Response to Selim Jahan and Hans Rosling

Abdi Hassan

All living things develop. Call it evolution and measure it by survival and reproductive capabilities or call it industrialization and measure it by growth of GDP or some other econometric. With time things develop. It is, however, a novel time in world history in which that which is developing, i.e. humanity, has the presence of mind and self awareness to track that development. This doesn’t always mean this “tracking” is done correctly or that the proper conclusions are drawn. Tie human development to technological progress you get one view, tie it to economic output you get another, and tie it to health you get another yet. Here we can compare and contrast these views and potentially distill meaning from the fusion of all the aforementioned.

Work. Not just “jobs and employment” but all that falls under the purview of that which is human work (Jahan). The quotidian, if you will, that is, domestic work, rearing of children, etc as well as the non-standardized volunteering and the arts and even child labor risk being overlooked when econometrics loom large over the domain of measuring human and national development as Jahan puts it. Furthermore, Jahan introduces a vastly understated sociological view in all this by not only looking at what is over looked when thinking of “work” but also who is overlooked, often women and child demographics.

When divorced from a strictly macroeconomic view of developement, we still run the risk of misinterpreting otherwise strong data. We know that health and wealth are great indicators in a people’s development, however, how much to allocate to each category or, simply, in what order of priority is a valid question. It is evident that a “health first” approach is more advantageous yet this is not the primary focus or bottom line globally, oftentimes that is profits, money, and largely wealth.

Selim Jahan

1. What are some of the targeted issues that Jahan examples as requiring focus throughout the world?

The valuation of work that is not “jobs and employment” such as creative work, art, care work and voluntary work. These tie in to the concept of youth work or child labor, work in agricultural and rural development, as well as gender related issues, and the “informal sector”. Livelihood during crisis situations are mentioned as well.

2. Jahan’s definition of human development + my elaboration

Jahan offers seeing human development as “the process of enlarging human choices” and that being likewise the ulitmate goal of human development. Jahan also mentions that both the capabilities and opportunities to use these capabilities must be enhanced to avoid human frustration and/or loss of human potential. In my perception of this, and I understand he does instead go in the direction of income and economic opulence rather than social strife where I personally took it, Jahan is hinting at a more general equality inequality balance as he mentions that human progress must be in line with human access to that progress. There is the one side of this where only some humans (the elite perhaps in whatever context we are in) have access to these exapnding capabilities and another side where access (lets use money as a conduit for access here like being able to afford better medicine and health advances) must be met with advancement. If either are out of “balance” I take it as a precursor to upheaval of systems or, at the very least, civil unrest.

3. What are the different measures incorporated into the Human Development Index that serve to capture the breadth and focus of each countries’ average achievement?

The Human Development Index looks at human development through the dimensions of Long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living. These line up well with the “focus” aspects of achievement. These are good for getting us into the “door” and when examining the first dimension you inevitably look with breadth at life expectancy and infant and maternal mortality.

Hans Rosling

1. What were some of the examples Rosling presented where health appeared to be a precursor to wealth?

In China Mao Zedong brought health and his successor brings wealth and they move up and to the right graphically across GDP and health. South Korea and Brazil were also trailed against one another and both tracked along this same trajectory, however, it was evident you could move much faster should you improve health first rather than wealth first.

2. What was Rosling’s warning regarding the dangers of using averages when describing development?

Averages can be misleading as they don’t always account for sub regional differences in data and present simplified versions of and sometimes oversimplified versions of information inhibiting contextualization which we found to be crucial for policy decisions and even for drawing conclusions at large about data.