Amartya Sen (born 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher whose work spans welfare economics, social choice theory, and development economics.[1] In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics, including studies of famine, poverty, and the measurement of collective well-being.[2] He is also known for developing the capability approach, which assesses human progress by the freedoms and opportunities people actually enjoy.[1]
Early life and education
Amartya Sen was born on 3 November 1933 in Santiniketan, a town in Bengal closely associated with the poet Rabindranath Tagore, who is said to have suggested his first name.[1] He studied at Presidency College in Calcutta under the University of Calcutta before moving to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a further degree and, in 1959, completed a doctorate in economics.[1] As a child he witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943, an experience that shaped his lifelong concern with hunger and deprivation.[3]
Academic career
Sen held teaching posts at the Delhi School of Economics, the London School of Economics, the University of Oxford, and Harvard University, where his work bridged economics and moral philosophy.[1] From 1998 to 2004 he served as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming the first Asian to head an Oxbridge college.[3]
Major work
In Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970) Sen advanced social choice theory, the study of how the preferences of many individuals can be combined into coherent collective decisions.[1] His book Poverty and Famines (1981) argued that famines frequently arise not from an absolute lack of food but from failures in its distribution and in the "entitlements" that give people access to it.[3] With the philosopher Martha Nussbaum and others he elaborated the capability approach, which measures well-being by what people are genuinely able to do and to be rather than by income alone.[2]
Recognition and later work
Sen received the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics.[2] The following year the Government of India conferred on him the Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian honour.[1] His later book Development as Freedom (1999) presented economic development as the expansion of human freedoms, an argument that influenced international measures such as the United Nations Human Development Index.[3]
