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Like ecological economics it focuses on measuring well-being and detecting uneconomic growth that comes at the expense of human health. However, it goes further in seeking not only to measure but to optimize well-being by some explicit modelling of how social capital and instructional capital can be deployed to optimize the overall value of human capital in an economy - which is itself part of an ecology. The role of individual capital within that ecology, and the adaptation of the individual to live well within it, is a major focus of these theories.
The most notable proponent of human development theory is Amartya SenAmartya Kumar Sen ( (born November 3, 1933) is a Bengali economist best known for his work on famine, Human development theory, welfare economics, and the underlying mechanisms of poverty. He received The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memor, who asked, in Development as FreedomDevelopment as Freedom is a book written by Amartya Sen., "what is the relationship between our wealth and our ability to live as we would like?"
This question cannot be answered strictly from an energyEnergy economics is a subfield of economics that focuses on energy relationships as the foundation of all other relationships. It is a subfield of ecological economics in that it assumes that food chains in ecology are directly analogous to energy supply, feminist, family, environmental healthEnvironmental economics is a subfield of economics concerned with environmental issues (other usages of the term are not uncommon). In using standard methods of economics, it is distinguished from green economics which subsumes the nonstandard approaches, peace, social justice, or ecological well-being point of view, although all of these may be factors in our happiness, and if tolerances of any of these are violated seriously, it would seem impossible to be happy at all.
Accordingly, human development theory is a major synthesis that is probably not confined within the bounds of conventional economics or political science, nor even the political economy that relates the two. It may also be over-ambitious, as objective measures of relative happiness and marginal utility in the pursuit of happiness do not seem readily accessible to economics.