What is capability approach? Elaborate the distinctive features of the capability theory of equality.
Subtopic: Paper I · The capability approach and the capability theory of equality
How to structure your answer
Define functionings and capability, answer 'equality of what?', then list distinctive features and Nussbaum's extension.
Detailed model answer
242 words · target 200 words · 12 min
The capability approach, developed by Amartya Sen from his 1979 Tanner Lecture Equality of What?, evaluates lives by what people are actually able to do and be.
Two building blocks. Functionings are achieved beings and doings — being nourished, being literate, taking part in the community. Capability is the real freedom to choose among combinations of functionings. The distinction matters: a person fasting and a person starving share a functioning but not a capability, and only the second is deprived.
Distinctive features of the capability theory of equality.
- The right space. Equality of income ignores that people convert resources into lives at different rates; a disabled person needs more income for the same mobility. Equality of utility is worse still, because adaptive preference makes the contented deprived appear well off. Capability is the space in which equality should be measured.
- Freedom, not just achievement. What is equalised is the opportunity set, so the approach respects people's differing conceptions of the good.
- Conversion factors. Personal, social and environmental factors mediate resources into capabilities, which is why non-discrimination and public provision matter as much as transfers.
- Pluralism and public reasoning. Sen deliberately refuses a fixed list, holding that weights must come from democratic deliberation.
- Nussbaum's variant does supply a list of ten central capabilities, treated as a threshold each person is entitled to, and grounds it in human dignity.
Influence. The approach underlies the Human Development Index and the multidimensional poverty measures now used in India.
What an examiner expects to see
- The right space. Equality of income ignores that people convert resources into lives at different rates; a disabled person needs more income for the same mobility. Equality of utility is worse still, because adaptive preference makes the contented deprived appear well off. Capability is the space in which equality should be measured.
- Freedom, not just achievement. What is equalised is the opportunity set, so the approach respects people's differing conceptions of the good.
- Conversion factors. Personal, social and environmental factors mediate resources into capabilities, which is why non-discrimination and public provision matter as much as transfers.
- Pluralism and public reasoning. Sen deliberately refuses a fixed list, holding that weights must come from democratic deliberation.
- Nussbaum's variant does supply a list of ten central capabilities, treated as a threshold each person is entitled to, and grounds it in human dignity.