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This volume is a seminal work dealing comprehensively with the problem of poverty. It is an analytical and an empirical inquiry into human well-being and the phenomenon of destitution. Professor Dasgupta's aim here is to offer a description of destitution as it occurs among rural populations of the poor countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; to give an account of the forces at work which perpetuate destitution; and to offer prescriptions for both the public and private spheres of life.
List of contents
- Part I Well-Being: Theory and Realisation
- The Commodity basis of well-beingPolitical morality and the stateThe objects of social contractsWell-being: from theory to measurementThe realization of well-beingPolitical and civil rights indices (Appendix)
- Part II Allocation of Resources Among Households: The Standard Theory
- Resource allocation mechanismsPublic goods and common property resources (Appendix)Decentralization and central guidanceReal national income as a measure of general well-being (Appendix)Uncertainty, insurance and social norms
- Part III The Household and its Setting: Extensions of Standard Theory
- Land, labour, savings and credit; Households and credit restraints (Appendix)Poverty and the environmental resource base; Net national product in a dynamic economy(Appendix)Food, care and work: the household as an allocation mechanismAxiomatic bargaining theory (Appendix)Strategic complimentarities in fertility decsions (Appendix)Population and savings: normative considerationsClassical utilitarianism in a limited world (Appendix)
- Part IV Undernourishment and destitution
- Food needs and work capacityAdaptation to undernourishmentInequality, malnutrition and the disenfranchisedAnalysis of allocation mechanism when nutrition affects productivity (Appendix)Incentives and development policies
- References
- Author and Subject Indexes
About the author
Partha Dasgupta is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, Fellow of the British Academy, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. His previous books include; Economic Analysis of Markets and Games; Issues in Contemporary Economics, vol. 3; Economic Organizations as Games (with K.G. Binmore) and The Control of Resources
Summary
Tackling development economics, this title also encompasses insights from philosophical research and empirical work on resource allocation, nutrition science, and anthropology. It title presents a description of the causes and remedies of poverty and undernourishment, and addresses the debate over methods of estimating their incidence.
Additional text
a rich unusual and wide ranging work...When one reads the whole book, one is forced to jettison incorrect impressions of simplemindedness. Without doubt, this is mandatory reading for every social scientist anywhere in the world." Indian Express
