Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment

by Dasgupta, Partha

• ISBN13: 9780199247882
• ISBN10: 0199247889
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-01-10
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment, Partha Dasgupta exploresways to measure the quality of life. Although the problem pervades a number ofacademic disciplines, it is not confined to the academic realm. Internationalorganizations regularly publish cross-country estimates of the quality of life,journalists and commentators publicize them, and national governments areobliged to take note of them. Today, quality-of-life indices broker politicalarguments and together form a coin that even helps purchase economic and socialpolicy.It is therefore ironic that indices of human well-being in current use arenotably insensitive to our dependence on the natural environment, both at amoment in time and across generations. Moreover, international discussions oneconomic development in poor regions all too frequently ignore the naturalresource base. In developing quality-of-life measures, Professor Dasgupta paysparticular attention to the natural environment, illustrating how it can beincorporated, more generally, into economic reasoning in a seamless manner. Theresult is a treatise that goes beyond quality-of-life measures and offers acomprehensive account of the newly emergent subject of ecological economics. Theconnections between biodiversity, ecosystem services, resource scarcities, andeconomic possibilities for the future are developed in a quantitative, butaccessible, language. Such familiar terms as 'sustainable development', 'socialdiscount rates', and Earth's 'carrying capacity' are given a firm theoreticalunderpinning. The theory that is developed is then put to use in extendedcommentaries on the economics of population, poverty traps, global warming,structural adjustment programmes, and free trade. The author shows that, whetherwe are interested in valuing the state of affairs in a country or in evaluatingeconomic policy there, the index that should be used is the economy's wealth,which is the social worth of its capital assets. The concept of wealth adoptedhere is a comprehensive one, including not only manufactured assets, but alsohuman capital, knowledge, and the natural environment. Wealth is contrasted withsuch popular measures of human well-being as gross national product and theUnited Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index.Although the theory developed here is not restricted in its applicability to thecircumstances facing poor countries, the exposition is prompted by the author'sconcerns over the dilemmas facing poor people in those parts of world.Repeatedly, he applies the theory to data on poor countries. The picture thatemerges is a sobering one and contrasts sharply with that portrayed in thecontemporary literature on economic development.The book has been written not only for fellow economists, but also for studentsof economics, environmental studies, political science, and politicalphilosophy. It is intended even more broadly for the general citizen interestedin human well-being and the centrality of the natural environment to oureveryday lives.

Author Biography

Partha Dasgupta is the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. A Past President of the Royal Economic Society and of the European Economic Association.

