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The Capability Approach

The capability approach is a theoretical framework that entails two core normative claims: first, the claim that the freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance, and second, that freedom to achieve well-being is to be understood in terms of people's capabilities, that is, their real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value. The approach has been developed in a variety of more specific normative theories, such as (partial) theories of social justice or accounts of development ethics. It has also led to a new and highly interdisciplinary literature in the social sciences resulting in new statistics and social indicators, and to a new policy paradigm which is mainly used in development studies, the so-called ‘human development approach’.

This entry will be limited to an explication of the capability approach from a philosophical point of view. Readers who are interested in a discussion of the capability approach from the perspective of the social sciences are referred to Comim, Qizilbash and Alkire (eds., 2008) and Deneulin (ed., 2009) for overview works; Kuklys (2005), Schokkaert (2009), and Basu and López-Calva (2011) for welfare economics; Venkatapuram (2011) for global public health; Schlosberg (2012) and Holland (2014) for environmental policies, among many other works in a wide variety of fields. For a comprehensive introduction to the human development approach, see Fukuda-Parr (2003) and Fukuda-Parr and Kumar (eds., 2009).

1. What kind of theoretical framework?

2.1 functionings and capabilities, 2.2 a metric for interpersonal comparisons, 2.3 the means-ends distinction, 2.4 conversion factors, 2.5 acknowledging human diversity, 2.6 basic capabilities, 2.7 capabilities as freedoms, 3.1 functionings or capabilities, 3.2 selecting and aggregating of capabilities, 3.3 what is needed for a capability theory of justice, 4. an alternative for utilitarianism, 5. an alternative for rawlsian justice, other internet resources, related entries.

Within moral and political philosophy, the capability approach has in recent decades emerged as a new theoretical framework about well-being, development and justice. Although we can trace some aspects of the capability approach back to, among others, Aristotle, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx (see Nussbaum 1988, 1992; Sen 1993, 1999: 14, 24; Walsh 2000), it is economist-philosopher Amartya Sen who pioneered the approach and philosopher Martha Nussbaum and a growing number of other scholars across the humanities and the social sciences who have significantly developed it. The capability approach purports that freedom to achieve well-being is a matter of what people are able to do and to be, and thus the kind of life they are effectively able to lead. The capability approach is generally conceived as a flexible and multi-purpose framework, rather than a precise theory of well-being (Sen 1992: 48; Robeyns 2005: 94–96; Qizilbash 2008: 53–54; Sen 2009a; Robeyns 2016). This open-ended and underspecified nature partly explains why the term ‘capability approach’ was chosen and is now used in the philosophical literature rather than, say, ‘capability theory’. The terms ‘capability approach’ and ‘capabilities approach’ are both used in the literature to refer to the same thing. Some philosophers have started to use the term 'capabilitarianism' (Robeyns 2016; Nielsen and Axelsen forthcoming)

Despite some philosophical disagreements about the best description of the capability approach, it is generally understood as a conceptual framework for a range of normative exercises, including most prominent the following: (1) the assessment of individual well-being; (2) the evaluation and assessment of social arrangements; and (3) the design of policies and proposals about social change in society. In all these normative exercises, the capability approach prioritizes certain of peoples' beings and doings and their opportunities to realize those beings and doings (such as their genuine opportunities to be educated, their ability to move around or to enjoy supportive social relationships). This stands in contrast to other accounts of well-being, which focus exclusively on subjective categories (such as happiness) or on the material means to well-being (such as resources like income or wealth).

Martha Nussbaum (2011) has described the general capability approach (not her own specific theory) as consisting of two clusters, one focussing on comparative quality of life and the other on theorising about justice. The two clusters would share a focus on what people are able doing and being, and would share a commitment to five principles: treating each person as an end; a focus on choice and freedom rather than achievements; pluralism about values; being deeply concerned with entrenched social injustices; and ascribing an urgent task to government. However, it has been argued that only two of those (namely, treating each person as an end and pluralism about values) are genuinely essential to each and every capability theory, and that in addition there exists work in the capability approach that does not neatly fit into one of the two clusters that Nussbaum proposes (Robeyns 2016). There is clearly disagreement among capability scholars about how to understand this theoretical approach at the most general and abstract level, and more research is needed to establish what would belong to the core of the capability approach, and which model best describes the approach.

Scholars and policy makers use the capability approach in a wide range of fields, most prominently in development studies and policymaking, welfare economics, social policy, and social and political philosophy. Yet across these areas, the capability approach can be employed in both narrower and broader ways (Crocker and Robeyns 2009). In the more narrow way, the capability approach tells us what information we should look at if we are to judge how well someone's life is going or has gone; this kind of information is needed in any account of well-being or human development. Since the capability approach contends that the relevant kind of information concerns human functionings (beings and doings) and capabilities (the opportunities to achieve those beings and doings), the approach provides part of what is needed for interpersonal comparisons of well-being. This makes the approach attractive to a variety of theorists and scholars since interpersonal comparisons are needed for a range of different exercises, such as comparing how well two persons (or groups or societies) are doing at the same time or comparing one person (or groups or society) at two different moments in time. In the narrower use of the capability approach, the focus is often strictly on the evaluation of individual functioning levels or on both functionings and capabilities. However, to apply this approach, we also need to decide which are the beings and doings that matter for the various normative usages of the approach (the selection of functionings and capabilities) and how each person's various functionings or capabilities are to be aggregated into one overall assessment of well-being or of freedom to achieve well-being (the aggregation of the various dimensions). These are crucial challenges for the capability approach, and will be discussed in more detail in Section 3.2 .

In its broader uses, the capability approach not only evaluates the lives of individuals (as in the more narrow use), but also includes other considerations in its evaluations. For example, the broader use of the capability approach often pays attention to other normative considerations and other values than only well-being, such as efficiency, agency, empowerment, or procedural fairness. For example, David Crocker (2008) has extended the capability approach with accounts of agency and participation into a more detailed account of development ethics, but discusses at length that not all versions of the capability approach are embracing agency so explicitly. Similarly, the capability approach can be developed into an alternative evaluative tool which can replace traditional social cost-benefit analysis (Alkire 2002). Or it can be used as a normative framework within which to evaluate and design policies and social institutions, ranging from welfare-state design in relatively affluent societies (Wolff and de-Shalit 2007), to governmental and nongovernmental development policies in poor countries, to policies that affluent countries and international institutions employ (or are advised to employ) in their efforts to aid poor countries (UNDP 1990–2010). In what follows we will discuss the capability approach in its narrow use, except if otherwise indicated.

The capability approach is a normative theory, rather than an explanatory theory: in other words, it is not a theory that will explain poverty, inequality, or well-being, but rather a theory that helps us to conceptualize these notions. Nevertheless, the notions of functionings and capabilities in themselves can be employed as elements in explanations of social phenomena, or one can use these notions in descriptions of poverty, inequality, quality of life, and social change.

Before moving on, one more clarification is in order. Within the analytical strand of normative political philosophy, there are roughly two different types of answers to the question: “What is the purpose of doing political philosophy?” The first answer is that political philosophy should be truth-seeking, even if that implies, for example, that political ideals such as justice, equality or democracy are unachievable. The truth-seeking strand within political philosophy produces a focused and often highly abstract type of analysis, which does not make the messy compromises that are needed to make the analysis directly relevant for practice (e.g., subjecting the analysis to constraints of feasibility). G.A. Cohen has been a prominent exponent of the truth-seeking strand within political philosophy (Cohen 2008: 1–25). The alternative approach to political philosophy is the practical approach, whose purpose is the direct (or indirect) guidance of our actions and decisions. The practical approach to political philosophy is more likely to take into account several types of constraints on our actions, including feasibility constraints but also facts about the world as we know it, such as the condition of relative scarcity of resources. The practical approach to political philosophy obviously also aims to respect truth (in so far as this is known) in its analyses, but is willing to make some simplifications and the above-mentioned compromises in order to move the analysis forward to the realm of practical recommendations—a realm in which the truth-seeking approach is much less likely to arrive due to the never-ending analysis of yet another detail of the structure or properties of a concept that needs to be analyzed. The distinction between the truth-seeking and the practical approach is very important for properly understanding the capability approach, since with very few exceptions (e.g., Vallentyne 2005), all philosophical work on the capability approach falls into the practical strand of political philosophy, and often has an interdisciplinary flavor. All that follows should therefore be read against the background of the assumption that we are operating within the practical strand of normative political philosophy.

2. The core ideas

Functionings are ‘beings and doings’, that is, various states of human beings and activities that a person can undertake. Examples of the former (the ‘beings’) are being well-nourished, being undernourished, being housed in a pleasantly warm but not excessively hot house, being educated, being illiterate, being part of a supportive social network, being part of a criminal network, and being depressed. Examples of the second group of functionings (the ‘doings’) are travelling, caring for a child, voting in an election, taking part in a debate, taking drugs, killing animals, eating animals, consuming lots of fuel in order to heat one's house, and donating money to charity.

From these examples we can draw a couple of observations. First, these examples indicate that many features of a person could be described either as a being or as a doing: we can say that a person is housed in a pleasantly warm house, or that this person does consume lots of energy to keep her house warm. Yet other functionings are much more straightforwardly described as either a being or a doing, for example ‘being healthy’ or ‘killing animals’. The second observation is that the notion of ‘functionings’ is a conceptual category that is in itself morally neutral. Functionings can be univocally good (e.g., being in good health) or univocally bad (e.g., being raped). But the goodness or badness of various other functionings may not be so straightforward, but rather depend on the context and/or the normative theory which we endorse. For example, is the care work of a mother who is caring full-time for her child a valuable functioning or not? A conservative-communitarian normative theory will most likely mark this as a valuable functioning, whereas a feminist-liberal theory will only do so if the care work is the result of an autonomous choice made against a background of equal opportunities and fair support for those who have duties to care for dependents.

Capabilities are a person's real freedoms or opportunities to achieve functionings. Thus, while travelling is a functioning, the real opportunity to travel is the corresponding capability. The distinction between functionings and capabilities is between the realized and the effectively possible, in other words, between achievements, on the one hand, and freedoms or valuable opportunities from which one can choose, on the other.

According to the capability approach, ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’ are the best metric for most kinds of interpersonal evaluations. In other words, those interpersonal evaluations should be conceptualized in terms of people's functioning (their actual beings and doings) and their capabilities (the real opportunities they have to realise those functionings). These beings and doings together are held to constitute what makes a life valuable. Whereas ‘functionings’ are the proposed conceptualization for interpersonal comparisons of (achieved) well-being, ‘capabilities’ are the conceptualization for interpersonal comparisons of the freedom to pursue well-being, which Sen calls “well-being freedom” (Sen 1992: 40).

The relevant functionings can vary from such elementary things as being adequately nourished, being in good health, avoiding escapable morbidity and premature mortality, to more complex achievements such as having a decent and valuable job, not suffering from lack of self-respect, taking active part in the life of the community, and so on. The claim is that functionings are constitutive of a person's being, and an evaluation of well-being has to take the form of an assessment of these constituent elements (Sen 1992: 39). To say that functionings are constitutive of a person's being means that one cannot be a human being without having at least a range of functionings: they make the lives of human beings both lives (in contrast to the existence of innate objects) and also human (in contrast to the lives of trees or tigers). Human functionings are those beings and doings that we take to constitute a human life, and which are central in our understandings of ourselves as human beings. This implies that the range of potentially relevant functionings is very broad, and that the capability approach will in some respects be close to both subjective metrics (for example, by including the capability to be happy), or resources-based metrics (since most functionings require some resources as inputs). Yet not all beings and doings are functionings; for example, being able to fly like a bird or reaching an age of 200 like an oak tree, are not human functionings.

Thus, according to the capability approach, the ends of well-being freedom, justice, and development should be conceptualized in terms of people's capabilities. Moreover, what is relevant is not only which opportunities are open to me each by themselves, hence in a piecemeal way, but rather which combinations or sets of potential functionings are open to me. For example, suppose I am a low-skilled poor single parent who lives in a society without decent social provisions. Take the following functionings: (1) to hold a job, which will require me to spend many hours on working and commuting, but will generate the income needed to properly feed myself and my family; (2) to care for my children at home and give them all the attention, care and supervision they need. In a piecemeal analysis, both (1) and (2) are opportunities open to me, but they are not both together open to me. The point about the capability approach is precisely that we must take a comprehensive or holistic approach, and ask which sets of capabilities are open to me, that is: can I simultaneously provide for my family and properly care for and supervise my children? Or am I rather forced to make some hard, perhaps even tragic choices between two functionings which both reflect basic needs and basic moral duties?

Note that while most types of capability analysis require interpersonal comparisons, one could also use the capability approach to evaluate the well-being or well-being freedom of one person at one point in time (e.g., evaluate her situation against a capability-yardstick), or to evaluate the changes in her well-being or well-being freedom over time. The capability approach could thus also be used by a single individual in her deliberate decision-making or evaluation processes, but these types of uses of the capability approach are much less prevalent in the philosophical literature, let alone in the social sciences.

The capability approach explicitly endorses and relies upon a key analytical distinction in practical philosophy, namely the means-ends distinction. The approach stresses that we should always be clear, when valuing something, whether we value it as an end in itself, or as a means to a valuable end. For the capability approach, the ultimate ends of interpersonal comparisons are people's capabilities. This implies that the capability approach evaluates policies and other changes according to their impact on people's capabilities as well as their actual functionings. It asks whether people are able to be healthy, and whether the means or resources necessary for this capability, such as clean water, adequate sanitation, access to doctors, protection from infections and diseases, and basic knowledge on health issues, are present. It asks whether people are well-nourished, and whether the means or conditions for the realization of this capability, such as having sufficient food supplies and food entitlements, are being met. It asks whether people have access to a high-quality education system, to real political participation, and to community activities that support them, that enable them to cope with struggles in daily life, and that foster caring and warm friendships.

Much of the critique that capability theorists have advanced against alternative normative frameworks (such as Dworkinian resourcism, or the Rawlsian social primary goods approach), can be traced back to the objection that alternative approaches value particular means to well-being rather than the ends. The main reason why the capability approach holds that it is better to focus on the ends rather than the means, is that people differ in their ability to convert means into valuable opportunities (capabilities) or outcomes (functionings) (Sen 1992: 26–28, 36–38). Since ends are what ultimately matters when thinking about well-being and the quality of life, means can only work as reliable proxies of people's opportunities to achieve those ends if they all have the same capacities or powers to convert those means into equal capability sets. Capability scholars believe that these inter-individual differences are far-reaching and significant, and that theories which focus on means tend to downplay their normative relevance. In the theoretical framework of the capability approach, these inter-individual differences are captured by the notion of ‘conversion factors’ (see Section 2.4 ).

One could argue, however, that the capability approach does not focus entirely on ends, but rather on the question whether a person is being put in the conditions in which she can pursue her ultimate ends. For example, being able to read could be seen as not an ultimate end in itself, since people's ultimate ends will be more specific, such as reading street signs, the newspaper, or the Bible or Koran. It is therefore somewhat more precise to say that the capability approach focuses on people's ends in terms of beings and doings expressed in general terms: being literate, being mobile, being able to hold a decent job. Whether a particular person then decides to translate these general capabilities in the more specific capabilities A , B or C (e.g., reading street signs, reading the newspaper, or reading the Bible), is up to them. Whether that person decides to stay put, travel to the US or rather to China, is not normatively relevant for the capability approach: the question is rather whether a person has these capabilities in more general terms.

Of course, the normative focus on ends does not imply that the capability approach does not at all value means such as material or financial resources. Instead, a capability analysis will typically also focus on resources and other means. For example, in their evaluation of development in India, Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (2002: 3) have stressed that working within the capability approach in no way excludes the integration of an analysis of resources, such as food, or other resources. In sum, all the means of well-being, like the availability of commodities, legal entitlements to them, other social institutions, and so forth, are important, but the capability approach presses the point that they are not the ends of well-being, only their means. Food may be abundant in the village, but a starving person may have nothing to exchange for it, no legal claim on it, or no way of preventing intestinal parasites from consuming it before he or she does. In all these cases at least some resources will be available, but it will still leave that person hungry and, after a while, undernourished.

Yet one could wonder: wouldn't it be better to focus on means only, rather than making the normative analysis more complicated and more informationally demanding by also focusing on functionings and capabilities? Capability scholars would respond that starting a normative analysis from the ends rather than means has at least two advantages, apart from the earlier mentioned fundamental reason that a focus on ends is needed to appropriately capture inter-individual differences. First, the valuation of means will retain the status of an instrumental valuation rather than take on the nature of an intrinsic valuation. For example, money or economic growth will not be valued for their own sake, but only in so far as they contribute to an expansion of people's capabilities. Second, by starting from ends, we do not a priori assume that there is only one overridingly important means to that ends (such as income), but rather explicitly ask the question which types of means are important for the fostering and nurturing of a particular capability, or set of capabilities. For some capabilities, the most important means will indeed be financial resources and economic production, but for others it may be particular political practices and institutions, such as effective guarantees and protections of freedom of thought, political participation, social or cultural practices, social structures, social institutions, public goods, social norms, and traditions and habits. As a consequence, an effective capability-enhancing policy may not exist in increasing disposable income, but rather fighting a homophobic, ethnophobic, racist or sexist social climate.

Another important idea in the capability approach, especially in the work by Amartya Sen (1992: 19–21, 26–30, 37–38) and scholars influenced by his writings, is the notion of conversion factors. Resources, such as marketable goods and services, but also goods and services emerging from the non-market economy, including household production, have certain characteristics that make them of interest to people. For example, we may be interested in a bike not because it is an object made from certain materials with a specific shape and color, but because it can take us to places where we want to go, and in a faster way than if we were walking. These characteristics of a good or commodity enable or contribute to a functioning. A bike enables the functioning of mobility, to be able to move oneself freely and more rapidly than walking. The relation between a good and the achievement of certain beings and doings is captured with the term ‘conversion factor’: the degree in which a person can transform a resource into a functioning. For example, an able bodied person who was taught to ride a bicycle when he was a child has a high conversion factor enabling him to turn the bicycle into the ability to move around efficiently, whereas a person with a physical impairment or someone who was never taught to ride a bike has a very low conversion factor. The conversion factors thus represent how much functioning one can get out of a good or service; in our example, how much mobility the person can get out of a bicycle.

