Human development policy: Theorizing and modeling

Abstract

For more than half a century after World War II, a tremendous effort has been made for international development, both financially and intellectually. Some development economists believed that national economic growth would contribute to solving the problems of poverty in developing countries; others believed that improving the productivity of human resources was the critical source of economic growth. These concepts of development have justified educational development as a tool of economic growth.

Human development theory questions such concepts of development that have focused exclusively on economic growth, and it considers humans themselves as the end of development, not a tool of economic growth. However, this philosophical theory of human development is not readily transformed into practical policy. What does "human development" mean? What role does educational development have in human development? How is it possible to embody this abstract concept as a policy? To answer these questions, this study sets three main aims: (I) to clarify the meaning of human development; (II) to propose a theoretical model of human development to specify a role of education in human development policy; and (III) to test the theoretical model empirically by applying Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling to Tanzania's survey data.

Theoretical analysis of human development finds that "human development" means the process of expanding individuals' constitutive freedom, and that basic education, especially children's literacy, plays a critical role as a central internal capability in human development. Quantitative models are developed to assess the need for human development policy in Tanzania, paying attention to the domestic gap between rural and urban districts. The models show significant contributions of schooling experience and book possession to children's literacy in both rural and urban areas as well as an imperative need of the rural children for public services such as child health aid staff and primary school teachers. This study analyzes human development theory from an educational perspective and proposed the needs assessment model for human development policy in Tanzania.