The Concept of Development According to Dudley Seers
Seers was a Cambridge trained development theorist who stressed the significance of social development in developing countries before moving to economic development seeing that in order for economic development to reach its maximum potential social development has to occur first. Seers was highly critical of using indexes such as unemployment and inflation when referring to Third World countries, possibly because the statistics we have from these countries are too unreliable for us to be able to make judgments concerning their economies. In other words to Seers true development lay in the elimination of poverty, increase in literacy, improvement in the health system as opposed to the increase of per capita output. Thus one may conclude that the whole concept behind the HDI lies within Seers notion of development. For example if a third world nation wants to develop it can't be expected to use the same policies as a first world nation. If, for instance, a third world nation had set growth as their macroeconomic target the government can't expect that by cutting taxation and reducing government spending its economy will grow the same way it would if it was a first world nation(fiscal policy). The reason behind this is that if the government in third world countries had taxes in the first place the people would be much worse off than they are now and the other complication is that the government can’t increase spending since all its spending relies on aid. Thus it would be much more beneficial for the governments of these countries to focus on combating illiteracy so as to educate its population and in the future this population will acquire jobs either within the country or abroad and thus poverty will be reduced. Moreover reduction of inequality is a key issue in Seers theory. When a Third World country wants to