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Published on July 12, 2007

How can a country measure the happiness of its citizens?

To visiting Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, the conventional economic indicators such as the level of income, material possessions and gross national product may not say much about the actual well-being of people.

Instead, yesterday he introduced to a Thai audience his novel - or even revolutionary - concept of "capability approach", in which he argues that a country's economic success should be measured against concrete capabilities to do valuable things for its citizens.

"The capability approach focuses on human life and not just some detached objects of convenience such as income or commodities that a person possesses, which are often taken, especially in economic analysis, to be the main criteria of human success," he said.

"For example, if a person has high income but is also very prone to persistent illness, or is handicapped by some serious physical disability, then the person need not necessarily be seen as very well off, on the mere grounds that his income is high."

Sen is a Harvard University professor of economics and philosophy. He was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998 for his work on famine, human development theory, welfare economics, the underlying mechanism of poverty and political liberalism. Among his famous books is "Development as Freedom".

He was addressing Thai academics and experts in public policy at the International Conference on Alternative Development and Sufficiency Economy organised by the National Institute of Development Administration.

HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn presided over the event and listened to Sen's keynote speech on "Capability and Development in the Contemporary World".

Sen explained that the capability approach looks at the ability of a person to turn income or possessions into good living; that is, living in a way that gives reason to celebrate.

"To understand that the means of satisfactory human living are not themselves the ends of good living helps to bring about a significant extension of the reach of evaluative exercise. And the use of the capability perspective begins right here," he said.

Sen brought the issue closer to the audience by citing the 1997 economic crisis in East Asia, where miraculous economic growth was highly praised by the World Bank. He questioned that if East Asia was so successful, why did it have a crisis, with so many people going through such desperate misery?

"The answer lies, I think, in the neglect of certain types of institutions, including those that provide economic and social security on the one hand, and financial and business transparency on the other.

"Going beyond that, the absence of democracy in some of these countries has also been a major deficiency."

Nantiya Tangwisutijit

The Nation