There are several different types of conversion factors, and the conversion factors discussed are often categorized into three groups (Robeyns 2005: 99). All conversion factors influence how a person can be or is free to convert the characteristics of the resources into a functioning, yet the sources of these factors may differ. Personal conversion factors are internal to the person, such as metabolism, physical condition, sex, reading skills, or intelligence. If a person is disabled, is in bad physical condition, or has never learned to cycle, then the bike will be of limited help in enabling the functioning of mobility. Social conversion factors are factors from the society in which one lives, such as public policies, social norms, practices that unfairly discriminate, societal hierarchies, or power relations related to class, gender, race, or caste. Environmental conversion factors emerge from the physical or built environment in which a person lives. Among aspects of one's geographical location are climate, pollution, the proneness to earthquakes, and the presence or absence of seas and oceans. Among aspects of the built environment are the stability of buildings, roads, and bridges, and the means of transportation and communication. Take the example of the bicycle. How much a bicycle contributes to a person's mobility depends on that person's physical condition (a personal conversion factor), the social mores including whether women are socially allowed to ride a bicycle (a social conversion factor), and the available of decent roads or bike paths (an environmental conversion factor).

The three types of conversion factors all stress that it is not sufficient to know the resources a person owns or can use in order to be able to assess the well-being that he or she has achieved or could achieve; rather, we need to know much more about the person and the circumstances in which he or she is living. Sen uses “capability” not to refer exclusively to a person's abilities or other internal powers but to refer to an opportunity made feasible, and constrained by, both internal (personal) and external (social and environmental) conversion factors (Crocker 2008: 171–2; Robeyns 2005: 99).

A strong acknowledgment of human diversity is one of the key theoretical driving forces of the capability approach. Its criticism of other normative approaches is often fueled by, and based on, the claim that the full human diversity among people is insufficiently acknowledged in many normative theories, such as theories of distributive justice. This also explains why the capability approach is often favorably regarded by feminist philosophers, or philosophers concerned with care and disability issues (e.g. Khader 2008, Terzi 2010), since one of their main complaints about mainstream moral and political philosophy has precisely been the relative invisibility of the fate of those people whose lives did not correspond to that of an able-bodied, non-dependent, caregiving-free individual who belongs to the dominant ethnic, racial and religious group. People of color, marginalized people, the disabled and many women do not fit that picture.

The capability approach thus takes account of human diversity in at least two ways. First, by its focus on the plurality of functionings and capabilities as important evaluative spaces. By including a wide range of dimensions in the conceptualization of well-being and well-being outcomes, the approach broadens the so-called ‘informational basis’ of assessments, and thereby includes some dimensions that may be particularly important for some groups but less so for others. For example, in standard outcome assessments, women as a group virtually always end up being worse off than men. But if the selection of outcome dimensions is shifted to also include the quality and quantity of social relations and support, and being able to engage in hands-on care, then the normative assessment of gender inequality becomes less univocal and requires much further argument and normative defense, including being explicit about how to aggregate different dimensions (Robeyns 2003).

Secondly, human diversity is stressed in the capability approach by the explicit focus on personal and socio-environmental conversion factors that make possible the conversion of commodities and other resources into functionings, and on the social, institutional, and environmental context that affects the conversion factors and the capability set directly. Each individual has a unique profile of conversion factors, some of which are body-related, others of which are shared with all people from her community, and still others of which are shared with people with the same social characteristics (e.g., same gender or class or race characteristics).

The terminology in the literature on the capability approach has changed over time, and this has led to some confusing use of certain terms, and also to difficulties in properly interpreting the earlier contributions in this field. This is importantly exemplified by the different interpretations of the term ‘basic capabilities’. Martha Nussbaum (2000: 84) uses the term ‘basic capabilities’ to refer to “the innate equipment of individuals that is necessary for developing the more advanced capabilities”, such as the capability of speech and language, which is present in a newborn but needs to be fostered. Amartya Sen (1980) mentioned the term ‘basic capability’ as his first rough attempt to answer the ‘equality of what?’ question, but changed his terminology in subsequent work (what he called ‘basic capability’ would later become ‘capability’).

In later work, Sen reserved the term ‘basic capabilities’ to refer to a threshold level for the relevant capabilities. A basic capability is “the ability to satisfy certain elementary and crucially important functionings up to certain levels” (Sen 1992: 45 n. 19). Basic capabilities refer to the freedom to do some basic things considered necessary for survival and to avoid or escape poverty or other serious deprivations. The relevance of basic capabilities is “not so much in ranking living standards, but in deciding on a cut-off point for the purpose of assessing poverty and deprivation” (Sen 1987: 109).

Hence, while the notion of capabilities refers to a very broad range of opportunities, basic capabilities refer to the real opportunity to avoid poverty or to meet or exceed a threshold of well-being. Basic capabilities will thus be crucial for poverty analysis and in general for studying the well-being of the majority of people in poor countries, or for theories of justice that endorse sufficiency as their distributive rule. In affluent countries, by contrast, well-being analysis would often focus on capabilities that are less necessary for survival. It is important to acknowledge that the capability approach is not restricted to poverty and deprivation analysis but can also serve as a framework for, say, project or policy evaluations or inequality measurement in non-poor communities. Sen's and Nussbaum's extensive writings on the capability approach may mislead us into thinking that the capability approach is about poverty and development issues only, but there is conceptually or normatively no reason to restrict its scope in this way.

Another frequent misunderstanding in the secondary literature concerns the use of the term ‘freedom’. Especially in his later work, Amartya Sen often equates capabilities with freedoms, without always specifying in more detail what kind of freedoms he is referring to. Yet this equation can easily be misunderstood since, as Sen himself acknowledges, there are many kinds of freedom (some valuable, some detrimental, and some trivial) and ‘freedom’ means very different things to different people.

One important misunderstanding to get out of the way is that capabilities as freedoms refer exclusively to the “free market.” Sen does argue that people have reason to value the freedom or liberty to produce, buy, and sell in markets. This point, however, is part of his more general work on development, and is a very different matter than the highly disputed question in economics and politics regarding the benefits and limits of the market as a system of economic production and distribution. Functionings and capabilities are conceptualizations of well-being achievements and well-being freedoms, and the question which economic institutions are the best institutional means to foster functionings and capabilities is both analytically but also politically a question that can only be settled after we first agree what economic outcomes we should be aiming at—and this is a question to which the capability approach gives a (partial) answer.

Yet if Sen and other capability scholars label capabilities as freedoms, then what kind of freedoms are capabilities? A careful reading of Sen's work clarifies that capabilities are freedoms conceived as real opportunities (Sen 1985a: 3–4; 1985b: 201; 2002: chapter 20). For Sen, capabilities as freedoms refer to the presence of valuable options or alternatives, in the sense of opportunities that do not exist only formally or legally but are also effectively available to the agent. As Alexander Kaufman (2006a) has shown, understanding capability as an opportunity concept of freedom, rather than some other kind of freedom, may undermine mistaken critiques on Sen's work.

3. Specifying the capability approach

The capability approach conceptualizes a metric of well-being (in terms of functionings) and well-being freedom (in terms of capabilities). However, clearly this still leaves open a range of very different capability theories to emerge from these metrics. Three components of specification are widely acknowledged in the capability literature. First, is the appropriate focus functionings, or rather capabilities? Second, how are we to select and aggregate the multiple dimensions of the capability approach? And finally, since the capability approach only specifies a metric of justice, what else is needed for a full capability theory of justice to be developed?

Scholars interested in the capability approach have debated the question of whether the appropriate well-being metric should be capabilities or functionings, hence opportunities or achievements. What considerations have been argued to be relevant for this choice?

The first consideration is normative, and this is the argument Sen and Nussbaum most often offer: by focusing on capabilities rather than functionings, we do not privilege a particular account of good lives but instead aim at a range of possible ways of life from which each person can choose. Thus, it is Nussbaum's and Sen's commitment to a liberal version of the capability approach, or an anti-paternalist consideration, that motivates a principled choice for capabilities rather than functionings. Obviously, the strength of this argument depends on how bad one takes paternalism to be. There may be good reasons to believe that some paternalism is unavoidable, or even desired (Nussbaum 2000: 51–56). To some extent, the promotion of functionings (rather than capabilities) may be unavoidable in a capabilitarian political theory, yet this tendency to paternalism can be stronger or weaker, depending on several specific choices made in the theory (Claassen 2014).

A second normative consideration stems from the importance given to personal responsibility in contemporary political philosophy. If one believes that one should strive for equality of capability, then each person should have the same real opportunity (capability), but once that is in place, each individual should be held responsible for his or her own choices. This responsibility-sensitivity principle is widely endorsed not only in political philosophy but also in the mathematical models being developed in normative welfare economics. If one wants to endorse and implement this principle of responsibility-sensitivity, then specifications and applications of the capability approach should focus on capabilities, rather than functionings. Yet even at a highly abstract theoretical level, philosophers disagree on whether we should endorse responsibility-sensitivity in developing the capability approach (e.g., Fleurbaey 2002; Vallentyne 2005; Wolff and de-Shalit 2007). Moreover, for applied work, serious epistemological hurdles may ultimately lead us to drop the responsibility-sensitive principle for practical reasoning about the actual world.

Third, there are cases in which a capability is available to a person but only if other people do not also want to realize that capability (Basu 1987: 74). For example, two spouses may each have the capability of holding demanding jobs which are each on their own incompatible with large caring responsibilities. However, if these spouses also have infants or relatives with extensive care needs, then at best only one of them may effectively realize that capability. Since capability sets may therefore include freedoms that are conditional (because they depend on the choices of other people), it might be better to focus both on the individual's capability set and also on what people have been able to realize from their own capability sets, that is, their functionings or well-being achievements. The question of who decides or should decide this sort of spousal question highlights the importance of agency and procedural fairness, which are generally taken to be part of the capability approach in its broader use (Crocker 2008).

It should also be mentioned that the concept of functioning has particular relevance for our relations to those human beings who are not yet able to choose (infants), who will never be able to choose (severely mentally disabled individuals), or who have lost this ability through advanced dementia or serious brain damage. Whether or not these persons can decide to be well nourished and healthy, it is generally held that we (through families, governments, or other institutions) have the moral obligation to promote or protect their nutritional and healthy functioning.

Finally, the choice between functionings and capabilities can also be bridged by a conceptual move. Sen (1987: 36–7) has proposed the concept of ‘refined functioning’ to designate functioning that takes note of the available alternatives. Sen (1992: 52) notes: “‘fasting’ as a functioning is not just starving; it is choosing to starve when one does have other options .” That is, one could focus on achieved functionings levels but—where appropriate—include the exercise of choice as one of the relevant functionings (Fleurbaey 2002; Stewart 1995).

In addition to these normative and conceptual arguments, there are also concerns related to the application and measurability that influence the choice of capabilities, functionings, or a combination of the two (Robeyns 2006). It is, for example, almost always easier to observe and measure functionings than capabilities (Sen 1992: 52–3).

Other major points of debate in the capability literature are the questions of which capabilities should be selected as relevant and who should decide (or how a decision should be made) on the aggregation of the various dimensions into an overall assessment. At the level of ideal theories of justice, some have argued that each and every capability is relevant and should count in our moral calculus (Vallentyne 2005). Others have argued that considerations of justice require that we demarcate morally relevant from morally irrelevant and morally bad capabilities (Nussbaum 2003; Pogge 2002; Pierik and Robeyns 2007). This demarcation could be done in various ways, and most capability scholars think that different answers are appropriate in different normative exercises. In other words, the selection of relevant capabilities would be different when the question is how to arrange a society's basic structure, versus when the question is how to spend the donations Oxfam has collected, or when the normative question is how to raise one's child. Anderson (1999) argues that, for purposes of political justice, the only relevant capabilities are those needed for a person to participate as a citizen. Nussbaum endorses a well-defined list of capabilities, which, she argues, should be enshrined in every country's constitution (Nussbaum 2000, 2003, 2006). Sen has been somewhat vague in responding to the question of how to select and weight capabilities, yet in the secondary literature it has been argued that he draws on his ideal of agency to argue that each group should itself select, weight, trade off, and sequence or otherwise aggregate capabilities as well as prioritize them in relation to other normative considerations, such as agency, efficiency, and stability (Crocker 2008; Crocker and Robeyns 2009).

Moving from ideal theory to non-ideal theory and empirical applications makes the selection of relevant capabilities even more complicated, for other concerns such as feasibility, data availability, practical relevance, and even parsimony may play significant roles. Several proposals are on offer, ranging from substantive proposals with elaborate theoretical underpinnings, through several procedural methods, to the a theoretical practice that an investigator should simply conduct a survey in order to collect rich data (or use an existing survey) and let a statistical technique, such as factor analysis, “decide.” At one end of this spectrum is Martha Nussbaum's well-known list, which contains prescribed capabilities that are grouped together under ten “central human capabilities”: life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; and control over one's environment (Nussbaum 2006: 76–78).

Nussbaum (2000: 70–77; 2006: 78–81) justifies this list by arguing that each of these capabilities is needed in order for a human life to be “not so impoverished that it is not worthy of the dignity of a human being” (2000: 72). She defends these capabilities as being the moral entitlements of every human being on earth. She formulates the list at an abstract level and advocates that the translation to implementation and policies should be done at a local level, taking into account local differences. Nussbaum argues that this list can be derived from a Rawlsian overlapping consensus and stresses that her list remains open-ended and always open for revision (Nussbaum 2000: 77), yet other philosophers have taken issue with her claim that this would result in a form of political liberalism (Barclay 2003) or have argued that this leaves insufficient scope for democratic deliberation and respect for agency in her capability approach (e.g., Crocker 2008; Robeyns 2003; Sen 2004a,b). Yet this strand of critique has itself been criticized for not understanding the proper role of philosophy and the normative and political status of Nussbaum's proposal (Claassen 2011).

Amartya Sen consistently and explicitly refuses to defend “one pre-determined canonical list of capabilities, chosen by theorists without any general social discussion or public reasoning” (Sen 2005: 158). Of course, groups and theorists might construct lists for various purposes, and lists need not be “pre-determined” or “canonical,” however we might understand these terms. And Sen's refusal to endorse Nussbaum's list has not prevented him from using—for various purposes—particular selections of capabilities in his empirical as well as his normative work. However, beyond stating in general terms that some democratic process and public reasoning should be involved, Sen has never explained in detail how such a selection could and should be done.

Several capability scholars, including Anderson, Alkire, Robeyns, and Crocker, have sought in various ways to fill this lacuna. Anderson (1999: 316) argues that people should be entitled “to whatever capabilities are necessary to enable them to avoid or escape entanglement in oppressive social relationships” and “to the capabilities necessary for functioning as an equal citizen in a democratic state.” Alkire (2002: chapter 2) proposes to select capabilities based on John Finnis's practical reasoning approach. By iteratively asking “Why do I do what I do?”, one comes to the most basic reasons for acting: life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability (friendship), practical reasonableness, and religion. Robeyns (2003) has proposed some pragmatic criteria, mainly relevant for empirical research, for the selection of capabilities for the context of inequality and well-being assessments. Crocker (2008: chapters 9–10) explores the theory and practice of deliberative democracy to bring more specificity to democratic procedures and participatory institutions in the development of an agency-sensitive capability approach.

The theoretical debate on the selection of dimensions has been complicated by the fact that there are different views on the status of the selection. Is that selection a truth-claim, or should it rather be seen as a contribution to democratic-decision making? Is the scholar proposing a selection of capabilities akin to a philosopher-king, or rather to a philosopher-citizen or a philosopher-mediator? Depending on how one sees these issues, it may affect how justified one believes a certain selection or selection procedure to be (Claassen 2011, Byskov forthcoming).

What about weighting different capabilities to come to an aggregate evaluation? If we have a list of relevant capabilities, we would still be left with the question of whether the capabilities should be aggregated and, if so, what their relative weights and the formula to aggregate them will or should be. A closely related question is how different capabilities should be traded off against one another when they cannot all be realized fully. Some have argued against trade-offs on the basis that the different capabilities are incommensurable or that each capability is an absolute entitlement that never should be overridden by another entitlement or other normative consideration. For example, Nussbaum argues that the ten capabilities on her list, being incommensurable, cannot be traded off against one another (and, hence, have no relative weights), and also that the state should provide each citizen with a minimum threshold of each capability.

One possible system of weighting or aggregating is to use a democratic or some other social choice procedure (Chakraborty 1996). The basic idea would be to encourage or prescribe that the relevant group of people decide on the weights. In some contexts, such as small-scale projects or evaluations, such capability weighting (and selection) could be done by participatory techniques. It has also been suggested that we may determine the weights of capabilities as a function of how much they contribute to overall life satisfaction or happiness (Schokkaert 2007). Yet this raises the question to what extent functionings are taken to be merely instrumental to another end, such as happiness, or indeed any other ultimate good or ideal.

Much of the existing literature refers to the issue of ‘weighting’, but this is only one particular form of the more general ‘aggregating’, since aggregation may take a different functional form than simply adding up. For example, if you have no food, your other capabilities will be worth very little. Some capabilities may thus be complementary capabilities, implying that their value to a person depends on the presence (or absence) of other capabilities. (Note the similarity with the notion of ‘complementary goods’ in consumer theory in economics, where it is argued that the utility of some goods is dependent on the quantity of some other goods, as in the case of pencils and erasers, or shoe polish and shoes of the same color).

It is striking that very few proposals on selecting and weighting or aggregating have been worked out by philosophers based on foundational work in ethical theory; instead, most of the proposals on selecting or weighting have been formulated by scholars working in applied ethics, normative political philosophy, or engaged with normative work in the social sciences. It is therefore to be hoped that in the (near) future proposals will be worked out regarding the selection of dimensions and aggregation that are much more theoretically grounded.

The capability approach is often wrongly taken to be an egalitarian theory or a theory of social or distributive justice. This reading is mistaken, even though it is entirely understandable given the specific debates in which the main philosophers defending the capability approach made their interventions. The capability approach specifies what should count for interpersonal evaluations and thus provides an important aspect of a theory of social or distributive justice, yet more is needed.

Nussbaum's work comes closest to offering us a capability theory of justice, but her theory too doesn't amount to a full theory of social justice. Nussbaum's theory of social justice is comprehensive, in the sense that it is not limited to an account of political justice, or to liberal democracies. Rather, her account holds for all human beings on earth, independently of whether they are living in a liberal democratic regime, or of whether they are severely disabled. The main demarcation of Nussbaum's account is that it provides only “a partial and minimal account of social justice” (Nussbaum 2006: 71) by specifying thresholds of a list of capabilities that governments in all nations should guarantee to their citizens. Nussbaum's theory focuses on thresholds, but this does not imply that reaching these thresholds is all that matters for social justice; rather, her theory is partial and simply leaves unaddressed the question what social justice requires once those thresholds are met.

Moreover, it would be a mistake to think that there can be only one capability theory of justice; on the contrary, the open nature of the capability approach allows for the development of a family of capability theories of justice. But this prompts the question: what is needed to develop a full capability theory of justice, and which of these aspects have already been developed by theorists of justice?

