The goal of this book is to advance the understanding of the nature and causes of national development, and to shed light on policies and circumstances that may promote such development. In contrast to some current and past research, national development is conceptualized in this study as the expansion of human capabilities, rather than in terms of economic achievements alone. The analysis focuses on eight middle-income developing societies, four in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica) and four in East Asia (Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand). Its main findings are that the public financing or provision of basic social services can produce rapid mortality decline, even in difficult economic circumstances; and that political democracy can expand the provision and utilization of mortality-reducing social services, in a wider range of ways than is sometimes appreciated. The experiences of the societies reviewed in this book suggest that Latin America as well as East Asia has produced development models worth emulating.

Several years ago my father alerted me to Amartya Sen's article “More than 100 Million Women are Missing” (1990). This article led me to other works by Professor Sen, notably the book Hunger and Public Action (1989), cowritten with Jean Drèze. Sen argued that development should be interpreted not as the enlargement of incomes, but rather as the growth of human capabilities, our abilities to live the lives that we have reason to choose.