EPFO APFC 2023 General Studies · Question 114 of 120

Correct — D, (d) Under the Welfare Approach to Human Development, the Government protects and promotes private entrepreneurs to maximize expenditure on welfare. The ask is negative — 'not' is printed in bold italics in the stem — so the answer is the one statement that misdescribes its subject, and three of the four options are accurate. This one is not, and the error is in the middle of the sentence. The welfare approach to human development treats human beings as the beneficiaries or targets of development activity rather than as participants in it. People are seen as passive recipients; the responsibility for raising the level of human development rests on the government, which discharges it by maximising expenditure on welfare — higher spending on education, health, social security and amenities. Nothing in the approach concerns private entrepreneurs, and the idea that the State's role is to protect and promote them belongs to an altogether different argument about growth, one in which development is expected to flow from private investment rather than from public provision. Insert that idea into the welfare approach and the sentence stops describing the approach at all: the government would be maximising the conditions for enterprise, not maximising expenditure on welfare, and the two halves of the printed option contradict each other. Take the other three quickly, because knowing why they are right is what makes the wrong one visible. The income approach is the oldest of the approaches, and it links human development directly to income on the reasoning that the level of income reflects the level of freedom an individual enjoys, so that a higher income means a higher level of human development. The basic needs approach was initially proposed by the International Labour Organization, and it identified six basic needs — health, education, food, water supply, sanitation and housing — while leaving the question of human choice aside and concentrating on provision to defined sections. The Human Poverty Index, introduced by the United Nations Development Programme alongside the Human Development Index, measures the shortfall in human development rather than its level, using non-income indicators such as the probability of not surviving to the age of forty, the adult illiteracy rate, the proportion without access to clean water and the proportion of small children who are underweight. Each of those three statements is accurate as printed, which leaves option (d) as the one that is not.

• (a)The basic concept of Income Approach to Human Development is that the level of income reflects the level of freedom an individual enjoys. — This statement is correct, so it cannot be the answer to a question asking which is not correct. The income approach is the oldest of the approaches to human development and the most straightforward: human development is treated as linked to income, on the argument that the level of income reflects the level of freedom an individual enjoys, so that a person with more income has more choice about how to live and is therefore more developed in the relevant sense. It is the reasoning that lies behind the long use of per capita income as the single measure of a country's progress. The approach has well-known limitations — income says nothing about how it is distributed, nothing about whether health and education are actually available to buy, and nothing about the non-material dimensions of a life — and those limitations are precisely why the other approaches were developed and why the Human Development Index combines income with longevity and knowledge rather than relying on income alone. But the statement as printed describes the approach accurately.
• (b)Basic Needs Approach to Human Development was initially proposed by the International Labour Organization (ILO). — This statement is correct as well. The basic needs approach was initially proposed by the International Labour Organization, which is a point examiners like because it attaches a named institution to an idea. The approach identifies six basic needs — health, education, food, water supply, sanitation and housing — and asks whether they are being met for defined sections of the population. Its distinctive feature, and the thing that separates it from the capability approach associated with Amartya Sen, is that it sets the question of human choice aside: what matters is whether the needs are provided for, not whether people have the freedom to choose among ways of living. That makes it a natural successor to the welfare approach and a natural predecessor to the capability approach, which restores choice to the centre by asking what people are actually able to do and to be. Since the statement attributes the approach to the right body, it is not the answer to a negative question.
• (c)Human Poverty Index measures the shortfall in human development. — This statement is correct too. The Human Poverty Index was introduced by the United Nations Development Programme as a companion to the Human Development Index, and where the Human Development Index measures the level of achievement, the Human Poverty Index measures the shortfall — the extent of deprivation in the same dimensions. It is a non-income measure, built from indicators such as the probability of not surviving to the age of forty, the adult illiteracy rate, the proportion of people without access to clean water and the proportion of underweight children, with a separate version used for selected high-income countries. One point of currency is worth adding without disturbing the statement's correctness: the Human Poverty Index was discontinued after the 2009 Human Development Report and replaced from 2010 by the Multidimensional Poverty Index, which counts deprivations across health, education and standard of living at the level of the individual household. The description in the option remains an accurate account of what the Human Poverty Index measured.

Human development is the process of enlarging people's choices and improving the well-being they can actually attain, and the conception was given institutional form by the United Nations Development Programme, which published the first Human Development Report in 1990 and with it the Human Development Index. Four approaches are conventionally distinguished and each should be held with its identifying feature. The income approach, the oldest, equates human development with income on the view that the level of income reflects the level of freedom an individual enjoys. The welfare approach treats people as beneficiaries or targets of development rather than participants in it, and assigns the government the duty of raising human development by maximising expenditure on welfare — education, health, social security and amenities. The basic needs approach, initially proposed by the International Labour Organization, identifies six basic needs — health, education, food, water supply, sanitation and housing — and sets the question of choice aside in favour of provision. The capability approach, associated with Amartya Sen, asks what people are actually able to do and to be, and treats the building of capabilities in health, education and access to resources as the key to human development. The measures follow the ideas. The Human Development Index combines a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living into a single figure between zero and one. The Human Poverty Index measured the shortfall in the same dimensions using non-income indicators, and was replaced from 2010 by the Multidimensional Poverty Index; the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index and the Gender Inequality Index date from the same year.