First, a theory of justice needs to explain on what basis it justifies its principles or claims of justice. For example, in Rawls's theory of justice the two principles of justice are justified by the thought-experiment of the original position and the more general social contract framework on which this is based. Dworkin's egalitarian justice theory starts from the meta-principle of equal respect and concern, which he then develops in the principles that the distribution of burdens and benefits should be sensitive to the ambitions that people have but should not reflect the unequal natural endowments with which individuals are born. One could also develop a capability theory of justice arguing that the ultimate driving force is a concern with autonomy or with human dignity. If capability scholars want to develop a full theory of justice, they will also need to explain on what bases they will justify their principles or claims. As mentioned earlier, Nussbaum starts from a notion of human dignity, whereas the Senian strand in the capability approach stresses the importance of what people have reason to value, hence an account of public reasoning. However, little work has been done so far to flesh out this embryonic idea of ‘having reason to value’, and it therefore remains unclear whether the capability approach has a solid unified rationale on the basis of which a full account of justice could be developed.

Second, as indicated above, in developing a capability theory of justice we must decide whether we want it to be an outcome or an opportunity theory, that is, whether we think that we should assess injustices in terms of functionings, or rather in terms of capabilities, or a mixture. At the level of theory and principles, most theorists of justice endorse the view that justice is done if all have equal genuine opportunities, or if all reach a minimal threshold of capability levels. Translated to the capability language, this would imply that at the level of theory and principles, capabilities are the relevant metric of justice, and not functionings. However, not everyone subscribes to this view. Anne Phillips (2004) has been a prominent voice arguing for equality of outcome, rather than opportunities. In the capability literature, Marc Fleurbaey (2002) has argued against the view to take only capabilities into account and has defended a focus on ‘refined functionings’ (being the combination of functionings and capabilities).

Third, a capability theory of justice will need, just as all other theories that are derived from the general and underspecified capability approach, to address the issue of selecting, quantifying and aggregating of dimensions. For the case of theories of justice, the problem of selecting, quantifying and aggregating turns into the question: ‘in which dimensions should we evaluate justice, how should we construct metrics in these dimensions, and how should we aggregate all the dimensions for overall assessments of justice?’ The general challenge of selecting and aggregating which was discussed above therefore also applies here.

Fourth, a capability theory of justice may need to address other ‘metrics of justice’. In the literature on social justice there are several terms used to indicate what precisely we are assessing or measuring: the metric of advantage, the currency of justice, or the informational basis for the interpersonal comparisons for the purpose of justice. Within theories of justice, the main arguments are with Rawlsian resourcists (which will be the subject of section 5), and with defenders of Dworkinian resourcism (for comparisons of the capability view with Dworkin's egalitarian theory, see Dworkin 2000: 299–303; Kaufman 2006b: 125–8; Pierik and Robeyns 2007; Sen 1984, 2009a: 264–268; Williams 2002)). Other possible metrics are needs, basic needs, or the many different types of subjective welfare or preference satisfaction. A full capability theory of justice would need to show why it serves better as a metric of justice than these other metrics.

Fifth, a capability theory of justice needs to take a position on the ‘distributive rule’ (Anderson 2010: 81) that it will endorse: will it argue for plain equality, or for sufficiency, or for prioritarianism, or for some other (mixed) distributive rule? Both Martha Nussbaum's and Elizabeth Andersons's theories are sufficiency accounts (Anderson 1999, 2010; Nussbaum 2006), but from this it does not follow, as one sometimes reads in the secondary literature, that the capability approach entails a sufficiency rule. Sen may have given the (wrong) impression of defending straight equality as a distributive rule, by asking the question ‘Equality of what?’ (Sen 1980), though a careful reading shows that he was merely asking the question ‘ If we want to be defending equality of something, then what would that be?’ In fact, Sen has remained uncommitted to one single distributive rule, which probably can be explained by the fact that he is averse of building a well-defined theory of justice but rather prefers to investigate how real-life unjust situations can be turned into more just situations, even if perfect justice is unattainable (Sen 2009). The capability approach clearly plays a role in Sen's work on justice, since when assessing a situation he will investigate inequalities in people's capabilities and analyze the processes that led to those inequalities. Yet Sen has an eclectic approach to theorizing, and hence other notions and theories (such as human rights or more formal discussions on freedoms from social choice theory) also play a role in his work on justice. The presence and importance of the capability approach in Sen's work is thus undeniable, but should not be seen as the only defining feature.

Sixth, a capability theory of justice needs to specify where the line between individual and collective responsibility is drawn, or how it will be decided, and by whom, where this line will be drawn. There is a remarkable absence of any discussion about issues of responsibility in the capability literature, in sharp contrast to political philosophy and welfare economics where this is one of the most important lines of debate, certainly since the publication of Ronald Dworkin's (1981, 2000) work on justice and equality which led to what Elizabeth Anderson (1999) has called ‘luck-egalitarianism’. Nevertheless, whether one wants to discuss it explicitly or not, any concrete capability policy proposal can be analyzed in terms of the division between personal and collective responsibility; but this terminology is largely absent from the capability literature.

In part this might be explained by the fact that much of the work on capabilities deals with global poverty, where issues of individual responsibility seem to be less relevant since it would seem outrageous to suggest that the world's most destitute people are personally responsible for the situation they are in. That doesn't mean that the responsibility question is not important: it is indeed of utmost importance to ask who is responsible for global poverty reduction or the fulfilling of the Millenium Development Goals, on which political philosophers have written a great deal (e.g., Pogge 2008, Singer 2009). The point is rather that philosophical puzzles, such as the issues of expensive tastes (for expensive wine, caviar, fast cars, or you name it), are simply beyond the radar screen of the child laborer or the poor peasant. However, while this may perhaps justify the absence of any discussion about personal responsibility among capability scholars concerned with poverty, it does not absolve theorists of justice who deal with justice in affluent societies (or affluent sections of poor societies) from discussing the just division between personal and collective responsibility (Pierik and Robeyns 2007: 148–149).

This brings us to a related issue: a theory of justice generally specifies rights, but also duties. However, capability theorists have remained largely silent on the questions who should bear the duties for the expansion of the selected capabilities. Nussbaum passionately advocates that all people all over the world should be entitled, as a matter of justice, to threshold levels of all the capabilities on her list; but apart from mentioning that it is the governments' duties to guarantee these entitlements (2006: 70), she remains silent on the question who precisely should bear the burdens and responsibilities for realizing these capabilities. Yet as Onora O'Neill (1996: chapter 5) has argued, questions of obligations and responsibilities should be central to any account of justice.

This section makes clear that a capability theory of justice is theoretically much more demanding than the basic presupposition of the capability approach that ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’ are the best metric for most kinds of interpersonal evaluations. While much has been written on the capability approach in recent years, by an increasing number of scholars, including philosophers, much of the philosophical work needed for turning the open-ended capability approach into a specific theory of justice remains to be done.

Note, however, that not all capability theorists working on issues of justice believe that aiming for such a fully worked-out theory of justice is what thinking about justice requires. Sen (2009) himself has argued at length that we don't need a theory that describes a utopian ideal, but rather we need theorising to help us with making comparisons of injustice, and to guide us towards a less unjust society. Similarly, Jay Drydyk (2012) has argued that the capability approach to justice should focus on reducing capability shortfalls, for which a utopian account of perfect justice is not needed. Some capability theorists may want to work out a full theory of justice by addressing the various specifications outlined above, while others may want to change the nature of theorising about justice, moving it more to applied, non-ideal or grounded theories (Watene and Drydyk 2016).

The capability approach explicitly aims at providing an alternative to normative views that rely exclusively on mental states in their evaluative exercises. This theme was present in Amartya Sen's launching of the capability approach in his 1979 Tanner Lectures (Sen 1980), and can be seen as an important move in the development of the capability approach (Qizilbash 2008: 54). Sen (1999: 59) characterizes welfarist theories as those consequentialist theories that restrict “the judgments of states of affairs to the utilities in the respective states (paying no direct attention to such things as the fulfillment or violation of rights, duties, and so on)”. He rejects such theories because, whatever their further specifications, they rely exclusively on utility and thus exclude non-utility information from our moral judgments (Sen 1999: 62).

Sen is concerned not only with the information that is included in a normative evaluation, but also with the information that is excluded. The non-utility information that is excluded by utilitarianism includes a person's additional physical needs, due to being physically disabled for example, but also social or moral principles, such as human rights or the specific principle that men and women should be paid the same wage for the same work. For a utilitarian, these features of life and these principles have no intrinsic value. Men and women, for example, should not be paid the same wage as long as women are satisfied with lower wages or total utility is maximized. But Sen believes it mistaken to think that such egalitarian and other moral principles would not be taken directly into account in our moral judgments. However, note that is a matter of philosophical dispute whether a moral defense of basic liberties can consistently and convincingly be derived from a capabilities theory; Henry Richardson (2007) has argued that the idea of capabilities cannot well capture the social, institutional and deontic aspects of basic liberties. If Richardson is right, then the capability approach may, perhaps, have a valid critique on the blind spots of utilitarianism, but not the answer of how to rectify this.

Thus the normative theories that Sen attacks include those that rely exclusively on mental states. This does not mean that Sen thinks that mental states, such as happiness, are unimportant and have no role to play, for they too are functionings that we sometimes have reason to value. Rather, it is the exclusive reliance on mental states that he rejects.

One could question whether the attack of Sen and some other capability scholars on utilitarianism is as successful as it may seem to them. One worry is that capability scholars attack the most simplified version of utilitarianism, or that they exaggerate the difference between (some versions of) utilitarianism and the capability approach. Based on a reading of J.S. Mill's work, Qizilbash (2008: 58) concludes that “the strong contrast which Sen sometimes makes between classical utilitarianism and his capability view is overdone.” The current state of the literature seems to lead to the conclusion that it has not yet been shown that all versions of utilitarianism are vulnerable to the capability critiques.

The capability metric has been proposed by capability philosophers as an alternative for, and improvement on, the Rawlsian social primary goods metric, which focuses on general purpose goods, such as income and wealth, opportunities and liberties, and the social basis of self-respect (Rawls 1971). Sen argued that “the primary goods approach seems to take little note of the diversity of human beings. … If people were basically very similar, then an index of primary goods might be quite a good way of judging advantage. But, in fact, people seem to have very different needs varying with health, longevity, climatic conditions, location, work conditions, temperament, and even body size. … So what is being involved is not merely ignoring a few hard cases, but overlooking very widespread and real differences” (Sen 1980: 215–216). A person with a disability, however severe, would not have a claim to additional resources grounded in his impairment under Rawls's two principles of justice. Sen argues that Rawls's difference principle would not justify any redistribution to the disabled on grounds of disability. Rawls's strategy has been to postpone the question of our obligations towards the disabled, and exclude them from the scope of his theory. Rawls certainly does not want to deny our moral duties towards the people that fall outside the scope of his theory, but he thinks that we should first work out a robust and convincing theory of justice for the “normal” cases and only then try to extend it to the “more extreme cases” (Rawls 2001: 176).

Sen's critique in his 1979 Tanner lecture, however, was not only about the case of the severely disabled. Sen's more general critique concerned what he saw as the inflexibility of primary goods as a metric of justice. Capability scholars thus believe that the more general problem with the use of primary goods is that it does not adequately deal with human diversity, since it does not focus on ends but rather on means, and since it excludes some groups from the scope of justice.

Yet while capability scholars initially seemed rather sure of their case against Rawls (Sen 1980, Nussbaum 2006), a more recent wave of philosophical enquiry has highlighted how complicated the comparisons between Rawls's theory of justice and the capability view are (Pogge 2002, Robeyns 2009, Brighouse and Robeyns eds. 2010). One reason is that the capability metric is a general metric of well-being and well-being freedom, whereas the social primary goods metric emerges as one element of an integral and complex theory of political justice (rather than social justice more broadly, let alone the even wider category of moral evaluations). As Arneson (2010) rightly notes, the unit of assessment ideally should be the moral theory, and not merely one part of it, such as the metric of interpersonal comparison. Also, Rawls's theory of justice is an ideal theory of justice, in contrast to the capability approach. This means that it is very hard to compare Rawls's work on justice with the philosophical work on the capability approach, since their scope and theoretical aims are not the same.

Regarding scope, Rawls's theory of justice is limited in scope to (1) the basic structure of society (that is, the set of most important social institutions), (2) to liberal democratic societies rather than also to nondemocratic and illiberal societies, (3) and to the principles of justice insofar as they apply to people in their capacity as citizens. The scope of the capability approach can be summarized as “justice applies everywhere”—that is, it applies to all human beings independently of their country of birth or residence, and not only to social institutions but also to the social ethos and to social practices.

Regarding theoretical aims, one can safely say that most capability scholars tend to disfavor top-down theorizing, and prefer to find out how theory or philosophy can help us make the actual world, a social institution or a practice more just, rather then to work more abstractly on the principles of justice and their justification. This last difference has been a main point of attention in Sen's more recent work (Sen 2009a), and by capability theorist who would like to develop a different kind of justice theorising, which focusses on what injustices are and which capability shortfalls should be tackled, how, by whom, and why.

Moreover, Rawlsians have criticized the capability approach too, and not all of their critiques have been sufficiently rebutted (Pogge 2002; Freeman 2006; Kelly 2010). Firstly, the capability approach is claimed to be endorsing a particular comprehensive moral view, which Rawlsians find objectionable. Another main Rawlsian objection to the capability approach concerns the publicity criterion, which stipulates that the conception of justice must be public and the necessary information to make a claim of injustice must be verifiable by all, and easily accessible. Rawlsians argue that a theory of justice needs a public standard of interpersonal comparisons, as otherwise the obtained principles of justice among citizens with diverse conceptions of the good life will not prove stable. The suggestion is that as capabilities are very hard to measure or assess in such a public fashion, and as they would require very large amounts and difficult sorts of information, the capability approach is unworkable as a theory of justice. Finally, some Rawlsians, like Richardson (2006) believe that the Rawlsian principles of justice can be adapted if we want to include human beings with non-standard needs such as the disabled, and that this may result in the justification of a mixed social primary goods/capabilities metric of justice. In short, this debate, too, is far from closed.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up this entry topic at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

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consequentialism | economics and economic justice | egalitarianism | justice: distributive | liberty: positive and negative | Rawls, John | well-being

Acknowledgments

For very helpful comments, I am grateful to Thomas Pogge and my former colleagues at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Copyright © 2016 by Ingrid Robeyns < i . a . m . robeyns @ uu . nl >

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Applications of the Capability Approach in the Health Field: A Literature Review

Paul mark mitchell.

1 Health Economics Unit, Institute of Applied Health Research, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

2 Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine, School of Social Science and Public Policy, King’s College London, London, UK

3 School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

Tracy E. Roberts

Pelham m. barton, joanna coast.

The primary aims of this review are to document capability applications in the health field and to explore the objectives and decision-rules of studies measuring capability more broadly. Relevant studies are identified using a literature search strategy known as “comprehensive pearl growing”. All studies with a primary focus on health are assessed individually, whilst a summary narrative analysis of the full review examines the objectives of capability studies. Four distinct groups in the health field are identified in the review: (1) physical activity and diet; (2) patient empowerment; (3) multidimensional poverty and (4) assessments of health and social care interventions. Different approaches to applying mixed methods, selecting capability dimensions and weighting capabilities are found across studies. There is a noticeable non-reliance on health status as a sole indicator of capability in health. In terms of objectives of studies measuring capability, although there is a lack of consistency, an objective related to sufficiency of capabilities appeared most often in the studies found in this review. Even though one of the appeals of the capability perspective is its underspecified nature, this review highlights the challenge of finding a coherent alternative to more established approaches of evaluation.

Introduction

The capability approach is a broad normative framework that provides an alternative to welfare economic approaches to evaluating well-being, with a primary focus on individual’s ability to achieve valuable functionings in life (Sen 1993 ). The capability approach has attracted interest from a wide variety of researchers, scholars and policymakers alike, with the Human Development and Capability Association consisting of 15 thematic groups in May 2016. A number of literature reviews on empirical applications across disciplines have been conducted, relating to the aspects of the capability approach that are the focus for analysis (Kuklys and Robeyns 2005 ), the spread of capability applications across disciplines (Robeyns 2006 ) and the types of statistical approaches taken when measuring capability (Chiappero-Martinetti and Roche 2009 ). A number of researchers have also attempted to conceptualise the capability approach for health specifically (Law and Widdows 2008 ; Ruger 2010 ; Venkatapuram 2011 ; Entwistle and Watt 2013 ). The primary aims of this review are to document studies that apply the capability approach in the health field and to explore the objectives and decision-rules (i.e. criteria for deciding to accept or reject proposal) of studies measuring capability more broadly.

Health itself is notoriously difficult to define (Venkatapuram 2013 ) and we do not attempt that task here, focusing more on how authors have conceptualised their own study. In terms of practical application of the capability approach within the health field, however, less is known about the breadth and scope of studies being undertaken. Three reviews have assessed the development of capability measures in health economics (Lorgelly et al. 2010 ; Coast et al. 2015 ; Lorgelly 2015 ). However, it is less clear what the current evidence base is on topics related to health in general. The first aim of this study is to document studies that apply the capability approach in the health field.

Less attention has also been paid to how capability measures are being used to inform policy making. Although there are widely documented indices informed by the capability approach [for example, the Human Development Index (HDI), the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)], these are focused mainly on international comparisons; less is known about the purpose or objectives of capability applications across other fields of research. Given the underspecified nature of the capability approach (Gasper 2007 ), it would be informative to know how capability objectives are interpreted for particular policy areas across different fields. The second aim of this paper is to establish the analytical objectives when applying measures of capability. Since little has been written on this specific topic within the health field, in achieving this second aim, the research draws on the literature across all fields.

These aims will be achieved through undertaking a literature review, applying a search strategy known as “comprehensive pearl growing” (Hartley et al. 1990 ) to identify studies measuring capability with a primary focus on health. Then, a summary narrative analysis of studies included in the review across other fields will be used to detail how researchers, in general, are applying the capability approach to aid decision-making.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section  2 details the comprehensive pearl growing search strategy employed to identify relevant studies. The method of identifying studies through key ‘pearls’ and inclusion and exclusion criteria used in the study are then explained. Data extraction and methods of analysis used are given before summary results of the literature search and grouping of papers by themes is presented. Given the primary focus of the review on the topic of health, the literature relating to health is then reviewed in much greater detail. Studies in the broad area of health are first grouped and described according to four key sub-themes. They are then compared in terms of the methodologies that they use, particularly in relation to how capabilities are selected and how weights are assigned to the selected capabilities. A summary narrative analysis of objectives and decision-rules across all other studies outside the health field is then presented. A discussion of the literature review findings concludes the paper.

