An inquiry into well-being and destitution
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
An inquiry into well-being and destitution
Clarendon Press , Oxford University Press, c1993
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [546]-625) and indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Destitution is the main subject matter of this study. It ranges through moral philosophy and political science to anthropology, welfare economics, economic theory and nutrition science. Dasgupta is concerned with reconciling empirical evidence with theoretical analysis, and with presenting a coherent description of the causes of undernourishment. This volume should be of interest to nutritionists and anthropologists in that it presents undernourishment, differences in calorie needs, and the phenomenon of adaptation to low energy intake - genetic, physiological and behavioural. It also addresses the current debate over methods for estimating the incidence of undernourishment, and is written in a style suitable for readers who are not economists, leaving the formal material to be presented in an appendix. This book is placed in the context of philosophical work on general well-being, and with the aim of stimulating research on policies to remedy the state of destitution.
Dasgupta uses, for example, modern analytical political philosophy to define the role of the state in the context of resource-poor economies, and concludes from his empirical evaluation of 40 of the world's poorest countries that there is a striking correlation between a country enjoying greater political and civil liberties and performing better in terms of per capita income, life expectancy and the other measurement standards he outlines. He advocates the existence and recognition of both positive and negative rights, and avoids the tendency of development economics works to concentrate on mortality or growth and ingore the role of these rights.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 Well-being - theory and realization: the commodity basis of well-being
- political morality and the state
- the object of social contracts
- well-being - from theory to measurement
- appendix - political and civil rights indices. Part 2 Allocation of resources among households - the standard theory: resource allocation mechanisms
- public goods and common property resources
- decentralization and central guidance
- real national income as a measure of general well-being
- uncertainty, insurance and social norms. Part 3 The household and its setting - extensions of the standard theory: land, labour, savings and credit
- households and credit constraints
- poverty and the environmental resource base
- net national product in a dynamic economy
- food, care and work - the household as an allocation mechanism
- axiomatic bargaining theory
- fertility and resources - the household as a reproductive unit
- strategic complementarities in fertility decisions
- population and savings - normative considerations
- classical utilitarianism in a limited world
- food needs and work capacity
- adaptation to nourishment
- inequality, malnutrition and the disenfranchised
- analysis of allocation mechanisms when nutrition affects productivity
- incentives and development policies. Subject index: agrarian reform
- food subsidies
- employment guarantee schemes and rural infrastructure
- community participation and credit facilities
- health and education
- envoi.
by "Nielsen BookData"
