Capability Approach to Development

The capability approach, associated with Amartya Sen, evaluates development by the real freedom people possess to live lives they have reason to value. Income, commodities and public services are important means, but development ultimately concerns what people are genuinely able to be and do.

Functionings and capabilities

The approach distinguishes achieved states from the freedom to choose among them.

• Functionings are valuable beings and doings, such as being healthy, educated, adequately nourished or participating in community life.
• A person's capability set comprises the genuinely attainable combinations of functionings available to that person.
• Freedom therefore includes meaningful choice. For example, fasting and involuntary starvation may produce similar nutritional outcomes, but only fasting involves the capability to eat.

Why resources alone are insufficient

Equal resources need not create equal freedom because people differ in their ability to convert resources into valuable functionings.

• Personal characteristics, including age, disability and health, affect the conversion of resources into opportunities.
• Social conditions, such as discrimination, gender norms, public safety and access to education or healthcare, shape the opportunities people can actually exercise.
• Environmental and institutional conditions also matter; consequently, income is an incomplete measure of human advantage.

Development and social empowerment

Development is understood as the expansion of substantive freedoms, not merely growth in output or possession of goods.

• Education, healthcare, social security and political participation can enlarge capabilities directly as well as improve earning opportunities.
• Social empowerment requires removing unfreedoms that prevent disadvantaged groups from exercising choice, voice and agency.
• Public policy should therefore assess both outcomes and whether people have the real opportunity to achieve them.