I ‘was’ a neo-classical economist- until I study the AIT-GDS ‘development’ economics a few days ago. The most astonishing fact that I came to learn in this class is that economic growth and economic development are two separate concepts. Economic growth means how much a country becomes wealthier, often measured by GDP per capita. In contrast, economic development refers to non-monetary wealth, widely assessed by Human Development Index.

In the class, I was part of explaining the GDP annual growth in my country, Afghanistan. Analysis in economic growth directs to discuss some exogenous factors like security having affected the economic growth. For example, security deterioration led a sharp drop in economic growth in 2009. But it revamped significantly thanks to a bumper harvest in 2012 (World Bank, 2013). But it did not entirely inform me of outside the macroeconomics. Contrary to it, the concept of human development points out that economic growth does not provide any guarantee for each of us (Gasper & Truong, 2005). This is intuitively right according to my observation.

Let’s say, I take human development perspectives in understanding about the education system. According to Human Development Report (UNDP, 2004), education has been one of the top priorities for the Afghan government, sparing the second largest budget. It is necessary to rebuild the country after as a three decade-long devastating conflict destroyed the education system nation-widely. But human development concept alerts me that while the national economic wealth is committed to education sector, people’s actual benefits are different from person to person. For example, only 20 % of women aged 15-24 are literate still now in 2013, and it is one of the sluggish areas of progress though prioritised (Oates, 2013). If you are a girl in rural area, the rate gets three times lower. Such disparity may not come exclusively from gender or geography, but also from other factors. Here the concept of human development reminds that the mass description, like ‘people’, or ‘national’ could be far from a reality for some. If you are a rural girl in Afghanistan, neither economic drop in 2009 nor rise in 2012 in the earlier analysis illustrates your situation well. You are most likely not to have been benefited.

I am not against the use of GDP annual growth for a macro-level discussion. But without being constantly conscious about who gets how much out of it, referring to human development concept, no economists can deliver the actual benefits to people in need. Now, I should aim to be a ‘developmental’ economist!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOJtc45nwcs

Gasper, D., & Truong, T.-D. (2005). Deepening Development Ethics: From Economism to Human Development to Human Security. The European Journal of Development Research, 17(3), 372–384.

Oates, L. (2013) The mother of all problems: female literacy in Afghanistan. The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/jun/21/funding-education-in-afghanistan

UNDP. (2004). Human Development Report Afghanistan.

World Bank. (2013). October 2013 Afghanistan Economic Update.