprivation in one dimension is supplemented and consolidated by
poverty in another dimension. The over-worked and unpaid women
workers may have neither the money to spend, nor the time to spend
it in, but the dual deprivations do not cancel each other out; in
fact, they reinforce each other wi thin a general ;;:>icture of
neglect, injustice and injury.
The issue of unpaid long hours of women's work is, however,
beginning to receive systematic attention in some discussions. In
Human Development Report 1995, the work predicament of women has