How do you measure national income? and why do countries need to measure it?

Need help summarizing....?

• I was wondering if someone could help me summarize these paragraph's, cause I don't understand it. Development of freedom Whether in sub-Saharan, China or elsewhere, chronic poverty deprives numbers of people of the incentives and economic means to care for and nourish their natural environment. Yet being poor is only one element of people’s blighted relationship to the environment. According to economist and Nobel laureate Amarthya Sen, poverty needs to understood in broader terms than only the lack of monetary income. Sen argues that poverty should be characterized fundamentally in terms of the deprivation of basic freedoms, rather than merely low incomes. In his view, development not only has the economic dimension with which it is usually understood but, more important, requires the removal of the “unfreedoms” endured by most people in underdeveloped countries. Besides poverty, these unfreedoms include, deprivation of health care, lack of sanitation, exclusion from education (especially women), exclusion from market activities, and above all, tyrannical regimes associated with systematic deprivation of political liberty and basic civil rights. Development, in Sen’s view, must included the freedom of democratic choices as well as the freedom of economic choices. Without such freedoms, people lack the opportunity for education, public debate, and discussion, which make possible rational choices about quality of life issues, including the environment, as well as rational choices about their families or their government. It follows that environmental improvement requires not only a measure of economic power for individuals but also the broader freedoms of individuals to set priorities for themselves, their families, and their society. Such freedoms also nourish the development of social values and environmental ethnics going beyond the bounds of government regulations and market rules. These values and ethnics are essentials for developing a healthy and sustainable environment. I have argued above that countries and people in the earliest stage of development tend to have little interest in environmental issues as typically understood in the individual countries, such as rain or global warming. In the subsistence phase, sheer survival amidst historically hostile environments has usually been the main challenge of their lives. This is not to say that poor societies do not have respect for their own environment- Native American nations, for example, generally have a profoundly spiritual relationship with their natural environment (though it has often been abused by outside forces). I have also noted that countries and people in the second phase of development, such as China, are quite aware of the collateral environmental deterioration occurring along with their industrialization and modernization. Yet in countries such as China, not only is domestic investment capital scarce, but also social priorities, including environmental quality, are set mostly by government rather than popular choice. Investments aimed at cleaning the environment typically have not reached the top of the governments priority scale, because other social investments (eg. in energy production, housing, education, and industrial production for consumption and exports) have been seen as providing far greater benefits. As mentioned above, this situation is changing as China’s economy rapidly grows.

• Answer:

  Paragraph 1: For people in all the undeveloped countries , chronic poverty is not only understood as the deprivation of basic freedom. Rather, it includes the deprivation of Health care , lack of education , putting restrictions on political liberty and basic civil rights. Paragraph 2: Amarthya Sen, an economist and Nobel laureate says; without freedom , rational choices will take control over the country . No opportunities would be given to individuals to take the advantage to gain proper education, get a career , and get the best health care. And those are the basic values for a healthy and sustainable society . Paragraph 3: Sen's arguments with the governments have ended up with two points; First, hostile environment and historical wars could have been placed number 1 priority for citizens that they had little interest on environmental issues. Second, governments have set several priorities rather than individual's priorities such as education, domestic investments and social issues Hope that helps