The Creation of the Human Development Approach

This book examines the main reasons for the success of the human development approach as an alternative to the economic growth model of development. Is human development theoretically richer, as claimed by its advocates, than any other development concepts including the mainstream? Is its measurement, the human development index (HDI), better than other proposed indices of well-being? Is there anything to be revised to keep its influence for the future? The methodology used throughout this book follows a historical and institutional approach on the ground that human development cannot be understood without taking into account the complexities added by the formation process. Quite often, human development debates are either theoretical and prescriptive or empirical and descriptive. Instead, this book provides a ‘meso-analysis’ of human development by means of a more pragmatic historical and institutional methodology, avoiding the other two extremes that have already been covered by philosophers and field-experts.

Tadashi Hirai is Project Researcher in the University of Tokyo, Japan, and a supervisor specializing in the human development approach and the human development index at the University of Cambridge, UK.