Literature Search Strategy

The search strategy employed in this review is known as “comprehensive pearl growing”, a particularly useful search strategy for interdisciplinary topics (Schlosser et al. 2006 ). The process of pearl growing commences with the identification of ‘key pearls’ (i.e. key studies), that can be identified from within the literature as being compatible with the aim of the review (Hartley et al. 1990 ). Once the key pearls have been identified, these are used to generate the ‘first wave of pearls’, that is, papers that have cited the key pearls within their reference list. Essentially, this type of search uses forward citations emanating initially from ‘key pearls’ and then from subsequent waves of pearls.

The literature search was undertaken through the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Knowledge citation search online facility. The ISI Web of Knowledge covers a number of databases including Web of Science (sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities) and MEDLINE (biomedicine and health sciences), which made it an appropriate database for searching capability literature across a wide variety of disciplines.

Papers published between 1 January 2006 and 1 December 2012 were included in the initial search, with the review updated to include studies on ISI until 1 November 2014. The review aimed to focus on the most recent advances in the operationalisation of the capability approach, given that earlier studies were already likely to have been captured through previous capability empirical reviews (Kuklys and Robeyns 2005 ; Robeyns 2006 ; Chiappero-Martinetti and Roche 2009 ).

Selection of Key Pearls

To identify the key pearls, research included in three previous reviews was considered (Kuklys and Robeyns 2005 ; Robeyns 2006 ; Chiappero-Martinetti and Roche 2009 ). The broadest disciplinary focus from the previous reviews was the study by Robeyns ( 2006 ) who identified nine areas where the capability approach has been applied (Robeyns 2006 ). Two groups (critiquing social norms and non-normative research) were excluded as the studies were not relevant for the focus of this review. From each of Robeyns’ remaining seven groups, at least one study per group was chosen as an initial key pearl. Nine ‘key pearls’ from Robeyns’ ( 2006 ) review were included and the Robeyns review ( 2006 ) itself was the tenth key pearl. Overall ten key pearls were included (Chiappero-Martinetti 2000 ; Alkire 2002 ; Fukuda-Parr 2003 ; Robeyns 2003 ; Ruggeri Laderchi et al. 2003 ; Kuklys 2005 ; Lewis and Giullari 2005 ; Zaidi and Burchardt 2005 ; Anand and van Hees 2006 ; Robeyns 2006 ).

Inclusion Criteria and Paper Categorisation

To be included, studies required to be published papers in English and needed to address at least one of the two review objectives:

• the aggregation of capability at an individual level (i.e. domains of capability included) and/or across populations (i.e. how capability between individuals are compared), and/or
• an objective or decision-rule as to how such outcomes could be then used to aid decision-making

Based on the above criteria, titles and abstracts for the studies were sorted through keyword searching. Keyword searching through title and abstract was structured as follows:

• Capability OR Capabilities OR Functioning(s) OR Agency [Capability keyword]
• Measure OR Outcome OR Empirical OR Index OR Operationalisation [Measurement keyword]

Studies excluded are non-English publications, books and book chapters, conference abstracts and presentations. Additionally, studies conducting validity of capability measures in certain patient groups were excluded as they were beyond the scope of this review.

This review followed a two stage process of study categorisation. This follows from previous reviews that have used this categorisation process to identify the studies of most relevance to the research question at hand (Roberts et al. 2002 ).

Stage I: Initial Categorisation of Studies

The studies identified using the previously outlined search strategy were then sorted into three categories based on the title and abstract.

Category A: studies that mentioned at least one capability keyword AND at least one measurement keyword.

Category B: studies that could be potentially relevant to the review, but required more information than the title and abstract alone. If the study contained at least one capability keyword but no measurement keyword, the study was examined for a results section including tables and figures, which could potentially indicate an attempt to measure capability outcomes. If a measurement keyword was found in the title and abstract but no capability keyword, the reference list for the study was searched for citations of key capability writings by either Amartya Sen (Sen 1985 , 1992 , 1993 , 2000 , 2009 ) or Martha Nussbaum (Nussbaum 2000 , 2011 ), as a means of eliciting whether the study was concerned with capability.

Category C: studies that were excluded from the review. The studies either did not include any of the capability or measurement keywords or did not meet the criteria for Category B.

Studies identified from the first wave that were categorised as Category A or B were then employed to carry out a further wave search. Studies that had cited these new pearls were then categorised in the same manner as in the first wave. This process of wave searching continued until no new relevant studies were found. An illustration of the pearl growing method is presented in Fig.  1 .

Illustration of the comprehensive pearl growing method

Stage II: Further Classification of Studies

Following the completion of the pearl search, studies categorised as either A or B were further classified after being read in full. Four classifications were used to identify the final papers for inclusion.

• Study developed and/or applied capability related outcome and discusses decision rule
• Study developed and/or applied capability related outcome but does not discuss decision rule
• Study discusses decision rule but does not develop nor apply capability related outcome
• Study does not develop nor apply capability related outcome nor discuss decision rule

Papers within the first three classifications were included in the analysis. Papers within the fourth classification were excluded from further analysis.

The review update used all studies classified within the first three categories during the initial search as the starting ‘key pearls’ for the update.

Data Extraction

Data were extracted from all included studies using a standardised data extraction form. This follows protocol for data extraction from systematic reviews in health (CRD 2009 ). Information extracted from studies include name of author(s); title of study; year of publication; dimensions within capability related measure; thematic group study most associated with; context capability measure developed for; country study conducted; study country specific or multinational; whether comparisons are made between different population groups; objective of study; and what decision criteria/rules discussed (see Appendix 1 ). The initial extraction and thematic grouping was undertaken by the first author and co-authors checked that the grouping of studies by theme most accurately reflected the primary focus of each individual study.

Robeyns’ ( 2006 ) seven application groups (i. General assessment of human development; ii. Assessing small scale development projects; iii. Identifying the poor in developing countries; iv. Poverty and well-being assessment in advanced economics; v. Deprivation of disabled people; vi. assessing gender inequalities; vii. Debating policies) that identified key pearls for this review are used as a starting point for grouping and analysing all the studies included following the pearl search; where studies fell outside these groups, additional groups for new themes were generated when necessary. Those grouped in a health thematic group are of primary interest in this review and we detail each study found, as well as comparing and contrasting the studies found in this group. To explore objective and decision-rules across fields outside of health, a narrative summary of the studies found in the remainder of the review is presented to give an overview of approaches across thematic groups.

Summary of Pearl Search

The summary of the literature search is provided in Fig.  2 . Out of 783 studies identified in the seven waves of literature searches, 113 studies are included in the review (see Appendix 2 ).

Summary statistics of initial comprehensive pearl growing review results

Summary Data for Studies Included

Figure  3 shows the spread of studies across seven capability thematic groups identified by Robeyns ( 2006 ) (i.e. group i.–group vii.) and three new themes that emerged from this review (i.e. group viii.–group x.). Group iv. (assessing poverty and well-being assessment in advanced economies) has the highest proportion of studies identified out of the 10 groups with 26 studies. The three new groups, education (group viii), technology (group ix.) and health (group x.), account for 37 of the 113 studies identified, showing a growing interest in capability applications in these three groups in particular. Indeed, the health group produced the second largest number of studies, with 19 papers focused primarily in the health field.

Number of studies per capability thematic group. Capability thematic groups: i general assessment of human development; ii assessing small; scale development projects: iii identifying the poor in developing countries, iv poverty; well-being assessment in advanced economics: v deprivation of disabled people, vi assessing gender inequalities: vii debating policies, viii education, ix technology, x health

Thematic Group x. Health

The health thematic group consisted of nineteen studies in total and are first detailed in four sections, before a comparison of studies is presented.

Physical Activity

Four studies from the United States looked into how the capability approach could be applied in assessing people’s capability to engage in physical activity with the aim of improving their health. Lewis ( 2012a , b ) undertook two studies looking into how the built environment in communities can be a leading instigator into the capability of individuals to participate in physical activity, exploring what questionnaires would be appropriate to capture this capability (Lewis 2012a , b ). Ferrer also led two studies, tackling problems associated with lack of physical activity in different ways. The first, Ferrer and Carrasco ( 2010 ), developed a list of capabilities to assess patient’s ability to manage their own health behaviours through an 18 item list on diet and physical activity (Ferrer and Carrasco 2010 ). The second and more recent, Ferrer et al. ( 2014 ) developed an instrument on healthy diet and physical activity using a more rigorous mixed methods approach. Qualitative focus groups were conducted with members from the Latino community, who had obesity and diabetes, to ascertain the constraints on opportunities to pursue healthy behaviour. From the focus groups, eight scales measuring capability approach constructs were produced: two subscales for resources and six subscales on conversion factors. The authors emphasise that their results show the need to focus on practical opportunities for healthy behaviour that will help bridge goals of intention with achievement of a healthy lifestyle (Ferrer et al. 2014 ).

Empowerment in Health

Three studies identified were concerned with patient empowerment. Two studies identified in the review worked on measuring women’s empowerment in developing countries when it came to decision-making relating to their health. Mabsout ( 2011 ) developed a health functioning model for Ethiopian women, with the aim to reduce shortfalls in health through measuring education, earnings share, control over earnings and decision-making (Mabsout 2011 ). Nikiema et al. ( 2012 ) pursued a similar theme by assessing women’s perceived ability to access healthcare in Burkina Faso by knowing where to go to seek care, getting permission to go, getting money for treatment, distance to health facility, having to take transportation, not wanting to go alone and concern that there may not be a female healthcare provider available. The third discussed the trade-offs associated with patient empowerment versus the maximisation of a patient’s health status (McAllister et al. 2012 ).

Multidimensional Poverty in Health Groups

Three studies were concerned with assessing multidimensional poverty in a health setting. Callander et al. ( 2013a , b ) developed what they termed as a Freedom Poverty Measure, assessing poverty in terms of three dimensions: income, education and health. Although similar in make-up to the HDI, Callander et al. ( 2013a ) placed additional weight on income due to its perceived importance in assessing poverty in Australia. Using a national representative survey from the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2003, of those classified as multidimensionally poor, three out of four had a chronic health condition. Having a chronic condition meant individuals were three times more likely to be multidimensionally poor, raising to seven times as likely if the chronic health condition was depression/mood affecting disorder (Callander et al. 2013a ). Callander et al. ( 2013b ) also used the same dataset and applied their freedom poverty measure to assess freedom poverty in people with cardiovascular disease.

Mitra et al. ( 2013 ) used a mixed methods approach to develop a multidimensional poverty measure to assess the situation of persons with psychiatric disorders in the United States. First, Mitra and colleagues developed a theoretical capability list before focusing on seven empirical capabilities that could be measured through the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. These empirical capabilities were then the subject of two focus groups who were asked to rank the importance of each capability. Rankings based on a lived experience group of psychiatric disorders and a providers/research group were used to weight capabilities separately, and apply two different methods of weighting the capabilities based on their ranking (Mitra et al. 2013 ). Results showed that the measure of multidimensional poverty was sensitive to the selection of different ranking and weighting structures. Mitra et al. ( 2013 ) concluded that further development of multidimensional measures should proceed using larger scale qualitative methods or combined methods (i.e. qualitative and quantitative) when ranking and weighting the capabilities (Mitra et al. 2013 ).

Assessments of Health and Social Care Interventions

Nine studies developed and/or applied capability measures for assessing health and care interventions for different population groups. Of these nine, six studies were concerned with the development of the ICEpop CAPability measure for Older people (ICECAP-O). Using qualitative interviews with older adults in the United Kingdom, it was found that the capability to achieve important functionings was of primary interest to this population (Grewal et al. 2006 ). Subsequently, thematic analysis was undertaken on the qualitative interviews to develop a short self-complete questionnaire (ICECAP-O) capturing the most important capabilities for this age group (Coast et al. 2008 ). Five capabilities were found to be of primary importance: attachment, role, enjoyment, security and control (Coast et al. 2008 ). The five capabilities were then assigned weights to create an index, based on a random utility methodology known as best-worst scaling (Coast et al. 2008 ). The ICECAP-O has now been used to assess capability in a number of different country and health settings, such as in fall patients in Canada (Davis et al. 2013 ), arthritis patients in the UK (Mitchell et al. 2013 ), older carers in Australia (Ratcliffe et al. 2013 ) and the general population for public health research in Australia (Couzner et al. 2013 ). A similar, although distinct, measure for the general adult population is the ICECAP-A, which has been developed using the same methodology. It also has five attributes of capability, although in the general adult population the most important attributes are stability, attachment, achievement, autonomy and enjoyment (Al-Janabi et al. 2012 ).

Another capability measure aimed primarily at older adults is the adult social care outcomes toolkit (ASCOT) (Netten et al. 2012 ). Also using qualitative methods to develop attributes, Netten et al. ( 2012 ) found nine areas to include when assessing social care interventions: food and drink, personal care, safety, social participation and involvement, control over daily living, accommodation, cleanliness and comfort, occupation and dignity. Although the ASCOT was originally developed without theoretical justification from the capability approach, the most recent ASCOT has an emphasis on the newly developed highest level of each attribute on the wants and likes of social care users to reflect a broader aspect of the questionnaire on capability. The lower three levels on the ASCOT reflect levels of basic functioning (Netten et al. 2012 ). Using preference weighting to develop a measure of social care related quality of life, Netten et al. ( 2012 ) developed a measure that can be used to produce a social care quality adjusted life year (QALY), allowing comparisons with the health QALY to judge resource allocation across health and social care interventions. QALYs are used by health guidance bodies, such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in England, to assess the cost-effectiveness of interventions based on their contribution to morbidity and mortality improvements (NICE 2014).

A final study developed a capability questionnaire for assessing the capability of mental health patients (Simon et al. 2013 ). Rooted in Nussbaum’s list of 10 essential human capabilities (Nussbaum 2000 ), the Oxford Capability Mental Health (OxCap-MH) measure consists of 18 items that has been developed from previous attempts to formulate Nussbaum’s list into a questionnaire format (Simon et al. 2013 ). Simon et al. ( 2013 ) tested their capability instrument within the Oxford Community Treatment Evaluation Trial and developed a capability index. In terms of valuing capability items, each item is weighted equally.

Comparison of Studies in the Health Group

There are a variety of ways the capability approach is being adopted in health and the individuals who are targeted by researchers measuring capabilities vary across studies. A mixed methods approach appears popular across a large number of the studies. However, there are key distinctions as to when qualitative and quantitative methods are applied. For Mitra et al. ( 2013 ), key aspects of capability for their population of interest are first identified through their research team, before asking focus groups the importance of the capability indicators they present. Simon et al. ( 2013 ) adopt a similar approach using Nussbaum’s list of 10 essential capabilities as their basis of capability indicators to include before testing their questionnaire in a mental health population. Alternatively, other studies have first asked their population of interest what aspects of life are important to them: obese or diabetic (Ferrer et al. 2014 ), people 65 years and older (Grewal et al. 2006 ), and social care users (Netten et al. 2012 ). For people 65 years and older, this led to a capability questionnaire being developed through thematic analysis by the research team (Coast et al. 2008 ). Ferrer et al. ( 2014 ) adopted a quantitative approach to finalising their questionnaire, using principal component analysis to generate a measure capturing resources and conversion factors to engage in a healthy diet and physical activity. For social care users, a previous version of a social care questionnaire was modified to reflect what was found in qualitative interviews and to attempt to capture capability (Netten et al. 2012 ).

A number of different weights across dimensions were applied. Simon et al. ( 2013 ) followed Nussbaum’s stance on the importance of achieving all capabilities in their list, so equal weight was attached to the 10 dimensions, although this approach indirectly gives double weight to dimensions that have two questions per dimension compared to one question per dimension. Callander et al. ( 2013a , b ) give additional weight to income in their freedom poverty measure of education, health and income; an unusual approach in capability literature where focus has shifted on moving away from income in a multidimensional poverty space (Alkire and Foster 2011 ). To be classified in freedom poverty, meaning multidimensionally poor, individuals needed low income (below 50 % of median income poverty line) and either poor overall health status (lower than average SF-6D utility score for their age group) or have insufficient education (less than 12 years aged 25–64 or less than 10 years aged 65 and above) (Callander et al. 2013a ). Mitra et al. ( 2013 ) use quantitative weighting formulas based on the ranking of importance of dimensions found in their focus groups. Netten et al. ( 2012 ) weight their social care instrument using a mixture of time trade-off and best-worst scaling methodology. These methods, in particular time trade-off are most prominently used to weight health states in QALYs for health economic evaluations. Coast et al. ( 2008 ) have argued against the use of the preference-based time trade-off methodology when weighting capabilities. Instead, Coast et al. ( 2008 ) base capability weighting on best-worst scaling only, arguing this approach involves population value judgements as opposed to people’s preferences.

What is noticeable in all studies is the lack of reliance on health status as the sole measure of capability, suggesting a shift in the evaluative space from functionings to capability in the studies found in this review. For example, Mabsout ( 2011 ) and Nikiema et al. ( 2012 ) find that focusing on women’s ability to make decisions with regard to health seeking behaviour takes prominence. McAllister et al. ( 2012 ) discusses how there could be a tradeoff between maximising health in favour of patient empowerment, although they do not detail how this may work in practice.

Across the 19 studies in the health group, there does not appear to be a sole objective reflective of the capability approach. Netten et al. ( 2012 ) take the traditional health economics route of implementing a measure using preference weights to develop a social care QALY to aid social care decision-making in terms of cost-effectiveness, with the aim of maximising QALY gains. However, such an approach is outright rejected by Simon et al. ( 2013 ), who argue that incorporating preferences similar to the QALY approach goes against the underlying rationale of the capability approach.

Capability Objectives and Decision-Rules

This section provides a narrative summary of the objectives and decision-rules from the studies identified in this review not classed in the health group (see Appendix 2 ).

