This essay explores the policy implications and strategic options of a model of economic development that places improvement in the welfare of the poor as the highest priority. Here I offer an extended argument for putting the poor first in economic development policy. This amounts to something like the following:
Economic development policies, both domestic and international, should be structured in such a way as to give highest priority to improving the welfare of the poor in developing countries.
What is involved in putting the poor first in development? In designing a development plan there are always a range of choice that must be made: to encourage export production, to promote cash crops or food crops, to favor heavy industry or consumer goods, and so forth. And the choices that are made among these alternatives will depend on the criteria of evaluation of consequences that are in use. If the goal is to increase GNP at the fastest possible rate, then one family of choices will be made; if the goal is a combination of growth and military security, another set of choices will be made; and so forth. Putting the poor first involves making these choices on the basis of consideration of how various alternatives will affect the welfare of the poorest strata in society. So, for example, a government may be deliberating between investment credits for a television assembly plant and for a sugar-processing plant. The television plant, let us suppose, will produce a greater amount of value added, generating a resultingly higher amount of foreign currency; while the sugar-processing plant involves a substantially higher level of employment at a wage higher than the current average for unskilled labor. Prima facie these circumstances, conjoined with the "poverty-first" principle, entail that the government should select the sugar-processing plant, since this alternative creates the greater amount of additional income for the poor.
This proposal for a reorientation of development planning raises a number of important questions. What implications does this priority have for other measures of economic development? And what policy options are available to make the most rapid and immediate effects on the welfare of the poor? How would such a development plan differ from existing policies? And are there countries which currently pursue such a model of growth? (See the Appendix for a review of the evolution of World Bank development doctrines over the past fifteen years.)