The Measure of America, 2010-2011: Mapping Risks and Resilience

Introduction. Human Development in America Today

PART 3 Human Development INTRODUCTION Human Development in America Today In the chronicling of the American story, the human development approach seeks to shift focus from the financial sphere of growth and profits to the human sphere of opportunity and freedom. Introduction Part I: Understanding Human Development The Ideas behind Human Development Measuring Human Development Part II: Reducing Risks, Increasing Resilience Safeguarding the Capabilities We Have Overcoming Barriers to Access Conclusion IN TH IS S ECT ION: WELL-BEING TIME 12 THE MEASURE OF AMERICA 2010–2011 America’s ability to fulfill its promise as a nation that offers everyone a fair chance relies on broadly shared freedom and opportunity. And today more than ever, raising our standard of living depends upon effective competition in the global marketplace. How are we faring in these two missions? For too long, we have looked to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to answer these and other crucial questions, tacitly equating market growth with progress. In December 2009, home foreclosures were still on the rise, and unemployment was holding steady at nearly 10 percent—only the second time since the Great Depression that the unemployment rate had reached double digits. Yet even as the bottom was falling out for countless American families, GDP was on the rise. We won’t know the full extent of the damage, the degree to which the recession upended the foundations of daily life for millions of Americans, until at least 2011. Why? Because while economic indicators—inflation, construction, retail trade, wholesale inventories, commodity prices, and much more—are released at least every quarter, vital signs of human well-being, such as the percentage of babies born with low birth weights or the number of young children living in extreme poverty, are measured annually at best, and released after a two- or three-year delay. Thus, we knew in January 2010 how much money Americans spent on their health in the fourth quarter of 2009. But we won’t know how long they were living in 2009—until 2012. We knew in July 2010 how many new houses were built, bought, and sold from April to June 2010. But we won’t know how many families had no home at all until late 2011. Human well-being depends on the success of the economy, as measured by GDP and other economic indicators. But these indicators tell us only part of the American story—a part that for many reads as a footnote beneath the chapters of “The success of an economy and of a society cannot be separated from the lives that members of the society are able to lead . . . We not only value living well and satisfactorily, but also appreciate having control over our own lives.” AMARTYA SEN, Development as Freedom, 1999 Introduction Human development is the process of enlarging people’s opportunities and improving their well-being. 13 Mapping Risks and Resilience HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN AMERICA TODAY our daily lives. In the chronicling of the American story, the human development approach seeks to shift focus from the financial sphere of growth and profits to the human sphere of opportunity and freedom. Human development is the process of enlarging people’s opportunities and improving their well-being. Human development is dedicated not to how big an economy can swell, but to what ordinary people can do and what they can become. Human development explores the real-world opportunities people have to live in ways they themselves value and freely choose, and the extent to which they are able to realize their potential to the fullest. By placing people at the center of analysis on well-being, this people-centered approach redefines the way we think about and address human—and national—progress. The human development approach was developed at the United Nations in the late 1980s, born of the frustration that economic progress in developing countries was not translating fully into human progress: healthier children, more literacy, greater political participation, cleaner environments, more widely shared prosperity, or greater freedom. Dr. Mahbub ul Haq, an economist who had worked at the World Bank and served as finance minister in his native Pakistan, developed the approach in response to the human lives he saw “shriveling even as economic production was expanding.”1 He insisted that while money and economic growth are essential means to an end, they are not ends in themselves. Human beings are not inputs to...