Although the capability approach was developed as an alternative to the traditional utilitarian approach in welfare economic assessment, there are some studies identified in this review who argue that capabilities can fall within a similar maximisation framework. One example of this is Renouard ( 2011 ), whose study suggests that corporate social responsibility within private enterprise should account for what they term as “relational capability”. By drawing upon research within anthropology and Sen and Nussbaum’s research, Renouard ( 2011 ) proposes to look beyond utility maximisation of company stakeholders but rather achieve the:

maximisation of the relational capability of people impacted by the activities of companies (Renouard 2011 )

This concept of maximising an absolute level of capabilities is not limited to the above example, with Biggeri and Ferrannini suggesting an objective of “maximising freedoms” in development analysis (Biggeri and Ferrannini 2014 ). Tikly and Barrett ( 2011 ) also state that the capability approach of “maximising choice” is a more appropriate assessment of welfare than the standard rational choice theory of economics within education of low income countries:

Here the assumption is that individuals act on the basis of the maximisation of their own utility and that efficiency within the public welfare system is best served through maximising ‘choice’ (Tikly and Barrett 2011 )

However, the objective of maximising capabilities in some form or another as an absolute aim is not a reflection of the majority of work related to the papers found in this review. As an example of this, Anand et al. ( 2009 ) states:

they (people) do not wish to maximize total social welfare for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that they are concerned about distributional issues too (Anand et al. 2009 )

Many papers focus on the maximisation of something less than optimum levels as a priority, such as the maximisation of basic capabilities (Krishnakumar and Ballon 2008 ) or by measuring poverty as “insufficiency in basic capabilities” (Kerstenetzky and Santos 2009 ).

Other conceptualisations of the capability approach have developed within more advanced economies. Binder and Broekel ( 2011 ) develop their concept of “conversion efficiency” as an alternative to traditional well-being assessment:

The idea of relative efficiency means we are evaluating individuals’ efficiency not with a theoretically derived maximum, but to the maximum of functioning achievement observed in the data given a certain level of resources (Binder and Broekel 2011 )

Binder and Broekel ( 2011 ) demonstrated their measure within Great Britain and showed that conversion efficiency is improved within this sample, by age, self-employment, marriage, the absence of any health problem and living in London and the surrounding boroughs.

Murphy and Gardoni ( 2010 ) developed a two-stage process for assessing individual capability within a risk analysis, such that:

for defined groups, the goal should be to maximise variability of non-basic capabilities and minimise variability within sub-vectors of basic capabilities and among defined groups of those with similar boundary conditions (Murphy and Gardoni 2010 )

Another alternative to welfare maximisation in a narrow space comes from the field of education. Callander et al. ( 2012 ) argue that increasing educational opportunities for youths is not an adequate pre-requisite to future labour force participation. Instead they develop a measure drawn from the multidimensional poverty literature (Alkire and Foster 2011 ) to assess health alongside education, which they argue is also likely to have an impact of the probability of labour force participation in the future:

efforts to increase children’s future labour participation rates as a means of improving their living standards should also focus on improving childhood health, as well as education. (Callander et al. 2012 )

From this review, there does not appear to be a method for combining a measure of capability with the cost of an intervention, even though studies have developed outcomes as alternatives to measuring benefits monetarily in a cost-benefit analysis (Beyazit 2010 ; Gardoni and Murphy 2010 ).

This study provides an up to date review of empirical capability applications, focusing particularly on publications interested in measuring capability in health and aiding decision-making more generally. Through an overview and comparison of research in the health field and a summary narrative analysis of studies across identified thematic groups, the review finds a number of different interpretations as to what capabilities to focus on depending on the intervention under consideration. Although this can be argued to be one of the benefits of the capability approach, drawing from the “toolbox” to suit a given research question (Conradie and Robeyns 2013 ), it also leads to practical difficulty. Mitra et al. ( 2013 ) summarise this problem neatly:

Although there is conceptual value to its voluntary incompleteness, Sen’s approach makes the capability approach difficult to operationalize (Mitra et al. 2013 )

This study provides an overview as to how researchers are attempting to measure capability and inform decision and policy making, particularly in the health field. The health overview provides information on how different research groups are drawing from the same approach to solve similar problems in different ways, albeit with the caveat that different individuals are targeted for analysis by different researchers. The narrative analysis of objectives within capability empirical applications provides an overview as to how researchers across disciplines are using the approach to address policy needs, where we try to determine the level of consistency across a wide variety of subject fields as to what is the primary objective when measuring capability in practice.

The capability approach continues to grow in its application, with this review requiring the classification of three new capability thematic groups compared to a previously conducted review (Robeyns 2006 ). Although this is an encouraging development, it could lead to a lack of coherence in utilising the capability approach even in the same topic area. Health is a prime example. Four different sections were required to describe the analysis using a capability approach in the same, albeit vast, field. Not only is the capability approach being applied in different ways, researchers have different interpretations of what it means to employ a capability perspective. However, the focus in all studies in the health field in moving away from a reliance on health status alone towards capturing individual capability provides a form of agreement in this area. This compares to a previous review of capability empirical applications across disciplines that found researchers using the capability approach most commonly measured functioning attainment (e.g. good health) rather than attempting to capture the capability to attain such functionings (Robeyns 2006 ). This indicates that studies within the health field are rising to the challenge of the “capability criterion”, i.e. measuring the opportunity aspect of the capability approach that makes it a distinct framework from traditional evaluative approaches, such as welfare economics (Gasper 2007 ).

The primary results show that there is a pluralistic interpretation as to how the capability approach should be applied either in health or elsewhere to aid decision-making. Therefore, decision-makers who are used to a consistent approach may struggle to apply the capability perspective in practice if there is no guiding principle as to what a capability based evaluation should look like and what is its overall objective. However, the majority of the studies reviewed across thematic groups appear to follow a trend related to achieving “basic capabilities” (Young 2009 ) or a “minimum level of capabilities attainment” (Murphy and Gardoni 2008 ). This threshold approach has also been referred to within regions as a “sufficiency economy” (Parks 2012 ) or within adult literacy as a “sufficient” level of learning (Maddox and Esposito 2011 ). Although there may be some crossover with a sufficiency objective and conceptualisations of the capability approach for health, it is not clear that the leading conceptual authors of the capability approach for health (Ruger 2010 ; Venkatapuram 2011 ) or more generally (Nussbaum 2011 ; Sen 2009 ) would support such an objective as an overarching goal.

Compared to similar reviews conducted on capability applications, this study produces a novel way of searching for capability literature in a comprehensive manner, using an explicit methodology. Previous reviews of capability applications did not document how their studies were collated, meaning other researchers could not replicate their search if they so wished. The pearl searching method employed here is also useful for researchers trying to gather studies related to their work and are only aware of a few key publications. There is precedent for using this methodology when searching the health literature for topics where search terms have a number of meanings and relevant papers are not easily identified from non-relevant papers using traditional systematic search strategies (Dolan et al. 2005 ; Tsuchiya and Dolan 2005 ; Stafinski et al. 2010 , 2011 ). A review of empirical applications of the capability approach seems similarly well suited to this method, as using a key word search strategy for a term such as “capability” that has a number of different meanings would return thousands of irrelevant studies. This pearl searching process provides a method as to how related studies can be easily identified. Given the spread of application of the capability approach across thematic groups found in this review (see Fig.  3 ), the need for a comprehensive approach for reviewing literature is more important, as it is unlikely any researcher will be able to identify all related work in their field without using such a comprehensive literature search strategy approach.

There are a number of limitations with this review. The literature search was restricted to published papers in English only. Whilst we are aware that some of work on capabilities often appears in books and other languages, this was a limitation that was necessary, as there was no consistent method for checking whether book chapters or non-English studies were relevant for this review. It is also important to note that this review does not cover the totality of research in the health field or other thematic areas, as it was focused on a particular review question. The studies that met the inclusion criteria for the review tended to be quantitative in nature, given the research focus; it is important therefore not to interpret the findings and selection of studies in this review as being representative of the entirety of research effort concerning the capability approach. Also, as we did not conduct any form of quality check on the papers, ensuring only peer review publications were considered provided some form of quality check.

Although there are positives for the pearl growing search strategy, there are also some negatives. The freedom for the researcher to include any research they wish in their review was not followed here. Additionally, research that fell outside the review search criteria (i.e. year of publication, publication type etc.) is automatically excluded, so relevant studies that are known to the authors of this review that could have been included in this review were not possible (Ibrahim and Tiwari 2014 ; Greco et al. 2015 ; Kinghorn 2015 ; Kinghorn et al. 2015 ; Lorgelly et al. 2015 ; Mitchell et al. 2015a , b ; Ruger 2015 ). A more flexible approach of reviewing literature in a comprehensive search may be more appropriate when reviewing capability literature in future. Moreover, the search strategy allowed measures developed closer to the start of the literature search start date (e.g. ICECAP-O) to accumulate other studies using them in practice, compared to more recently developed measures (e.g. ASCOT, ICECAP-A, OxCAP-MH). In addition, future literature reviews related to this topic should also consider qualitative research in the health field, the kinds of questions asked in relevant studies and how the concept of capability relates to the types of questions asked by different researchers.

Our focus in this review was to provide clarity as to how capabilities were measured in the health field and whether or not there is a clear objective when measuring capability. We have shown a wide variety of applications of empirical studies within health and different objectives across disciplines. For clinicians and policymakers to take the capability approach seriously as a viable alternative to the welfare economics influenced approaches that have now been established in evidence based medicine (for example, the incremental cost effectiveness ratio when using the QALY in health economic evaluations), more clarity about alternative objectives is required. Such alternative objectives need to be just as applicable to the health context as to that of poverty assessment if they are to obtain wider usage. Given there is a lack of consistency about how the measurement of capabilities can be used to aid decision-making, the challenge remains as to whether the capability approach can offer a coherent alternative to welfarist or other non-welfarist economic assessments across health and public policy.

Financial support for this study was provided by a PhD studentship from the School of Health and Population Sciences at the University of Birmingham and a Wellcome Trust fellowship (WT094245) at King’s College London. The funding agreement ensures the authors’ independence in designing the study, interpreting the data, wording and publishing the article.

Appendix 1: Data Extraction Sheet

Appendix 2: Studies Included in Final Review Across Capability Thematic Groups

Group i. general assessment of human development.

Alkire, Sabina, and James Foster. 2011. “Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement.” Journal of Public Economics no. 95 (7–8):476–487. doi: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.11.006.

Alkire, Sabina, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Amber Peterman, Agnes Quisumbing, Greg Seymour, and Ana Vaz. 2013. “The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index.” World Development no. 52 (0):71–91. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.06.007.

Alkire, Sabina, and Maria Emma Santos. 2014. “Measuring Acute Poverty in the Developing World: Robustness and Scope of the Multidimensional Poverty Index.” World Development no. 59 (0):251–274. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.01.026.

Alkire, Sabina, and MariaEmma Santos. 2013. “A Multidimensional Approach: Poverty Measurement & Beyond.” Social Indicators Research no. 112 (2):239–257. doi: 10.1007/s11205-013-0257-3.

Anand, Paul, Jaya Krishnakumar, and Ngoc Bich Tran. 2011. “Measuring welfare: Latent variable models for happiness and capabilities in the presence of unobservable heterogeneity.” Journal of Public Economics no. 95 (3–4):205–215. doi: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.11.007.

Distaso, Alba. 2007. “Well-being and/or quality of life in EU countries through a multidimensional index of sustainability.” Ecological Economics no. 64 (1):163–180. doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2007.02.025.

Gardoni, Paolo, and Colleen Murphy. 2010. “Gauging the societal impacts of natural disasters using a capability approach.” Disasters no. 34 (3):619–636. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7717.2010.01160.x.

Krishnakumar, Jaya, and Paola Ballon. 2008. “Estimating Basic Capabilities: A Structural Equation Model Applied to Bolivia.” World Development no. 36 (6):992–1010. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2007.10.006.

Nguefack‐Tsague, Georges, Stephan Klasen, and Walter Zucchini. 2011. “On Weighting the Components of the Human Development Index: A Statistical Justification.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 12 (2):183–202. doi: 10.1080/19452829.2011.571077.

Notten, Geranda, and Keetie Roelen. 2012. “A New Tool for Monitoring (Child) Poverty: Measures of Cumulative Deprivation.” Child Indicators Research no. 5 (2):335–355. doi: 10.1007/s12187-011-9130-6.

Nussbaumer, Patrick, Morgan Bazilian, and Vijay Modi. 2012. “Measuring energy poverty: Focusing on what matters.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews no. 16 (1):231–243. doi: 10.1016/j.rser.2011.07.150.

Rende, Sevinc, and Murat Donduran. 2013. “Neighborhoods in Development: Human Development Index and Self-organizing Maps.” Social Indicators Research no. 110 (2):721–734. doi: 10.1007/s11205-011-9955-x.

Group ii. Assessing Small Scale Development Projects

Biggeri, Mario, and Andrea Ferrannini. 2014. “Opportunity Gap Analysis: Procedures and Methods for Applying the Capability Approach in Development Initiatives.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 15 (1):60–78. doi: 10.1080/19452829.2013.837036.

Conradie, Ina, and Ingrid Robeyns. 2013. “Aspirations and Human Development Interventions.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 14 (4):559–580. doi: 10.1080/19452829.2013.827637.

Peris, Jordi, Sarai Fariñas, Estela López, and Alejandra Boni. 2012. “Expanding collective agency in rural indigenous communities in Guatemala: a case for El Almanario approach.” International Development Planning Review no. 34 (1):83–102. doi: 10.3828/idpr.2012.6.

Group iii. Identifying the Poor in Developing Countries

Alkire, Sabina, and Suman Seth. 2013. “Selecting a Targeting Method to Identify BPL Households in India.” Social Indicators Research no. 112 (2):417–446. doi: 10.1007/s11205-013-0254-6.

Ansari, Shahzad, Kamal Munir, and Tricia Gregg. 2012. “Impact at the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’: The Role of Social Capital in Capability Development and Community Empowerment.” Journal of Management Studies no. 49 (4):813–842. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.2012.01042.x.

Arndt, Channing, Andres Garcia, Finn Tarp, and James Thurlow. 2012. “Poverty Reduction and Economic Structure: Comparative Path Analysis for Mozambique and Vietnam.” Review of Income and Wealth no. 58 (4):742–763. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4991.2011.00474.x.

Barrientos, Armando. 2010. “Protecting Capability, Eradicating Extreme Poverty: Chile Solidario and the Future of Social Protection.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 11 (4):579–597. doi: 10.1080/19452829.2010.520926.

Batana, YéléMaweki. 2013. “Multidimensional Measurement of Poverty Among Women in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Social Indicators Research no. 112 (2):337–362. doi: 10.1007/s11205-013-0251-9.

Clark, David A., and Mozaffar Qizilbash. 2008. “Core Poverty, Vagueness and Adaptation: A New Methodology and Some Results for South Africa.” The Journal of Development Studies no. 44 (4):519–544. doi: 10.1080/00220380801980855.

Groh, Sebastian. 2014. “The role of energy in development processes—The energy poverty penalty: Case study of Arequipa (Peru).” Energy for Sustainable Development no. 18 (0):83–99. doi: 10.1016/j.esd.2013.12.002.

Kerstenetzky, Celia Lessa, and Larissa Santos. 2009. “Poverty as Deprivation of Freedom: The Case of Vidigal Shantytown in Rio de Janeiro.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 10 (2):189. doi: 10.1080/19452820902940893.

Neff, Daniel. 2013. “Fuzzy set theoretic applications in poverty research.” Policy and Society no. 32 (4):319–331. doi: 10.1016/j.polsoc.2013.10.004.

Ningaye, Paul, TiomelaYemedjeu Alexi, and TakoutioFeudjio Virginie. 2013. “Multi-Poverty in Cameroon: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach.” Social Indicators Research no. 113 (1):159–181. doi: 10.1007/s11205-012-0087-8.

Norcia, Maurizio, Antonella Risotto, and Elisa Noci. 2012. “Measuring poverty through capabilities: preliminary results of a research in Italy.” OIDA International Journal of Sustainable Development no. 4 (8):39–46.

Parks, Sarah. 2012. “Divergent pathways of development: a comparative case study of human well-being in two Thai provinces.” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy no. 30:891–909.

Roche, JoséManuel. 2013. “Monitoring Progress in Child Poverty Reduction: Methodological Insights and Illustration to the Case Study of Bangladesh.” Social Indicators Research no. 112 (2):363–390. doi: 10.1007/s11205-013-0252-8.

Roelen, Keetie, Franziska Gassmann, and Chris de Neubourg. 2010. “Child Poverty in Vietnam: Providing Insights Using a Country-Specific and Multidimensional Model.” Social Indicators Research no. 98 (1):129–145. doi: 10.1007/s11205-009-9522-x.

Santos, MariaEmma. 2013. “Tracking Poverty Reduction in Bhutan: Income Deprivation Alongside Deprivation in Other Sources of Happiness.” Social Indicators Research no. 112 (2):259–290. doi: 10.1007/s11205-013-0248-4.

Trani, Jean-Francois, Mario Biggeri, and Vincenzo Mauro. 2013. “The Multidimensionality of Child Poverty: Evidence from Afghanistan.” Social Indicators Research no. 112 (2):391–416. doi: 10.1007/s11205-013-0253-7.

Trani, Jean-François, and Tim I. Cannings. 2013. “Child Poverty in an Emergency and Conflict Context: A Multidimensional Profile and an Identification of the Poorest Children in Western Darfur.” World Development no. 48 (0):48–70. doi: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2013.03.005.

Group iv. Poverty and Well-Being Assessment in Advanced Economies

Anand, Paul, Graham Hunter, Ian Carter, Keith Dowding, Francesco Guala, and Martin Van Hees. 2009. “The Development of Capability Indicators.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 10 (1):127. doi: 10.1080/14649880802675366.

Arndt, Christian, and Jürgen Volkert. 2011. “The Capability Approach: A Framework for Official German Poverty and Wealth Reports.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 12 (3):311–337. doi: 10.1080/19452829.2011.589248.

Bellani, Luna, Graham Hunter, and Paul Anand. 2013. “Multidimensional Welfare: Do Groups Vary in Their Priorities and Behaviours?*.” Fiscal Studies no. 34 (3):333–354. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-5890.2013.12009.x.

Beyazit, Eda. 2010. “Evaluating Social Justice in Transport: Lessons to be Learned from the Capability Approach.” Transport Reviews no. 31 (1):117–134. doi: 10.1080/01441647.2010.504900.

Binder, Martin, and Tom Broekel. 2011. “Applying a Non‐parametric Efficiency Analysis to Measure Conversion Efficiency in Great Britain.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 12 (2):261. doi: 10.1080/19452829.2011.571088.

Boarini, Romina, and Marco Mira D’Ercole. 2013. “Going beyond GDP: An OECD Perspective*.” Fiscal Studies no. 34 (3):289–314. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-5890.2013.12007.x.

Burchardt, Tania. 2009. “Agency Goals, Adaptation and Capability Sets.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 10 (1):3–19. doi: 10.1080/14649880802675044.

Burchardt, Tania, and Polly Vizard. 2011. “‘Operationalizing’ the Capability Approach as a Basis for Equality and Human Rights Monitoring in Twenty‐first‐century Britain.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 12 (1):91–119. doi: 10.1080/19452829.2011.541790.

