Economic Development As Opportunity Equalization
Economic development should be conceived of as the degree to which an economy has implemented an efficient and just distribution of economic resources. The ubiquitous measure of GDP per capita reflects a utilitarian conception of justice, where ind...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/07/18006010/economic-development-opportunity-equalization http://hdl.handle.net/10986/15888 |
| Summary: | Economic development should be conceived
of as the degree to which an economy has implemented an
efficient and just distribution of economic resources. The
ubiquitous measure of GDP per capita reflects a utilitarian
conception of justice, where individual utility is defined
as personal income, and social welfare is the average of
utilities in a population. A more attractive conception of
justice is opportunity-equalization. Here, a two-dimensional
measure of economic development is proposed, based upon
viewing individuals incomes as a consequence of
circumstances, effort, and policy. The first dimension is
the average income level of those in the society with the
most disadvantaged circumstances, and the second dimension
is the degree to which total income inequality is due to
differential effort, as opposed to differential
circumstances. This pair of numbers is computed for a set of
22 European countries. No country dominates all others on
both dimensions. The two-dimensional measure induces a
partial ordering of countries with respect to development. |
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