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Getting Ahead and Falling Behind: A Sociological Elaboration of Sen's Theory of Human Development
Author(s) -
Marsh Robert M.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
social science quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.482
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1540-6237
pISSN - 0038-4941
DOI - 10.1111/ssqu.12088
Subject(s) - human development (humanity) , inequality , sociology , per capita income , economic inequality , ordinary least squares , life satisfaction , language change , politics , development economics , economics , demographic economics , economic growth , political science , social psychology , econometrics , psychology , demography , mathematics , law , mathematical analysis , art , literature
Objective One relatively neglected question raised by Amartya Sen's theory of human development is: Why do people and societies differ in their capacity to convert income and commodities into valuable human achievements (“functionings” in Sen's terminology)? I focus upon the degree to which people in developed and developing societies realize each of the six diverse types of valued functionings: long life, schooling, living in a society with less income inequality and less gender inequality, more political freedom, and greater life satisfaction. Methods Using data from all societies with a population of over 1 million ( N = 156), I first regress each type of functioning on societies’ GDP per capita to obtain the residual scores. These scores indicate which societies do better than expected, as expected, or worse than expected on the basis of their level of economic development. Results and Conclusion To explain these differences, I then estimate an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model whose independent variables are economic growth rate, ethnolinguistic fractionalization, civil war fatalities, corruption, and several dummy variables for cultural regions of the world.