Callander, Emily J., Deborah J. Schofield, and Rupendra N. Shrestha. 2012a. “Capacity for Freedom—Using a New Poverty Measure to Look at Regional Differences in Living Standards within Australia.” Geographical Research no. 50 (4):411–420. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-5871.2011.00748.x.

Callander, Emily J., Deborah J. Schofield, and Rupendra N. Shrestha. 2012b. “Towards a holistic understanding of poverty: A new multidimensional measure of poverty for Australia.” Health Sociology Review no. 21 (2):141–155. doi: 10.5172/hesr.2012.21.2.141.

Callander, EmilyJ, DeborahJ Schofield, and RupendraN Shrestha. 2012c. “Capacity for Freedom—A New Way of Measuring Poverty Amongst Australian Children.” Child Indicators Research no. 5 (1):179. doi: 10.1007/s12187-011-9122-6.

Clark, David, and David Hulme. 2010. “Poverty, time and vagueness: integrating the core poverty and chronic poverty frameworks.” Cambridge Journal of Economics no. 34 (2):347–366. doi: 10.1093/cje/ben046.

Clery, Elizabeth, Tiffany Tsang, and Polly Vizard. 2014. “The Children’s Measurement Framework: A new Indicator-Based Tool for Monitoring Children’s Equality and Human Rights.” Child Indicators Research no. 7 (2):321–349. doi: 10.1007/s12187-013-9224-4.

Gardoni, Paolo, and Colleen Murphy. 2014. “A Scale of Risk.” Risk Analysis no. 34 (7):1208–1227. doi: 10.1111/risa.12150.

Hofmann, Karen, Dominik Schori, and Thomas Abel. 2013. “Self-Reported Capabilities Among Young Male Adults in Switzerland: Translation and Psychometric Evaluation of a German, French and Italian Version of a Closed Survey Instrument.” Social Indicators Research no. 114 (2):723–738. doi: 10.1007/s11205-012-0170-1.

Jordan, Kirrily, Hannah Bulloch, and Geoff Buchanan. 2010. “Statistical equality and cultural difference in Indigenous wellbeing frameworks: A new expression of an enduring debate.” Australian Journal of Social Issues no. 45 (3):333–362,295-296.

Matsuyama, Jun, and Kenji Mori. 2011. “Freedom and achievement of well-being and adaptive dynamics of capabilities.” Metroeconomica no. 62 (3):494–511. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-999X.2011.04118.x.

Murphy, Colleen, and Paolo Gardoni. 2008. “The Acceptability and the Tolerability of Societal Risks: A Capabilities-based Approach.” Science and Engineering Ethics no. 14 (1):77–92. doi: 10.1007/s11948-007-9031-8.

Murphy, Colleen, and Paolo Gardoni. 2010. “Assessing capability instead of achieved functionings in risk analysis.” Journal of Risk Research no. 13 (2):145. doi: 10.1080/13669870903126259.

Peichl, Andreas, and Nico Pestel. 2013. “Multidimensional Well-Being at the Top: Evidence for Germany*.” Fiscal Studies no. 34 (3):355–371. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-5890.2013.12010.x.

Perrons, Diane. 2011. “Regional performance and inequality: linking economic and social development through a capabilities approach.” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society . doi: 10.1093/cjres/rsr033.

Van Ootegem, Luc, and Elsy Verhofstadt. 2012. “Using Capabilities as an Alternative Indicator for Well-being.” Social Indicators Research no. 106 (1):133–152. doi: 10.1007/s11205-011-9799-4.

Waglé, Udaya R. 2008. “Multidimensional poverty: An alternative measurement approach for the United States?” Social Science Research no. 37 (2):559–580. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2007.06.013.

Wagle, Udaya R. 2009. “Capability Deprivation and Income Poverty in the United States, 1994 and 2004: Measurement Outcomes and Demographic Profiles.” Social Indicators Research no. 94 (3):509–533. doi: 10.1007/s11205-009-9446-5.

Wagle, Udaya R. 2014. “The Counting-Based Measurement of Multidimensional Poverty: The Focus on Economic Resources, Inner Capabilities, and Relational Resources in the United States.” Social Indicators Research no. 115 (1):223–240. doi: 10.1007/s11205-012-0216-4.

Wüst, Kirsten, and Jürgen Volkert. 2012. “Childhood and Capability Deprivation in Germany: A Quantitative Analysis Using German Socio-Economic Panel Data.” Social Indicators Research no. 106 (3):439–469. doi: 10.1007/s11205-011-9817-6.

Group v. Deprivation of Disabled People

Rosano, Aldo, Federica Mancini, and Alessandro Solipaca. 2009. “Poverty in People with Disabilities: Indicators from the Capability Approach.” Social Indicators Research no. 94 (1):75–82. doi: 10.1007/s11205-008-9337-1.

Group vi. Assessing Gender Inequalities

Addabbo, Tindara, Maria Laura Di Tommaso, and Anna Maccagnan. 2014. “Gender Differences in Italian Children’s Capabilities.” Feminist Economics no. 20 (2):90–121. doi: 10.1080/13545701.2013.844846.

Addabbo, Tindara, Diego Lanzi, and Antonella Picchio. 2010. “Gender Budgets: A Capability Approach.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 11 (4):479–501. doi: 10.1080/19452829.2010.520900.

Anand, Paul, and Cristina Santos. 2007. “Violent crime, gender inequalities and well-being: models based on a survey of individual capabilities and crime rates for England and Wales.” Revue d’économie politique no. 117:135-160.

Bérenger, Valérie, and Audrey Verdier‐Chouchane. 2011. “From the Relative Women Disadvantage Index to Women’s Quality‐of‐Life.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 12 (2):203–233. doi: 10.1080/19452829.2010.520893.

Di Tommaso, Maria L., Isilda Shima, Steinar Strøm, and Francesca Bettio. 2009. “As bad as it gets: Well-being deprivation of sexually exploited trafficked women.” European Journal of Political Economy no. 25 (2):143–162. doi: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2008.11.002.

Floro, Maria S., and Anant Pichetpongsa. 2010. “Gender, Work Intensity, and Well-Being of Thai Home-Based Workers.” Feminist Economics no. 16 (3):5–44. doi: 10.1080/13545701.2010.499657.

Gálvez-Muñoz, Lina, Mónica Domínguez-Serrano, Paula Rodríguez-Modroño, and Mauricio Matus-López. 2013. “Gender, Time Use, and Children’s and Adolescents’ Well-Being: Implications for Public Policies*.” Fiscal Studies no. 34 (3):373–389. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-5890.2013.12011.x.

Group vii. Debating Policies

Agee, Mark D., and Thomas D. Crocker. 2013. “Operationalizing the capability approach to assessing well-being.” The Journal of Socio - Economics no. 46 (0):85. doi: 10.1016/j.socec.2013.07.003.

Burchi, Francesco, and Andrea Passacantilli. 2013. “Inequality in the monetary and functioning spaces: the case of Peru under the first Garcia government (1985–1990).” Journal of International Development no. 25 (3):340–361. doi: 10.1002/jid.1821.

Fahlén, Susanne. 2013. “Capabilities and Childbearing Intentions in Europe.” European Societies no. 15 (5):639–662. doi: 10.1080/14616696.2013.798018.

Hirvilammi, Tuuli, Senja Laakso, Michael Lettenmeier, and Satu Lähteenoja. 2013. “Studying Well-being and its Environmental Impacts: A Case Study of Minimum Income Receivers in Finland.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 14 (1):134–154. doi: 10.1080/19452829.2012.747490.

Hobson, Barbara, and Susanne Fahlén. 2009. “Competing Scenarios for European Fathers: Applying Sen’s Capabilities and Agency Framework to Work—Family Balance.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science no. 624 (1):214–233. doi: 10.1177/0002716209334435.

Hobson, Barbara, Susanne Fahlén, and Judit Takács. 2011. “Agency and Capabilities to Achieve a Work–Life Balance: A Comparison of Sweden and Hungary.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society no. 18 (2):168–198. doi: 10.1093/sp/jxr007.

Kalfagianni, Agni. 2014. “Addressing the Global Sustainability Challenge: The Potential and Pitfalls of Private Governance from the Perspective of Human Capabilities.” Journal of Business Ethics no. 122 (2):307–320. doi: 10.1007/s10551-013-1747-6.

Reitinger, Claudia, Matthias Dumke, Mario Barosevcic, and Rafaela Hillerbrand. 2011. “A conceptual framework for impact assessment within SLCA.” The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment no. 16 (4):380–388. doi: 10.1007/s11367-011-0265-y.

Renouard, Cecile. 2011. “Corporate Social Responsibility, Utilitarianism, and the Capabilities Approach.” Journal of Business Ethics no. 98 (1):85. doi: 10.1007/s10551-010-0536-8.

Group viii. Education

Kelly, Anthony. 2012. “Sen and the art of educational maintenance: evidencing a capability, as opposed to an effectiveness, approach to schooling.” Cambridge Journal of Education no. 42 (3):283–296. doi: 10.1080/0305764X.2012.706255.

Maddox, Bryan, and Lucio Esposito. 2011. “Sufficiency Re-examined: A Capabilities Perspective on the Assessment of Functional Adult Literacy.” The Journal of Development Studies no. 47 (9):1315–1331. doi: 10.1080/00220388.2010.509788.

Maguire, Cindy, Corinne Donovan, Jacob Mishook, Genevieve de Gaillande, and Ivonne Garcia. 2012. “Choosing a life one has reason to value: the role of the arts in fostering capability development in four small urban high schools.” Cambridge Journal of Education no. 42 (3):367–390. doi: 10.1080/0305764X.2012.706258.

McLean, Monica, and Melanie Walker. 2011. “The possibilities for university-based public-good professional education: a case-study from South Africa based on the ‘capability approach’.” Studies in Higher Education no. 37 (5):585–601. doi: 10.1080/03075079.2010.531461.

Smith, Michèle, and Angeline M. Barrett. 2011. “Capabilities for learning to read: An investigation of social and economic effects for Grade 6 learners in Southern and East Africa.” International Journal of Educational Development no. 31 (1):23–36. doi: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2010.06.006.

Tikly, Leon, and Angeline M. Barrett. 2011. “Social justice, capabilities and the quality of education in low income countries.” International Journal of Educational Development no. 31 (1):8. doi: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2010.06.001.

Walker, Melanie. 2006. “Towards a capability‐based theory of social justice for education policy‐making.” Journal of Education Policy no. 21 (2):163–185. doi: 10.1080/02680930500500245.

Walker, Melanie. 2008. “A human capabilities framework for evaluating student learning.” Teaching in Higher Education no. 13 (4):477–487. doi: 10.1080/13562510802169764.

Walker, Melanie. 2012. “A capital or capabilities education narrative in a world of staggering inequalities?” International Journal of Educational Development no. 32 (3):384–393. doi: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2011.09.003.

Young, Marion. 2009. “Basic Capabilities, Basic Learning Outcomes and Thresholds of Learning.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 10 (2):259–277. doi: 10.1080/19452820902941206.

Group ix. Technology

Grunfeld, Helena, Sokleap Hak, and Tara Pin. 2011. “Understanding benefits realisation of iREACH from a capability approach perspective.” Ethics and Information Technology no. 13 (2):151–172. doi: 10.1007/s10676-011-9268-4.

Hatakka, Mathias, Annika Andersson, and Åke Grönlund. 2013. “Students’ use of one to one laptops: a capability approach analysis.” Information Technology & People no. 26 (1):94–112. doi: doi:10.1108/09593841311307169.

Hatakka, Mathias, and Jenny Lagsten. 2011. “The capability approach as a tool for development evaluation—analyzing students’ use of internet resources.” Information Technology for Development no. 18 (1):23–41. doi: 10.1080/02681102.2011.617722.

Kivunike, Florence Nameere, Love Ekenberg, Mats Danielson, and F. F. Tusubira. 2011. “Perceptions of the role of ICT on quality of life in rural communities in Uganda.” Information Technology for Development no. 17 (1):61–80. doi: 10.1080/02681102.2010.511698.

Kleine, Dorothea. 2010. “ICT4WHAT?—Using the choice framework to operationalise the capability approach to development.” Journal of International Development no. 22 (5):674–692. doi: 10.1002/jid.1719.

Kleine, Dorothea. 2011. “The capability approach and the ‘medium of choice’: steps towards conceptualising information and communication technologies for development.” Ethics and Information Technology no. 13 (2):119–130. doi: 10.1007/s10676-010-9251-5.

Kleine, Dorothea, Ann Light, and Maria-José Montero. 2012. “Signifiers of the life we value? Considering human development, technologies and Fair Trade from the perspective of the capabilities approach.” Information Technology for Development no. 18 (1):42–60. doi: 10.1080/02681102.2011.643208.

Mizohata, Sachie, and Raynald Jadoul. 2013. “Towards International and Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration for the Measurements of Quality of Life.” Social Indicators Research no. 111 (3):683–708. doi: 10.1007/s11205-012-0027-7.

Ojo, Adegboyega, Tomasz Janowski, and Johanna Awotwi. 2013. “Enabling development through governance and mobile technology.” Government Information Quarterly no. 30, Supplement 1 (0):S32-S45. doi: 10.1016/j.giq.2012.10.004.

Group x. Health

Al-Janabi, Hareth, Terry Flynn, and Joanna Coast. 2012. “Development of a self-report measure of capability wellbeing for adults: the ICECAP-A.” Quality of Life Research no. 21 (1):167–176. doi: 10.1007/s11136-011-9927-2.

Callander, Emily J, Deborah J Schofield, and Rupendra N Shrestha. 2013a. “Chronic health conditions and poverty: a cross-sectional study using a multidimensional poverty measure.” BMJ Open no. 3 (11). doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2013-003397.

Callander, Emily J., Deborah J. Schofield, and Rupendra N. Shrestha. 2013b. “Freedom poverty: A new tool to identify the multiple disadvantages affecting those with CVD.” International Journal of Cardiology no. 166 (2):321–326. doi: 10.1016/j.ijcard.2011.10.088.

Coast, Joanna, Terry N. Flynn, Lucy Natarajan, Kerry Sproston, Jane Lewis, Jordan J. Louviere, and Tim J. Peters. 2008. “Valuing the ICECAP capability index for older people.” Social Science & Medicine no. 67 (5):874–882. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.05.015.

Couzner, Leah, J. Ratcliffe, L. Lester, T. Flynn, and M. Crotty. 2013. “Measuring and valuing quality of life for public health research: application of the ICECAP-O capability index in the Australian general population.” International Journal of Public Health no. 58 (3):367–376. doi: 10.1007/s00038-012-0407-4.

Davis, Jennifer, Teresa Liu-Ambrose, ChrisG Richardson, and Stirling Bryan. 2013. “A comparison of the ICECAP-O with EQ-5D in a falls prevention clinical setting: are they complements or substitutes?” Quality of Life Research no. 22 (5):969–977. doi: 10.1007/s11136-012-0225-4.

Ferrer, Robert L., and Alejandra Varela Carrasco. 2010. “Capability and Clinical Success.” The Annals of Family Medicine no. 8 (5):454–460. doi: 10.1370/afm.1163.

Ferrer, Robert L., Inez Cruz, Sandra Burge, Bryan Bayles, and Martha I. Castilla. 2014. “Measuring Capability for Healthy Diet and Physical Activity.” The Annals of Family Medicine no. 12 (1):46–56. doi: 10.1370/afm.1580.

Grewal, Ini, Jane Lewis, Terry Flynn, Jackie Brown, John Bond, and Joanna Coast. 2006. “Developing attributes for a generic quality of life measure for older people: Preferences or capabilities?” Social Science & Medicine no. 62 (8):1891–1901. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.08.023.

Lewis, Ferdinand. 2012a. “Auditing Capability and Active Living in the Built Environment.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities no. 13 (2):295–315. doi: 10.1080/19452829.2011.645028.

Lewis, Ferdinand. 2012b. “Toward a general model of built environment audits.” Planning Theory no. 11 (1):44–65. doi: 10.1177/1473095211408056.

Mabsout, Ramzi. 2011. “Capability and Health Functioning in Ethiopian Households.” Social Indicators Research no. 101 (3):359–389. doi: 10.1007/s11205-010-9661-0.

McAllister, Marion, Graham Dunn, Katherine Payne, Linda Davies, and Chris Todd. 2012. “Patient empowerment: The need to consider it as a measurable patient-reported outcome for chronic conditions.” BMC Health Services Research no. 12 (1):157.

Mitchell, Paul M., Tracy E. Roberts, Pelham M. Barton, Beth S. Pollard, and Joanna Coast. 2013. “Predicting the ICECAP-O Capability Index from the WOMAC Osteoarthritis Index: Is Mapping onto Capability from Condition-Specific Health Status Questionnaires Feasible?” Medical Decision Making no. 33 (4):547–557. doi: 10.1177/0272989x12475092.

Mitra, Sophie, Kris Jones, Brandon Vick, David Brown, Eileen McGinn, and MaryJane Alexander. 2013. “Implementing a Multidimensional Poverty Measure Using Mixed Methods and a Participatory Framework.” Social Indicators Research no. 110 (3):1061–1081. doi: 10.1007/s11205-011-9972-9.

Netten, Ann, Peter Burge, Juliette Malley, Dimitris Potoglou, Ann-Marie Towers, John Brazier, Terry Flynn, and Julien Forder. 2012. “Outcomes of social care for adults: developing a preference-weighted measure.” Health Technology Assessment no. 16 (16):1–166.

Nikiema, Beatrice, Slim Haddad, and Louise Potvin. 2012. “Measuring women’s perceived ability to overcome barriers to healthcare seeking in Burkina Faso.” BMC Public Health no. 12 (1):147.

Ratcliffe, Julie, Laurence H. Lester, Leah Couzner, and Maria Crotty. 2013. “An assessment of the relationship between informal caring and quality of life in older community-dwelling adults—more positives than negatives?” Health & Social Care in the Community no. 21 (1):35–46. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2524.2012.01085.x.

Simon, Judit, Paul Anand, Alastair Gray, Jorun Rugkåsa, Ksenija Yeeles, and Tom Burns. 2013. “Operationalising the capability approach for outcome measurement in mental health research.” Social Science & Medicine no. 98 (0):187–196. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.09.019.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflicts of interest.

P.M.M., T.E.R. and P.M.B. declare they have no conflict of interest. J.C. led the development of the ICECAP-O and ICECAP-A capability measures.

