Preconceived ideas vs reality is that all the third world is in an equally bad spot, but there is a lot of variation in development. The same can be said about the western world, people tend to believe that it is all equally well off even though there are spots that are far less developed than others. This can be described by the test that Rosling did where he asked students about child mortality rates, and all his students chose western nations over the other countries due to their western bias.
Rosling showed that health came before wealth in development. Healthcare and education are important in development since access to effective healthcare helps with peace of mind, and when health is less of a concern people can put more of an emphasis on other parts of their life, such as education. Education is important since it helps increase people’s human capital, which contributes to an increase in wealth and development in all areas of industry.
Development is the expansion of real freedoms that people can enjoy. This is a more expansive view of development than we normally consider, since we generally view development as being economic. One of the main measures that we use to track development is GDP, since the general view of a modern country is one that is industrialized and has modern(western) commodities. However, other aspects of development exist that can be such as social and political freedoms help expand other aspects of freedom as well.
Development requires the removal of unfreedoms such as poverty, disease and general lack of choice. Free and sustainable agency are an important part of development are integral to development since freedoms can also described as general autonomy, and the opportunity to create change and adapt to situations without intense barriers. Political freedoms can change with times to meet current opinions, and economic freedoms can work with the market to obtain products that are useful at the time.
Markets are important in freedom of economic choice and being against markets is like being against conversation since it can sometimes be negative.
Condorcet and Malthus had conflicting views on the effects of development on fertility rates, Condorcet said that development would decrease fertility, while Malthus said it would do no such thing. It does however since opportunity cost to raise a child increases, and the use of having a child (for agriculture etc.) is not as real.