Human development is a standing theme in the general studies paper for a social security post, and it is asked in the vocabulary of school geography and of the Human Development Reports rather than in that of academic economics. That is useful to know, because it means the examinable content is finite and textual: four named approaches, one identifying feature each, the institution or person attached to each, and the family of indices with what each of them measures. This item tests exactly that, and it does so by taking a correct account of three of them and corrupting the fourth. The corruption is not a subtle one once the approach is known — the welfare approach is about government expenditure on people, and the option talks about protecting and promoting private entrepreneurs — but it is invisible to a candidate who knows only that a welfare approach exists. The relevance to the post is direct. The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation is an instrument of exactly the conception the welfare approach describes, a State institution providing income security through public machinery, and the debate between provision and capability is the live policy argument about how social security should be designed. The stem also prints 'human development' inside single quotation marks and sets 'not' in bold italics, both of which are this booklet's conventions: the quotation marks flag a term of art, and the bold italic warns that the answer is the false statement.

• The welfare approach treats human beings as beneficiaries or targets of development rather than participants in it. People are passive recipients and the government is responsible for raising human development by maximising expenditure on welfare — education, health, social security and amenities. It has nothing to do with protecting or promoting private entrepreneurs, which is the error in the keyed option.
• The income approach is the oldest, and holds that human development is linked to income because the level of income reflects the level of freedom an individual enjoys. Its limitation is that income reveals nothing about distribution, nothing about whether health and education can actually be bought, and nothing about the non-material dimensions of a life.
• The basic needs approach was initially proposed by the International Labour Organization and identified six basic needs: health, education, food, water supply, sanitation and housing. It concentrates on provision to defined sections and leaves the question of human choice aside, which is what separates it from the capability approach.
• The capability approach is associated with Amartya Sen and asks what people are actually able to do and to be, treating the building of capabilities in health, education and access to resources as the route to human development. The United Nations Development Programme's conception of human development draws on it directly.
• The Human Development Index, first published in the Human Development Report of 1990, combines a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living. The Human Poverty Index measured the shortfall in human development through non-income indicators and was discontinued after the 2009 report, replaced from 2010 by the Multidimensional Poverty Index.

• Missing the bold italic 'not' in the stem and selecting the first statement that is plainly correct. Three of the four options here are accurate descriptions, so the item is easy to answer backwards for anybody reading at speed.
• Confusing the welfare approach with a market-led or growth-led view of development. The welfare approach places the duty on the government to spend on people; the promotion of private enterprise belongs to a different argument and its appearance in the option is what makes the option false.
• Attributing the basic needs approach to the wrong body, or the capability approach to the wrong person. The basic needs approach was initially proposed by the International Labour Organization and the capability approach is associated with Amartya Sen; examiners test both attributions.
• Confusing the Human Poverty Index with the Human Development Index. The first measures the shortfall in human development using non-income indicators and was replaced from 2010 by the Multidimensional Poverty Index; the second measures the level of achievement across longevity, knowledge and standard of living.

Human development questions in these papers come in three shapes and all of them reward memorised attributions rather than argument. The first, used here, prints four statements about approaches or indices and asks which is or is not correct, and the falsehood is typically manufactured by swapping the defining feature of one approach into the description of another. The second asks a straight attribution question — who proposed a given approach, which body publishes a given index, in which year it was first published. The third describes an index and asks for its name, or names an index and asks what it measures, where the Human Development Index, the Human Poverty Index, the Multidimensional Poverty Index and the Gender Inequality Index are the usual candidates. Preparing for all three means building one small table: approach, defining idea, associated person or institution, and the criticism that led to the next approach; and beside it a second table of indices with their dimensions, their sponsoring body and the years they were introduced or discontinued.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The capability approach to human development, which asks what people are actually able to do and to be, is most closely associated with which one of the following?

  • (a)The International Labour Organization
  • (b)Amartya Sen
  • (c)The World Trade Organization
  • (d)The International Monetary Fund

  Answer(b) Amartya Sen — the capability approach treats the building of human capabilities in health, education and access to resources as the key to human development, and it underpins the conception of development used in the Human Development Reports. The International Labour Organization is attached to the basic needs approach instead, which identified health, education, food, water supply, sanitation and housing as the six basic needs.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Human Poverty Index was discontinued after the Human Development Report of 2009 and replaced from 2010 by which one of the following?

  • (a)The Human Development Index
  • (b)The Multidimensional Poverty Index
  • (c)The Gender Development Index
  • (d)The Physical Quality of Life Index

  Answer(b) The Multidimensional Poverty Index — introduced in the 2010 Human Development Report, it counts deprivations at the level of the individual household across health, education and standard of living, replacing the Human Poverty Index, which had measured the shortfall in human development using country-level non-income indicators. The Human Development Index measures achievement rather than deprivation and continues to be published.