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We can distinguish between a synchronic approach, which is interested only in what you can or are consuming right now, and a diachronic approach, which thinks about people as having projects that they try to achieve, rather than just living in the moment as “globules of desire,” in Veblen’s phrase. Synchronic measurements of how much people have right now are certainly interesting, but don’t give you any sense of how resilient someone’s current consumption level may be or how worried they are, how vulnerable to a small crisis — e.g. kid gets sick, stay home from work, lose your job, fall behind on rent, lose housing. Sen is very good at pointing to the importance of having a diversified and robust entitlement set.

To move to Marx for a moment, the emphasis on production is also a choice to pursue diachronic analysis — i.e. workers and capitalists, in the simplest model, inhabit time differently because workers must work to eat while capitalists can get credit. Power becomes manifest in how you can use time and manipulate other peoples’ lives in time.

So I agree with the last paragraph above. I’m all for analyses of consumption. What worries me are critiques of consumption that pose as replacements for analyses of production, sometimes by gluing bits of Marxian terminology on top of what is really work in the Mauss-Simmel-Sombart tradition.

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I have a simpler explanation of why poor people in a rich society might have a hard time functioning. If you have a hard time functioning in the society, then you are likely to be poor (relative to other members of the society). In other words, I think the casuality goes the other way. At the same time, people with less material wealth in a poor society (but wealthier compared to other members of that society) have demonstrated a greater ability to function effectively in that society. So it would hardly surprise me if they also do more with less than the poor people in a rich society.

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I think that’s a pretty basic misunderstanding of the motivation of enlistees — U.S. enlistees anyway. The Dullsville Community College option is always there–nobody needs to join the military to do that. Joining the military is not a way to get to Dullsville Community College, it’s a way to avoid it (for a few years anyway). It’s a way out of Dullsville. The uniforms, the respect, the high-tech equipment, the foreign travel (even the possible danger) are attractive to a lot of 18-year-olds facing the prospect of life in Dullsville.

Your “off the farm, out of the ghetto, and off the ‘rez” is a bit off the mark as well. Enlistees in recent decades have been working class, but not poor. High-school dropouts don’t qualify. And minorities really aren’t overrepresented (in fact, I believe they’re a bit underrepresented in combat units).

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Somewhere I saw in the commentary a something about Black Americans and African Americans. When I did a stint in W. Africa, I had any number of Africans tell me that American Blacks were not Africans. Go figure. Culture is where you hang your hat and there ain’t much class to it.

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The point is that access to “resources” is not always beneficial to the human animal. One might construe this as a class issue, since in addition to their increased access to food and drink the rich also have access to superior health care, health education, and fitness clubs, but it is more rightly, in my opinion, a consequence of personal choices.

In the US the poor have the “option” of eating terribly and too much. In poorer countries the actual consequence of the lack of these “options” is likely to be beneficial to long-term health, which is what your study shows. Which is not to say whatever point about class Sen (or whoever) wants to make cannot still be made, but using this methodology to make it is suspect.

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So why not compare African Americans to black Africans? Or to Haitians? Would African Americans really live longer as absolutely poorer, but relatively wealthier Africans?

Richard Pryor once subversively declared, in a monologue about a trip to African, “Thank God for slavery”. Of course, it was intended to be an offensive, politically incorrect joke, but was he completely wrong?

Of course, the cultural differences between African Americans and Africans are large, too. Wouldn’t a better point of comparison be Mexican Americans in the southwest vs Mexicans–the cultural differences are relatively small, and the Mexican Americans are absolutely richer but relatively poorer than their Mexican relatives. Are there any data? Are Mexicans who try to come here making a terrible mistake–gaining absolute wealth but giving up ‘freedom’ and making themselves worse off?

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It is obvious that growth-mediated process has an advantage over its support-led alternative; it may, ultimately, offer more, since there are deprivations–other than premature mortality, or high morbidity, or illiteracy–that are directly connected with loweness of incomes (such as being inadequately clothed and sheltered). It is clearly better to have high income as well as high longevity…rather than only the latter. THis is a point worth emphasizing, since there is some danger of being overconvinced by the statistics of life expectancy and other basic indicators of the quality of life (page 48 of Development As Freedom).

So Sen doesn’t minimize the importance of gains in purchasing power and increasing purchasing power as an important way of enhancing the capabilities.

Second, I think we need to be cautious in taking the experience of African-Americans as emblematic of other poor and minority populations in the developed world, including in America. For instance, non-white Latinos seem to have a higher life-expectancy than white people do, despite have a generally lower socio-economic status. Why is this the case? I don’t know, but I think the relationship between inequality and health outcomes is more complicated than you suggest.

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Are you claiming that minority and poor populations in developed countries have lower life-expectancies than poor and minority populations in developing countries? If you are, I find that to be pretty suspect.

No. I’m saying that minority and poor populations in developed countries have lower-life expectancies than those in developing countries with significantly lower purchasing power. They are not the minorities and poor in those countries – but they outlive those in the developing world who can afford a much more luxurious bundle of goods.

From Sen’s Development as Freedom:

Even though the per capita income of African Americans in the United States is considerably lower than that of the white population, African Americans are very many times richer in income terms than the people of China or Kerala (even after correcting for cost-of-living differences). In this context, the comparison of survival prospects of African Americans vis-à-vis those of the very much poorer Chinese, or Indians in Kerala, is of particular interest. African Americans tend to do better in terms of survival at low age groups (especially in terms of infant mortality) vis-à-vis the Chinese or the Indians, but the picture changes over the years.

In fact, it turns out that men in Chinand in Kerala decisively outlive African American men in terms of surviving to older age groups. Even African American women end up having a survival pattern for the higher ages similar to that of the much poorer Chinese, and decidedly lower survival rates than even poorer Indians in Kerala. So it is not only the case that American blacks suffer from relative depravation in terms of income per head vis-à-vis American whites, they also are absolutely more deprived than the low-income Indians in Kerala (for both women and men), and the Chinese (in the case of men), in terms of living to ripe old ages. The causal influences in these contrasts (that is, between living standards judged by income per head and those judged by the ability to survive to higher ages) include social arrangements and community relations such as medical coverage, public health care, school education, law and order, prevalence of violence and so on.

This is from pages 21-23. He goes on to discuss differences within the African American population.

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Can you clarify what you mean by this? How is it harder to function as a poor person in a rich society than in a poor one? I’m having trouble seeing the connection. Are you claiming that minority and poor populations in developed countries have lower life-expectancies than poor and minority populations in developing countries? If you are, I find that to be pretty suspect.

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