Development: A Very Short Introduction

Citation

Goldin, I. (2018). Development: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Very Short Introductions.

Chapter Summary

The book has eight chapters and about 150 pages of main text. The first three ask what development is, how thinking about it has changed and why countries have diverged; the last five turn to what can be done, through domestic policy, aid, environmental policy and international cooperation. Chapter 5 on aid is by far the longest, at roughly thirty-five pages.

Chapter 1: What is development?

The opening chapter notes the large fall in poverty over the past quarter-century alongside the many people who still face severe deprivation. It traces how the concept of development has widened since the Second World War, from income and growth to a combination of economic, psychological and environmental needs, explains the main development indicators, and flags newer challenges such as climate change, obesity and antibiotic resistance.

Chapter 2: How does development happen?

A history of development thinking. The chapter moves from the classical political economy behind early post-war theory to Modernization Theory in the 1950s and 1960s, development planning and Dependency Theory, then the swing towards market-led, neo-classical development in the late 1970s and 1980s, and finally the debate of the 1990s on the respective roles of state and market once markets alone were seen to fall short.

Chapter 3: Why are some countries rich and others poor?

The chapter introduces theories of economic growth, including Robert Solow's 1956 model, and charts uneven development from the late nineteenth century to the present, contrasting fast growers such as Japan and South Korea with disappointments such as Argentina and Uruguay. It weighs natural resources, geography, history, institutions, politics and power as explanations, and ends by noting that inequality has been rising in almost all countries even as poverty has fallen.

Chapter 4: What can be done to accelerate development?

Starting from the diversity of national pathways, the chapter stresses that development requires sacrificing short-term benefits for long-term goals and that gains can be reversed. It then works through the main levers: literacy and education, health, reducing gender inequality, agriculture and nutrition, infrastructure, legal frameworks and equity, global trade, and peace and stability.

Chapter 5: The evolution of development aid

The longest chapter defines foreign aid and describes how it became more effective after the Cold War by targeting poverty reduction more directly. It covers the eight Millennium Development Goals and the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals of 2015, the development finance institutions and their response to the debt crisis, and the case for greater investment in global public goods to prevent global catastrophes.

Chapter 6: Sustainable development

A short chapter on the relationship between environment and development, starting from the 1987 Brundtland Report's recognition that growth has depleted and damaged the natural resource base. It discusses limits to growth and planetary boundaries and argues for much greater investment in environmental awareness and protection.

Chapter 7: Globalization and development

The chapter sets out the contested relationship between globalization and development, presenting both the view of globalization as a powerful force for poverty reduction and the view of it as a source of inequality and environmental damage. Its topics are financial flows and types of investment, fairer trade for developing countries, technology, international cooperation against transfer pricing and tax avoidance, and migration, including refugees from civil war and genocide.

Chapter 8: The future of development

The conclusion considers the sequencing of reforms and investment, the roles of private investment and aid, the coherence of aid policies, global public goods and the protection of the global commons. Its closing argument is that development is becoming less about particular places and more about collective capacity to manage global opportunities and risks.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Meaning, theory and divergence

• Development as a multidimensional idea: progress measured not only by income but by education, health, gender equity, institutions and sustainability.
• Development indicators: the measures used to compare countries' progress, whose evolution Chapter 1 explains.
• Modernization and Dependency Theory: two post-war accounts, one treating development as a sequence of stages, the other locating the causes of underdevelopment in relations with richer countries.
• Solow growth model: the 1956 model of growth through capital accumulation and technology, used in Chapter 3 to frame why incomes differ.

Chapters 4–5: Policy and aid

• Levers of development: education, health, gender equality, agriculture, infrastructure, the rule of law, trade and peace, each discussed as an area where policy can improve prospects.
• Official development assistance: concessional loans and grants to developing countries for economic development or welfare.
• Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals: the eight goals set for 2015 and the seventeen that succeeded them.

Chapters 6–8: Environment, globalization and the future

• Sustainable development: development that meets present needs without undermining the natural resource base, in the sense of the Brundtland Report.
• Planetary boundaries: environmental limits within which growth must remain.
• Global public goods and the global commons: shared goods, such as a stable climate, that no single country will provide and that require international cooperation.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A broad, policy-oriented map in a small space. Within roughly 150 pages the book covers definitions, the history of ideas, growth theory, domestic policy, aid, the environment and globalization. The publisher's summary presents this breadth as the point: development is treated as more than income growth.
• History of ideas as an organising thread. Chapter 2 gives a compact sequence of the main schools, from Modernization and Dependency Theory to market-led development and the later state-and-market debate, which helps a newcomer place the arguments met in longer textbooks.
• Written from inside the policy world. The author, Oxford's Professor of Globalisation and Development, was previously Director of Development Policy and then Vice President of the World Bank and head of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, and the weight of the book reflects it: aid, development finance institutions, the development goals and global public goods take up much of the second half.

Limitations

• Little economic analysis. Growth theory is introduced through one model in a fifteen-page chapter, and there is no sign of formal tools or empirical methods. Readers looking for how economists test claims about development will need a textbook.
• Survey rather than argument on individual levers. Chapter 4 covers eight policy areas in about twenty pages, so each receives only brief treatment.
• Micro-level evidence is not the focus. The chapter list centres on countries, international institutions and global issues; household decisions and programme evaluation, the subject of much recent development research, do not appear as topics in their own right.
• Dated by events. Published in 2018, it predates the COVID-19 pandemic and the later setbacks to poverty reduction.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the shortest and widest entry point in the development economics list. It pairs naturally with Banerjee and Duflo's Poor Economics, the other general-audience book: Goldin looks at development from the level of countries, aid agencies and the international system, while Banerjee and Duflo work from the decisions of poor households and the results of randomised evaluations. Reading both gives a balanced first view of the field's macro and micro sides.

From here, Todaro and Smith's Economic Development is the natural undergraduate textbook, covering many of the same themes (growth, poverty, inequality, agriculture, environment, trade, aid) with theory, data and country case studies. Debraj Ray's Development Economics develops formal models of the same questions and suits students comfortable with intermediate microeconomics. De Janvry and Sadoulet's Development Economics: Theory and Practice and Bardhan and Udry's Development Microeconomics are graduate-level texts, for later study.

How to Use This Book

The book suits first-year students, students from other disciplines taking a development module, and general readers who want orientation before a textbook. No economics background is required.

A suggested plan:

• Read first (Chapters 1–3): they establish the vocabulary and the competing explanations that later textbooks assume. Note the theories named in Chapter 2 and the factors listed in Chapter 3; they make good headings for further reading.
• Core for policy-minded readers (Chapters 4–5): take Chapter 4 as a checklist of policy areas and look up current data on one or two of them for a country of interest. Chapter 5 is the most detailed and repays slower reading, especially the parts on the development goals and development finance institutions.
• Contemporary issues (Chapters 6–8): read these together; they share the theme of global public goods and international cooperation.

The book can be read in a few sittings. Because it is short and dated to 2018, check its figures against current sources such as the World Bank's development indicators and the UN reports on the Sustainable Development Goals, and move to a textbook for any topic needed in depth.