The best books to understand human development in advanced economies

What is human development to have real economic and social progress?

Creating Capabilities written by the philosopher Martha Nussbaum is perhaps the book that best explains what human development is according to the Capability Approach, originally conceived by the Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen.

The explanation distinguishes between internal individual capabilities and environmental opportunities that give the freedom to exercise them. In this way, the author links the psychological aspect with the socio-economic aspect of capabilities.

The main purpose of the book is normative, that is, to recommend what government should do.

But it leaves open the question of why economic growth does not automatically lead to human development.

I love this book because it summarizes in a few pages a lot of scientific work on a very slippery and thorny topic: early education.

It is not a self-help book; it does not provide detailed advice to parents. It rather demonstrates three principles that can inspire policy as well as educators’ actions.

First, people’s skills and personalities are not determined only by genes, but can be changed as the environment interacts with genes.

Second, inequality due to the birth lottery is not diminishing in the US, but is rather increasing.

Third, investing in adolescent education could enlarge inequality, whereas investing in the quality of early education improves both equity and efficiency, and is much rewarding.

Will policies be able to be so far-sighted and to intervene on parenting?

Are we able to use free time, once secured our livelihood, to make life happier?

The Joyless Economy provides a negative answer, as the title already suggests.

The book is premonitory because Scitovsky wrote in the 1970s referring to the United States, while today Americans say they are less happy, despite the economic and technological progress since then..

Scitovsky was still original in explaining this puzzle: the pursuit of happiness in the comfort of material goods and social approval has prevailed over the pleasure of learning, as children do when they play, and then over the pursuit of ambitious life goals.

I loved this book because, although drawing on the psychology and neurosciences of the time, it gives valuable insights for understanding today's world, such as consumerism and the education crisis.

This book is one of the most effective attacks against the market tendency to commercialize any good, ending up corroding what is most intrinsically human in social relationships and in people's intimate lives.

The effectiveness of the book lies in the examples, ranging from the sale of kidneys to paying someone to be substituted in the queue.

The most important lesson of the book is that market-driven economic growth has not only transformed the environment to make our lives more comfortable, thus hitting the limit in environmental degradation, but it has also transformed ourselves, because it has made us more consumers and less human.

This silent transformation - the philosopher Sandel teaches us - must be limited.

I like this book because it does not simply show how income inequality affects happiness inequality, thus suggesting that unhappiness is just a sign of material disadvantage.

The book also links income and happiness to hope, which is a feeling that motivates people to plan and invest for the future. 

To convince the sceptical reader about measuring hope and happiness, Carol Graham provides an abundance of empirical evidence.

But being an economist, in addition to telling emblematic stories, she reports evidence based on large samples and international data.

It is a challenging book, but rewarding, because it helps to understand both how the exhaustion of the American Dream will affect the future, and where to look for new hope.