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3.13: The capability approach and theories of justice

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Discussions about inequality and justice are very important within the capability literature. In fact, they are so important that many philosophers studying the capability approach have made the mistake of believing that it is a theory of equality, or a theory of justice. But as the descriptions of the capability approach in chapter 2 have shown, that is not the case. Here, too, we need to make use of the distinction between the general capability approach and more specific capability theories: theorizing justice is only one among many different purposes that capability theories can have, that is, one of the possible choices we can make in module B1. 19 Still, given that the capability approach offers a distinct view on interpersonal comparisons of advantage, it should not surprise us that the capability approach has been widely used in thinking about inequality and justice.

The literature that develops the relevance of the capability approach in theories of justice falls primarily within the domain of normative political philosophy, but there is some overlap with the work done by welfare economists and other scholars. In order to get a grip on what the capability approach does in the literature on distributive justice, or, vice versa, what thinking goes on about theories of distributive justice within the capability literature, let us start with a brief primer on the theoretical literature on justice in the next section. Then, in section 3.13.2, I pose the question of what is required for the construction of a complete capability theory of justice. The final section, 3.13.3, explores the implications of a capability-based approach to justice in practice.

3.13.1 A brief description of the literature on theories of justice

Justice is an essentially contested concept: there is no generally accepted definition of justice, and thus no consensus on what the appropriate subject matter of theories of justice is or should be. Of course, it does not follow that nothing at all can be said about the notion of justice. David Miller’s description of social justice is a good starting point. He claims that when arguing about justice, we are discussing:

how the good and bad things in life should be distributed among the members of a human society. When, more concretely, we attack some policy or some state of affairs as socially unjust, we are claiming that a person, or more usually a category of persons, enjoys fewer advantages than that person or group of persons ought to enjoy (or bears more of the burdens than they ought to bear), given how other members of the society in question are faring. (Miller 1999, 1)

Theories of justice do not cover the entire spectrum of moral issues. Social justice theorists generally agree that parts of morality fall outside the scope of justice. Charity is such a case: you may not have a duty of justice to help a frail, elderly neighbour, but you may nevertheless decide to help that person as an act of charity and compassion. Another example is morally laudable behaviour, such as being a volunteer for social activities in your neighbourhood. Such behaviour may be morally praiseworthy, but it may at the same time not be required as a matter of justice. Hence, justice is not all that matters, if we consider how to make the world morally better.

Can we describe justice, and theories of justice, by their properties, as philosophers often do? First, justice is a property that has been ascribed to both individuals and institutions: justice is a virtue of individuals in their interactions with others, and justice is also a virtue of social institutions (Barry and Matravers 2011). Thus, we can say that a certain society is more or less just, or we can say that the behaviour of some persons is just or unjust. Theorists of justice tend primarily to discuss the justice of social arrangements, that is, of social institutions broadly defined; justice as an individual virtue is sometimes regarded as a matter of ethics rather than of political philosophy (although not every political philosopher would agree with this way of demarcating justice from ethics). Moreover, an increasing number of theorists define social institutions more broadly so as to include societal structures related to class or caste, as well as social norms; under such broad definitions, conceptualising justice as a virtue of institutions touches upon many of the same aspects we would discuss if we were to see justice as a virtue of persons. For example, if a society has widely shared racist social norms, such as the disapproval of interracial love relationships, then a person who shows her disapproval of an interracial love relationship is acting upon an unjust social norm, but also showing non-virtuous behaviour.

Second, while sometimes the terms ‘social justice’ and ‘distributive justice’ are used as synonyms, it makes sense to understand ‘social justice’ as somewhat broader than ‘distributive justice’. Distributive justice always deals with an analysis of who gets what, whereas social justice may also relate to questions of respect or recognition, or the attitudes that a certain institution expresses. The capability approach is mainly discussed in theories of distributive justice, although it is to some extent able to integrate the concerns of theorists of recognition about what they conceive to be the narrow or mistaken focus of theories of distributive justice. 20

A third point to note about the literature on justice is that there are several different schools within social justice theories. According to Brian Barry and Matt Matravers, it is helpful to classify theories of social justice according to four types: conventionalism, teleology, justice as mutual advantage and egalitarian justice. Conventionalism is the view that issues of justice can be resolved by examining how local conventions, institutions, traditions and systems of law determine the divisions of burdens and benefits. Barry and Matravers rightly point out that this approach, which has been defended by Michael Walzer (1983), can lead to the acceptance of grossly unjust practices because they are generally endorsed by certain communities, even if they may be seen as unjust if judged on the basis of values and ideas not currently present (or dominant) in that society. Teleology is the view that social arrangements should be justified by referring to some good they are aiming for. Some examples are utilitarianism, natural law theory or Aquinas’ Christian philosophy. For teleological theories, what justice is follows from an account of the good, and thus the account of justice depends on the account of the social good itself. A criticism of teleological theories is that they necessarily rely on an external source (to specify what ‘the good’ is), such as utility, the natural law or God’s authority. Teleological accounts of justice therefore necessarily depend on notions of the ultimate good. However, in pluralistic societies characterised by a variety of religious and non-religious worldviews, it is hard to see how justice can be derived from notions of the good that are not endorsed by all. Many contemporary political philosophers therefore argue that teleological theories cannot be defended since people have competing ideas of the good, and we cannot call upon a generally-accepted external source that will tell us which idea of the good should be imposed on all.

The third and fourth schools of social justice, in comparison, share a commitment to some form of liberalism that recognizes the diversity of views of the good life, which a just society should respect. These schools experienced a major revival after the publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971, which is generally regarded as the single most important work on social justice written in the last century. 21 Rawls turned to the social contract tradition , in which justice is understood as the fair distribution of benefits of social cooperation. The core idea is that rules of justice are ultimately more beneficial to everyone than if each were to pursue their own advantage by themselves. Some of these theories (though not Rawls’s!) take the relative power or bargaining strength of every individual in society as given , and one may therefore question whether in situations of unequal bargaining power, justice will be done (Nussbaum 2006b). The other liberal school of justice is egalitarian justice , which is premised on the idea that people should be treated with equal respect and concern (Dworkin 2000). The most basic claim of those theories is that people are morally equal: each person should be treated as a being of equal moral worth. However, that general and abstract claim can be further developed in many different ways, and it is in specifying these further details that philosophers disagree. Distributive justice requires equality of something, but not necessarily equality of outcome in material terms (in fact, plain equality of resources is a claim very few theorists of justice would be willing to defend, since people have different needs, are confronted with different circumstances and, if given the same opportunities, are likely to make different use of them). Hence, Rawls’s theory of justice can be seen as an egalitarian theory of justice, but so are theories that come to very different substantive conclusions, such as Robert Nozick’s (1974) entitlement theory. Other major contemporary theorists of justice who can be labelled ‘liberal egalitarian’ are Brian Barry (1995), Philippe Van Parijs (1995), and Ronald Dworkin (2000), among many others.

Of those four schools, it is primarily liberal egalitarian theories that are discussed in relation to the capability approach. While there is internal diversity within this group of liberal egalitarian theories, these theories share the commitment to the principle that there should be considerable (although by no means absolute) scope for individuals to determine their own life plan and notion of the good, as well as a commitment to a notion of equal moral consideration, which is another way to put the principle of each person as an end, or normative individualism (see section 2.6.8).

Of the four schools of social justice, only the last two regard justice and equality as being closely related values. Under conventionalism, justice is guided by existing traditions, conventions and institutions, even if those existing practices do not treat people as equals in a plausible sense. Teleological theories also do not understand justice as entailing some notion of equality; instead, the idea of the good is more important, even if it implies that people are not treated as moral equals. In some theories of conventionalism and teleology, social justice could be consistent with a notion of equality, but this is not necessarily the case for all these theories. The social contract tradition and liberal egalitarianism, in contrast, derive their principles of social justice from a fundamental idea of people as moral equals. However, the notion of equal moral worth does not necessarily lead to the notion of equality of resources or another type of equality of outcome, as will be explained in what follows. Social justice and equality are related in these theories, but not always at the level of material inequality, but rather at a more fundamental level of treating people as moral equals or with equal respect and concern.

For a proper understanding of mainstream philosophical literature on theories of justice, it is helpful to know that the literature itself is highly abstract, and often rather detached from questions about policy design or political feasibility. Sen (2006, 2009c) has recently criticised such theories, and in particular Rawls’s work, for being overly “transcendental”. Such ideal theories give an account of the perfectly just society, but do not tell us what needs to be done to get closer to that very ideal, how we can make the world less unjust and which of two situations might be more unjust than the other. Another critique of contemporary theories of justice is that they are often based on so-called idealisations or strong assumptions, which may introduce significant biases or exclude certain groups of people from the theory. For example, Dworkin (2000) sets his egalitarian theory against a set of background assumptions that rule out racist and sexist attitudes and behaviours, as well as the adaptation of preferences to unfair circumstances (Pierik and Robeyns 2007). Certain assumptions and meta-theoretical as well as methodological choices also put philosophical theories of justice at risk of being too far removed from practical applicability. When we try to apply contemporary theories of justice to the actual reality of our chaotic and often messy world, there are all sorts of complications that need to be taken into account, such as trade-offs between different values, power imbalances between different social groups, unintended consequences of justice-enhancing interventions and policies, or interests of individuals and groups that may conflict with concerns for justice (e.g. a desire for re-election on the part of government administrations).

Debates about the practical relevance of contemporary philosophical theories of justice have gained momentum in the last decade. It remains unclear whether the outcome will change the way theories of justice are constructed in the future. It may well be that we will see a turn towards more non-ideal, empirically-informed, ‘directly useful’ theories that are easier to translate into practice. In any case, it is fair to say that most capability theorists working on justice are among those who strongly advocate this turn to make theories of justice more relevant to practice.

3.13.2 What do we need for a capability theory of justice?

In the previous section I gave a very brief account of the philosophical literature on theories of justice. What contribution can the capability approach make to this field? The first thing to note is that Martha Nussbaum has written at great length developing a capabilities theory of justice (e.g. Nussbaum 1988, 1992, Nussbaum 2000, 2002a; Nussbaum 2006b). Her capabilities theory is the most detailed capability theory of justice that has been developed up till now. Her theory is comprehensive, in the sense that it is not limited to an account of political justice, or to liberal democracies. Her account holds for all human beings on earth, independently of whether they are living in a liberal democratic regime, or of whether they are severely disabled. However, Nussbaum’s theory of social justice doesn’t amount to a full theory of social justice. The main demarcation of Nussbaum’s account is that it provides only “a partial and minimal account of social justice” (Nussbaum 2006b, 71) by specifying thresholds of a list of capabilities that governments in all nations should guarantee to their citizens. Nussbaum’s theory focuses on thresholds, but this does not imply that reaching these thresholds is all that matters for social justice; rather, her theory is partial and simply doesn’t discuss the question of what social justice requires once those thresholds are met. Not discussing certain things is not necessarily a flaw of a theory: this may be theoretical work that Nussbaum will do in the future, or it may be work that will be done by other scholars. Moreover, it is quite possible that Nussbaum’s account of partial justice is consistent with several accounts of what justice requires above the thresholds.

Yet, while Nussbaum’s theory of justice has been worked out in great detail and has received a lot of attention, it would be a grave mistake to think that there can be only one capability theory of justice. On the contrary, the open nature of the capability framework allows for the development of a family of capability theories of justice. This then prompts the question: what is needed if we want to create such a capability theory of justice? 22

First, a theory of justice needs to explain on what basis it justifies its principles or claims of justice. For example, Rawls uses the method of reflective equilibrium, including the thought experiment of the original position. 23 Dworkin’s egalitarian justice theory starts from the meta-principle of equal respect and concern, which he then develops in the principles that the distribution of burdens and benefits should be sensitive to the ambitions that people have but should not reflect the unequal natural endowments with which individuals are born (Dworkin 1981, 2000). One could also develop a capability theory of justice arguing that the ultimate driving force is a concern with agency (Claassen and Düwell 2013; Claassen 2016) or with human dignity (Nussbaum 2000; Nussbaum 2006b). If capability scholars want to develop a full theory of justice, they will also need to explain on what bases they justify their principles or claims. As mentioned earlier, Nussbaum starts from a notion of human dignity, whereas the Senian strand in the capability approach stresses the importance of what people have reason to value, hence an account of public reasoning. However, little work has been done so far to flesh out this embryonic idea of ‘having reason to value’, and it therefore remains unclear whether the capability approach has a solid unified rationale on the basis of which a full account of justice could be developed.

Second, as indicated above, in developing a capability theory of justice we must decide whether we want it to be an outcome or an opportunity theory; that is, whether we think that we should assess injustices in terms of functionings, or rather in terms of capabilities, or a mixture. At the level of theory and principles, most theorists of justice endorse the view that justice is done if all have equal genuine opportunities, or if all reach a minimal threshold of capability levels. Translated to the capability language, this would imply that at the level of theory and principles, capabilities are the relevant metric of justice, and not functionings. However, among theorists of justice, not everyone subscribes to this view. Anne Phillips (2004) has been a prominent voice arguing for equality of outcome, rather than opportunities. In the capability literature, Marc Fleurbaey (2002) has argued against an approach that takes only capabilities into account and has defended a focus on ‘refined functionings’ (being the combination of functionings and capabilities).

A third issue which needs to be solved if one hopes to develop a capability theory of justice is to decide and justify which capabilities matter the most. There are at least two ways of answering this question: either through procedural approaches, such as using criteria from which the relevant capabilities are derived, or by defending a specific list of capabilities. This selection of relevant capabilities for the purpose of justice can be done at the level of ideal theory (without taking issues of practical feasibility and implementation into account), at the level of abstract principles (Anderson 1999; Nussbaum 2006b; Claassen 2016) or at an applied theoretical level, which is useful for practical assessments of unjust inequalities (e.g. Robeyns 2003; Wolff and De-Shalit 2007).

Fourth, a capability theory of justice may need to engage in a comparison with other ‘metrics of justice’. In the literature on social justice there are several terms used to indicate what precisely we are assessing or measuring: the metric of advantage, the currency of justice, or the informational basis for the interpersonal comparisons for the purpose of justice. Within theories of justice, the main arguments are with Rawlsian 24 resourcists and with defenders of Dworkinian resourcism. 25 Other possible metrics are basic needs or the many different types of subjective welfare or preference satisfaction. A full capability theory of justice would need to show why it serves better as a metric of justice than these other metrics.

Fifth, a capability theory of justice needs to take a position on the “distributive rule” (Anderson 2010, 81) that it will endorse: will it argue for plain equality, or for sufficiency, or for prioritarianism, or for some other (mixed) distributive rule? Both Martha Nussbaum’s and Elizabeth Anderson’s theories are sufficiency accounts, but from this it does not follow, as one sometimes reads in the secondary literature, that the capability approach entails a sufficiency rule. Sen may have given the (wrong) impression of defending straight equality as a distributive rule, by asking the question “Equality of what?” (Sen 1980), though a careful reading shows that he was merely asking the question “ If we want to be defending equality of something, then what would that be?” In fact, Sen has remained uncommitted to one single distributive rule, which probably can be explained by the fact that he is averse to building a well-defined theory of justice but rather prefers to investigate how real-life unjust situations can be turned into more just situations, even if perfect justice is unattainable (Sen 2006, 2009c). The capability approach clearly plays a role in Sen’s work on justice, since when assessing a situation, he will investigate inequalities in people’s capabilities and analyse the processes that led to those inequalities. Yet Sen has an eclectic approach to theorizing, and hence other notions and theories (such as human rights or more formal discussions on freedoms from social choice theory) also play a role in his work on justice. The presence and importance of the capability approach in Sen’s work is thus undeniable, but should not be seen as the only defining feature.

Sixth, a capability theory of justice needs to specify where the line between individual and collective responsibility is drawn, or how this will be decided, and by whom. There is a remarkable absence of any discussion about issues of responsibility in the capability literature, in sharp contrast to political philosophy and welfare economics where this is one of the most important lines of debate, certainly since the publication of Dworkin’s (1981, 2000) work on justice and equality which led to what Anderson (1999) has called “luck-egalitarianism”. Nevertheless, whether one wants to discuss it explicitly or not, any concrete capability policy proposal can be analysed in terms of the division between personal and collective responsibility, but this terminology is largely absent from the capability literature. In part, this might be explained by the fact that much of the work on capabilities deals with global poverty, where issues of individual responsibility seem to be less relevant since it would seem outrageous to suggest that the world’s most destitute people are personally responsible for the situation they are in. That doesn’t mean that the responsibility question is not important: it is indeed of utmost importance to ask who is responsible for global poverty reduction or the fulfilling of international development targets, such as the Sustainable Development Goals on which political philosophers have written a great deal (Singer 2004, 2010; Pogge 2008). The point is rather that philosophical puzzles, such as the issue of expensive tastes (for expensive wine, caviar, fast cars, or you name it), are simply beyond the radar of the child labourer or the poor peasant. However, while this may perhaps justify the absence of any discussion about personal responsibility among capability scholars concerned with poverty, it does not absolve theorists of justice who deal with justice in affluent societies (or affluent sections of poor societies) from discussing the just division between personal and collective responsibility (Pierik and Robeyns 2007, 148–49).

This brings us to a related issue: a theory of justice generally specifies rights, but also duties. However, capability theorists have remained largely silent on the question of whose duty it is to expand the selected capabilities. Nussbaum passionately advocates that all people all over the world should be entitled, as a matter of justice, to threshold levels of all the capabilities on her list, but apart from mentioning that it is the governments’ duty to guarantee these entitlements (Nussbaum 2006b, 70), she remains silent on the question of who precisely should bear the burdens and responsibilities for realizing these capabilities. Yet as Onora O’Neill (1996, 122–53) has argued, questions of obligations and responsibilities should be central to any account of justice.

This section makes clear that a capability theory of justice is theoretically much more demanding than the basic presupposition of the capability approach that ‘functionings’ and ‘capabilities’ are the best metric for most kinds of interpersonal evaluations. While much has been written on the capability approach in recent years by an increasing number of scholars, including philosophers, much of the philosophical work needed for turning the open-ended capability approach into a specific theory of justice remains to be done.

Note, however, that not all capability theorists working on issues of justice believe that such a fully worked-out theory is required. Sen (2009c) himself has argued at length that we don’t need a theory that describes a utopian ideal, but rather we need theorising to help us with making comparisons of injustice, and to guide us towards a less unjust society. Similarly, Jay Drydyk (2012) has argued that the capability approach to justice should focus on reducing capability shortfalls, for which a utopian account of perfect justice is not needed. Some capability theorists may want to work out a full theory of justice by addressing the various specifications outlined above, while others may want to change the very nature of theorising about justice, moving it more to applied, non-ideal or grounded theories (Watene and Drydyk 2016).

