The Economics of Human Betterment is a comparative look at economic change and social progress. It is about betterment—a change or process—and about institutions and countries as they evolve. It is about human betterment—and therefore concerned with perceived welfare and the identification of basic human needs. And it is about economics, but about means as means, not means as ends. This book asks in what way productive activities (whether free market or planned, whether in developed or in developing countries) influence and reflect basic human values.

The essays contained herein represent some of the best up-to-date accounts available on such topics as the welfare state in Holland or the relationship between growth and betterment in Singapore. Other essays take in the United Kingdom, Japan, India, and the planned economy of the Soviet Union. The contributors are all well-known experts in their own field. And their essays reveal a common conviction that economics is about people first, and about things only in so far as they contribute to human betterment.