The Economic Thought of Amartya Sen and African challenges

Abstract

Is the world in this era of globalization becoming more unequal, or heading toward an equitable state? Much of the contemporary confusion about inequality is attributable to the gap between popular perceptions of inequality and its definition by professional economists, with the latter being that inequality refers to ratios of measurable welfare levels between different segments of the population.In this review article that makes use of the latest literature in particular of the World Bank, income inequality of the world is assessed from three different angles: world inequality, international inequality, and intranational inequality.As inequality among average citizens of respectivenations is apparently on the decrease largely due to the increase of income per capita in China, some defenders of globalization argue that the world is becoming more equal.If we disaggregate the rough picture of world income distribution, however, it emerges that Asian colossi such as China and India exhibit massive income disparity within their boundaries, and that the absolute poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia still remains on an enormous, staggering level.Inequality can be measured in various aspects of capabilities, which shed light on what a person can do not only with a certain amount of income and assets but also with nutritious intake, health conditions and other essentials that concern well-being of individuals.Although international inequality of life expectancy has impressively ameliorated in the post-war period, it can be misleading to compare the degrees of inequalities of income and of welfare indices on the same plane.In general comparison, Sub-Saharan Africa seems to lag behind South Asia in the sphere of public health, while the distributive equity of nutrition in that continent can be much better than conditions in South Asia.