Table of Contents

Summary and Guide	xviii
Introduction: Means and Ends	1	(1)
Making Comparisons	1	(2)
Disagreements over Facts and Values	3	(4)
Valuation and Evaluation in Kakotopia	7	(2)
PART I: VALUING AND EVALUATING	9	(32)
Prologue	11	(2)
The Notion of Well-Being	13	(11)
Personal to the Social	13	(1)
Welfare and Well-Being	14	(1)
Human Rights as Constituents of Well-Being	15	(3)
Positive and Negative Rights	18	(1)
Aggregation in Theory	19	(1)
Numerical Indices: Complete vs. Partial Ordering	20	(2)
Complete vs. Partial Comparability of Well-Being	22	(2)
Ordering Social States	24	(3)
Definitions	24	(1)
Efficient Liberalism	25	(2)
Why Measure Well-Being?	27	(6)
Measuring Economic Activity	27	(1)
Comparing Groups	27	(1)
Comparing Localities	28	(1)
Measuring Sustainable Well-Being	29	(1)
Finding Criteria for Policy Evaluation	30	(1)
Four Senses of Plurality	30	(3)
Constituents and Determinants of Well-Being	33	(8)
Constituents or Determinants?	33	(1)
Valuation, Trust, and Institutions	34	(2)
Happiness	36	(2)
Imitation and the Demonstration Effect	38	(3)
PART II: MEASURING CURRENT WELL-BEING	41	(44)
Prologue	43	(2)
Theory	45	(11)
Citizenship: Civil, Political, and Socio-Economic	45	(1)
The Need for Parsimony	46	(2)
Exotic Goods and Basic Needs	48	(2)
Civic Attitudes, Entitlements, and Democracy	50	(3)
Aggregation in Practice	53	(1)
Cardinal or Ordinal Indices	54	(2)
Current Quality of Life in Poor Countries	56	(29)
The Data	56	(3)
Borda Ranking	59	(3)
GNP and Current Well-Being	62	(1)
The Contemporary Poor World	63	(3)
Civil Rights, Democracy, and Economic Progress: Theory	66	(3)
Civil Rights, Democracy, and Economic Progress: Illustration	69	(7)
Geography of Poverty Traps	76	(4)
The Human Development Index: Development as What?	80	(5)
PART III: MEASURING WELL-BEING OVER TIME	85	(78)
Prologue	86	(3)
Intergenerational Well-Being	89	(15)
The Ramsey Formulation	89	(5)
Discounting the Future	94	(2)
Public and Private Ethics	96	(2)
Population Growth	98	(3)
Uncertainty	101	(3)
Intergenerational Conflicts	104	(3)
Present vs. the Future	104	(1)
Declining Discount Rates	105	(2)
Economic Institutions and the Natural Environment	107	(15)
Markets	107	(3)
The Local Community	110	(4)
The State	114	(2)
Property Rights and Management: A Schemata	116	(1)
Global and Local Environmental Problems	117	(2)
Technological Biases	119	(3)
Valuing Goods	122	(17)
Accounting Prices	122	(2)
Necessities vs. Luxuries	124	(3)
Biodiversity and Substitution Possibilities	127	(4)
Estimating Accounting Prices	131	(6)
Total vs. Incremental Values	137	(2)
Wealth and Well-Being	139	(24)
Sustainable Development	139	(3)
Capital Assets and Institutions	142	(4)
Genuine Investment: Theory	146	(3)
Why not NNP?	149	(2)
What Does Productivity Growth Measure?	151	(3)
Accounting for the Environment	154	(2)
Genuine Investment: Applications	156	(7)
PART IV: EVALUATING POLICIES IN IMPERFECT ECONOMIES	163	(42)
Prologue	165	(2)
Policy Reforms	167	(12)
Policy Change as Perturbation	167	(1)
Project Evaluation Criterion	168	(4)
Two Applications	172	(1)
Taxes and Regulations as Policies	173	(4)
Hard and Soft Prices	177	(2)
Discounting Future Consumption	179	(13)
Why	179	(1)
How	180	(3)
Global Warming and Discounting	183	(4)
Gamma Discounting	187	(3)
Project-Specific Discounting	190	(1)
Total or Incremental Output?	191	(1)
Institutional Responses to Policy Change	192	(13)
Non-Market Interactions	192	(4)
Growth or Redistribution?	196	(3)
Managing Local Irrigation Systems	199	(1)
Structural Adjustment Programmes and the Natural Environment	200	(2)
Poverty and Freer Trade	202	(3)
PART V: VALUING POTENTIAL LIVES	205	(31)
Prologue	207	(4)
Some Views	211	(4)
Old Theories	211	(1)
Average Utilitarianism	212	(3)
Classical Utilitarianism and the Genesis Problem	215	(5)
Formulating the Theory	215	(3)
Optimum Population Size	218	(2)
Numbers and Well-Being under Classical Utilitarianism	220	(2)
Actual vs. Potential Lives	222	(9)
What is Wrong with the Genesis Problem?	222	(1)
Actual Problems	223	(3)
Generation-Relative Ethics	226	(2)
Rational Ends	228	(3)
Generation-Relative Utilitarianism	231	(5)
Appendix	236	(27)
A.1. The Basic Model	236	(2)
A.2. The Imperfect Economy	238	(3)
A.3. Measuring Current Well-Being	241	(1)
A.4. Accounting Prices	242	(2)
A.5. Project Evaluation	244	(2)
A.6. Wealth and Sustainable Well-Being	246	(1)
A.7. Valuing and Evaluating	247	(1)
A.8. The Current-Value Hamiltonian	247	(2)
A.9. The Welfare Significance of NNP	249	(1)
A.10. Cross-Country Comparisons	250	(2)
A.11. Global Public Goods	252	(1)
A.12. Evaluation of Permanent Policy Change	252	(1)
A.13. Illustration	253	(2)
A.14. Technological Change and Growth Accounting	255	(3)
A.15. Population Change	258	(1)
A.16. Further Extensions	259	(4)
References	263	(24)
Name Index	287	(6)
Subject Index	293