3.13.3 From theories of justice to just practices and policies

Before closing this section on capabilitarian theorizing about justice, let us briefly shift from theory to practice. Since theories of justice are mainly developed at a highly abstract level, often entailing ideals of perfect justice, we may wonder whether the capability approach to social justice and equality is of any use in telling us what justice-enhancing strategies and policies to develop. Indeed, this has sometimes been phrased as a serious concern, namely, that theories of justice are too abstract and do not help us with social justice struggles on the ground. One may well argue that we roughly know what is going wrong and we need political action rather than more and more detailed theorising. Moreover, some think that in the real world the subtleties of theories of justice are easily abused in order to justify gross inequalities, as may have been the case with philosophical discussions on individual responsibility. For example, Brian Barry’s (2005) later work exemplified this concern with the direct application of theories of justice to political change and the reform of the welfare state, rather than with further philosophical refinements of theories of justice. Related charges have been aimed at the capability approach as well. For instance, it has been argued that not enough attention has been paid to issues of social power in the capability writings on justice, and Feldman and Gellert (2006) have underscored the importance of recognising the struggles and negotiations by dominated and disadvantaged groups if social justice is ever to be realised. Such questions of power politics, effective social criticism, successful collective action, historical and cultural sensitivities, and the negotiation of competing interests are indeed largely absent from the philosophical literature on theories of justice. These ideal theories develop standards of a just society, but often do not tell us what institutions or policies are necessary if just societies are to be constructed, nor do they tell us what social and political processes will help advocates implement these social changes in concrete ways.

But the capability approach can be linked to more concrete justice-enhancing policy proposals that have been developed. For one thing, the Millennium Development Goals could be understood as being a practical (albeit specific and also limited) translation of the capability approach in practice, and their successors, the Sustainable Development Goals, can also be seen as influenced by the capability approach. 26 In fact, at the level of severe global poverty, any concrete poverty-reduction strategy which conceptualises poverty in a capability sense is, for most accounts of justice, a concrete justice-enhancing strategy, since these theories would include the absence of severe poverty as a principle of justice.

If we move from the area of poverty-reduction strategies to the question of just social policies in countries or regions with higher levels of affluence, we observe that there are much fewer actual examples of justice-enhancing policies that have been explicitly grounded in, or associated with, the capability approach. Yet many concrete policies and interventions could be interpreted as such, or are consistent with the capability perspective itself. One example relates to a policy of providing, regulating and/or subsidising child-care facilities. This can arguably be justified as a prerequisite for gender justice in capabilities since, due to gender norms, women will in effect not be able to develop themselves professionally if they are not supported in their need for decent quality-regulated (and possibly subsidised) child-care facilities. Mothers at home may be materially well-off if their husbands earn a good income but, if they do not have the genuine opportunity to hold jobs, then their capability sets are severely constrained and gender justice in capabilities cannot be achieved. An income metric which assumes equal sharing in the household may not detect any moral problem, but a capability metric will claim that women have more limited freedoms than men, since the provisions are not there to ensure that both parents can hold jobs, and gender norms and other gendered social mechanisms make it highly unlikely that men will volunteer to stay at home with their children. At the same time, men are also losing out since they have a very limited capability to spend time with their newborn babies.

A slightly different example concerns a justice-enhancing intervention that can be found in the form of adult volunteers who visit disadvantaged families to read to the children in order to enhance their language skills. 27 It is well-known that many children of immigrants are disadvantaged at school since they are very likely to enter school with weaker knowledge of the language of instruction than non-immigrant children. For this reason, in several cities there are networks of volunteers to read books to small immigrant children in their own homes. In this way, they effectively reduce the gap in educational opportunity between immigrant children and non-immigrant children. This example also illustrates that justice-enhancing strategies are not confined to public policy, but can also be initiated by persons and groups at the grassroots. The government is not the only agent of justice; we can all do our part.

19 In particular, see the overview of different types of capability study in section 2.4.

20 It doesn’t follow that all concerns of theorists of recognition are best expressed by using the capability approach. I doubt that this is the case, but will not pursue this issue here further.

21 There is a large literature on the differences and complementarities between the capability approach to justice (that is, capabilitarian theories of justice) and Rawls’s theory of justice (see e.g. Sen 1980, 195–200; Rawls 1988; Sen 1992a, 82–83; Pogge 2002; Nussbaum 2006b; Robeyns 2008b, 2009; and the contributions to Brighouse and Robeyns 2010).

22 I have presented this overview of steps that need to be taken in earlier publications (e.g. Robeyns 2016d).

23 An accessible explanation of the method of reflective equilibrium can be found in Knight (2017).

24 An analysis of this comparison between social primary goods and capabilities was made by the various contributions to the volume edited by Brighouse and Robeyns (2010).

25 For comparisons of the capability view with Dworkin’s egalitarian theory, see Sen (1984b, 321–23, 2009c, 264–68); Dworkin (2000, 299–303); Williams (2002); Browne and Stears (2005); Kaufman (2006); Pierik and Robeyns (2007).

26 See http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

27 In the Netherlands, this volunteer organisation is called De Voorleesexpress ( https://voorleesexpress.nl ) but similar initiatives must exist around the world.

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The Capability Approach Concepts, Measures and Applications

• Flavio Comim , University of Cambridge
• Mozaffar Qizilbash , University of York
• Sabina Alkire , University of Oxford
• Date Published: August 2010
• availability: Available
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521154529

Other available formats: Hardback

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The capability approach developed by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has become an important new paradigm in thinking about development. However, despite its theoretical and philosophical attractiveness, it has been less easy to measure or to translate into policy. This volume addresses these issues in the context of poverty and justice. Part I offers a set of conceptual essays that debate the strength of the often misunderstood individual focus of the capability approach. Part II investigates the techniques by which we can measure and compare capabilities, and how we can integrate them into poverty comparisons and policy advice. Finally, Part III looks at how we can apply the capability approach to different regions and contexts. Written by a team of international scholars, The Capability Approach is a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students concerned with the debate over the value of the capability approach and its potential applications.

• Cross-disciplinary appeal to development economists and philosophers
• Discusses measurement and application of the complex philosophical arguments of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen in real development contexts
• International authorship and case studies ensure global relevance

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Review of the hardback: 'Amartya Sen's notion of capabilities is a rich source of new ideas and philosophical debates about such diverse and wide ranging issues as development, poverty, inequality, human rights, gender, identity and democracy. Here is a collection of well-researched and cogently written essays discussing these many aspects and taking the debates further. It will provide a quarry of ideas for policy makers, researchers, teachers and students of these many issues.' Lord Meghnad Desai, Emeritus Professor of Economics and former director of the Centre for Global Governance, London School of Economics

Review of the hardback: 'These essays on Amartya Sen's capability approach to thinking about human well-being, and so about poverty and development, raise fundamental questions. Can a capabilities approach yield coherent and convincing concepts of well-being and of poverty, or ways of measuring them? What, if anything, does it do better than income- or resource-based approaches? Or is a demand that it 'do better' in the terms of its rivals simply evidence of failure to think through the implications of taking capabilities, and thereby human agency and diversity, seriously? If so, how should the success of work based on capabilities be judged? Why is there so much disagreement over the supposed individualism of the capabilities approach? Has the approach led to significant practical initiatives? The essays in this ample collection offer a rich and often detailed reflection on these and other fundamental questions, and some sharp analyses of central questions about capabilities.' Baroness Onora O'Neill, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge

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• length: 634 pages
• dimensions: 229 x 152 x 38 mm
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List of figures List of tables Introduction 1. Using the capability approach: prospective and evaluative analyses Sabina Alkire Part I. Concepts: 2. Amartya Sen's capability view: insightful sketch or distorted picture? Mozaffar Qizilbash 3. Sen's capability approach and feminist concerns Ingrid Robeyns 4. Beyond individual freedom and agency: structures of living together in the capability approach to development Séverine Deneulin 5. Does identity matter? On the relevance of identity and interaction for capabilities Miriam Teschl and Laurent Derobert 6. Measuring Capabilities Flavio Comim Part II. Measures: 7. Do concepts matter? An empirical investigation of the differences between a capability and a monetary assessment of poverty Caterina Ruggeri Laderchi 8. Social exclusion in the EU: a capability-based approach Fotis Papadopoulos and Panos Tsakloglou 9. Complexity and vagueness in the capability approach: strengths or weaknesses? Enrica Chiappero Martinetti 10. Operationalising Sen's capability approach: the influence of the selected technique Sara Lelli 11. Operationalizing capabilities in a segmented society: the role of institutions Kanchan Chopra and Anantha Kumar Duraiappah Part III. Applications: 12. Democracy, decentralisation and access to basic services: an elaboration on Sen's capability approach Santosh Mehrotra 13. Reinforcing household's capabilities as a way to reduce vulnerability and prevent poverty in equitable terms Jean-Luc Dubois and Sophie Rousseau 14. Capabilities over the lifecourse: at what age does poverty damage most? Shahin Yaqub 15. Social policy and the ability to appear in public without shame: some lessons from a food relief programme in Kinshasa Tom De Herdt 16. The capability approach and gendered education:some issues of operationalisation in the context of the HIV/AIDs epidemic in South Africa Elaine Unterhalter 17. Women and poverty In Mozambique: is there a gender bias In capabilities, employment conditions and living standards? Pier Giogio Ardeni and Antonio Andracchio 18. From the quantity to the quality of employment: an application of the capability approach to the Chilean labour market Kirsten Sehnbruch Index.

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Contributors

Sabina Alkire, Mozaffar Qizilbash, Ingrid Robeyns, Séverine Deneulin, Miriam Teschl, Laurent Derobert, Flavio Comim, Caterina Ruggeri Laderchi, Fotis Papadopoulos, Panos Tsakloglou, Enrica Chiappero Martinetti, Sara Lelli, Kanchan Chopra, Anantha Kumar Duraiappah, Santosh Mehrotra, Jean-Luc Dubois, Sophie Rousseau, Shahin Yaqub, Tom De Herdt, Elaine Unterhalter, Pier Giogio Ardeni, Antonio Andracchio, Kirsten Sehnbruch

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The Capability Approach

From Theory to Practice

• © 2014
• Solava Ibrahim (Lecturer) 0 ,
• Meera Tiwari (Reader) 1

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Theory of the Capability Approach

The Notion of Capability in Literature

Capabilities and Work Practices - A Case Study of the Practical Use and Utility

• sustainability
• development policy
• development aid
• development theory

Table of contents (11 chapters)

Front matter, introduction: the capability approach: from theory to practice — rationale, review and reflections.

Solava Ibrahim

Capability Approach, Livelihoods and Social Inclusion: Agents of Change in Rural India

Meera Tiwari

The Dynamics of Collective Agency in Practice: Women’s Fight against FGM in Upper Egypt

Growing up on the street — understanding the lives of street children and youth in africa.

• Wayne Shand

An Agency-Oriented Exploration of Capabilities: Reflections from the UNDP 2010 Brasil Ponto a Ponto Campaign

• Alexandre Apsan Frediani

Sustainability and the Capability Approach: From Theory to Practice?

• P. B. Anand

Using the Capability Approach to Evaluate Health and Care for Individuals and Groups in England

• Tania Burchardt, Polly Vizard

Capability Approach Applications in Germany: Official Poverty and Wealth Reporting and Beyond

• Jürgen Volkert

Integrating Human Capital and Human Capabilities in Understanding the Value of Education

• Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti, Anna Sabadash

French Public Involvement in Fair Trade: An Opportunity to Link the Solidarity Economy and the Capability Approach

• Hanitra Randrianasolo, Jean Luc Dubois

Conclusion: Key Contributions and Lessons Learned from Challenges in Applying the Capability Approach

Back matter.

“This book is a novel contribution to the existing literature and that it will provide a key point of reference for any PhD student or researcher attempting to apply the CA to practice in their respective fields for many years to come. ... this book provides a good starting point for anyone else heading down a similar road, although the work contained in this book should make that trip less arduous.” (Paul Mark Mitchell, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Vol. 17 (2), May, 2016)

'This book convincingly demonstrates that the application of the capability approach to development policy and practice should be prioritised . by both researchers and practitioners. It provides both a thoughtful overview of 'why' and 'how' to move from theory to practice, and nine case studies (from rural India and Upper Egypt to the UK and Germany)that give detailed analyses of the application of the capability approach. Essential reading for all who are seeking to promote human flourishing.' David Hulme, University of Manchester, UK

'People often ask 'how do I apply the capability approach in practice it is a convincing idea in theory but what does it mean in concrete?' This book bridges the gap with a collection of wide ranging case studies from Brazil, Egypt, France, Germany, India and elsewhere. A must read for scholars and practitioners in search of a people centred and equitable development.' Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, The New School University, New York, USA

'This book is a refreshing contribution to the literature on the operationalisation of the Capability Approach. The essays and case studies in this rich collection provide a lucid variety of accounts of how to apply the human development paradigm to the real world. This international team of scholars has produced an outstanding reference work for scholars, policy-makers and non-specialists.' Flavio Comim, University of Cambridge, UK

Editors and Affiliations

About the editors, bibliographic information.

Book Title : The Capability Approach

Book Subtitle : From Theory to Practice

Editors : Solava Ibrahim, Meera Tiwari

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137001436

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan London

eBook Packages : Palgrave Intern. Relations & Development Collection , Political Science and International Studies (R0)

Copyright Information : Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2014

Hardcover ISBN : 978-1-137-00144-3 Published: 22 July 2014

Softcover ISBN : 978-1-349-43363-6 Published: 01 January 2014

eBook ISBN : 978-1-137-00143-6 Published: 22 July 2014

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XIV, 273

Topics : Development Economics , Development Policy , Development Aid , Development Theory , Development Studies , Methodology of the Social Sciences

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Army develops its approach to electronic warfare

Recent studies and exercises have shown that the Army needs a layered approach to EW and that the electromagnetic spectrum should be treated as terrain.

The Army has been reexamining its approach to electronic warfare as recent studies and exercises have shown that the service needs a layered approach to EW and that the electromagnetic spectrum should be treated with the same strategic importance as physical terrain in military operations.

Over the last year, the service conducted multiple studies examining its cyber and electronic warfare resources and capabilities, including the 120-day study conducted by the Cyber Center of Excellence team , followed by a series of classified studies conducted by Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Last month, the service held an EW tabletop exercise at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland , where participants , including I Corps, III Corps, XVIII Airborne Corps and Multi-Domain Task Force , among others , examined over 70 different EW capabilities across the service. The goal was to understand how those capabilities fit into current operational scenarios, identify gaps and develop potential approaches to operational challenges.

“Some of the gaps — it was more of a scenario-based. But fundamentally, just understanding what you look like in the electromagnetic spectrum, what your adversaries look like and how you can be influenced is really one of the the main areas that we walked away from,”  Brig. Gen. Ed Barker, program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, said during a C4ISRnet event Wednesday.

         Learn about CDM's ever-evolving role in civilian cyber in our new ebook, sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton. Download today!

“It really validated that you got to have that kind of layered approach to address those gaps. I think the takeaway was we have to treat the EMS as terrain — you have to be able to hold terrain, you have to be able to maneuver inside of it and you also have to be able to affect the enemy. That was probably the biggest takeaway.”

Due to the unique nature of different operational environments, the U.S. forces can’t rely on a single solution. For example, given particular characteristics of the Pacific theater, air-launched effects , or the ability to deploy EW capabilities from a distance , are needed.  

At closer ranges, EW capabilities are needed to protect specific platforms, such as tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles, against threats like inbound drones.

“If you want to non-kinetically effect inbound drone to ensure that it misses a tank, that’s similar physics, but the ranges and the outcomes are somewhat different. So you’re doing something in a very long range. And then you’re also, you know, making sure that you can protect those close-in assets,” Baker said.

“From a technical standpoint, it’s definitely a significantly different problem — protecting something within 500 kilometers versus protecting something within the last 500 meters.”

Data challenges  

Despite units having to rely on different systems and capabilities depending on their geographical location, they need to be connected to share real-time data and intelligence.

The Army Cyber Center of Excellence is currently conducting an EW pilot to develop a unified EW data architecture that will allow seamless data integration from different sources and regions.

“We have to just be comfortable with the fact that they’re going to be geographically dispersed and have to operate independently, but then also be interconnected. The data conversation is absolutely real – you have to understand the fundamentals underlying data challenges associated with the EW space,” said Baker. 

         Read more: Defense

Sharing data with partners

The Army and Marine Corps are conducting a pilot to develop common data standards and capabilities.

The Army recently decided to shift from the Electronic Warfare Planning and Management Tool’s electromagnetic warfare and spectrum management capabilities to the Tactical Assault Kit (TAK) framework, where applications for situational awareness data and geospatial visualizations can be built. The effort is being led by the Electronic Warfare Integration product management office.

“It aligns ourselves with the rest of the fires in the maneuver communities to achieve a commonality across software development, user interfaces, common experiences, underlying data and it’s part of that overall TAK architecture,” said Baker.

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Colorado’s Bold New Approach to Highways — Not Building Them

The state has made it harder to widen highways, and transportation officials are turning their eyes to transit.

Credit... Elliot Ross for The New York Times

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By Megan Kimble

• May 31, 2024

When Interstate 25 was constructed through Denver, highway engineers moved a river.

It was the 1950s, and nothing was going to get in the way of building a national highway system. Colorado’s governor and other dignitaries, including the chief engineer of the state highway department, acknowledged the moment by posing for a photo standing on bulldozer tracks, next to the trench that would become Interstate 25.

Today, state highway departments have rebranded as transportation agencies, but building, fixing and expanding highways is still mostly what they do.

So it was notable when, in 2022, the head of Colorado’s Department of Transportation called off a long planned widening of Interstate 25. The decision to do nothing was arguably more consequential than the alternative. By not expanding the highway, the agency offered a new vision for the future of transportation planning.

In Colorado, that new vision was catalyzed by climate change. In 2019, Gov. Jared Polis signed a law that required the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent within 30 years. As the state tried to figure out how it would get there, it zeroed in on drivers. Transportation is the largest single contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, accounting for about 30 percent of the total; 60 percent of that comes from cars and trucks. To reduce emissions, Coloradans would have to drive less.

An effective bit of bureaucracy drove that message home. After sustained lobbying from climate and environmental justice activists, the Transportation Commission of Colorado adopted a formal rule that makes the state transportation agency, along with Colorado’s five metropolitan planning organizations, demonstrate how new projects, including highways, reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If they don’t, they could lose funding.

Should transportation planners stop prioritizing highway construction?

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What is generative AI?

In the months and years since ChatGPT burst on the scene in November 2022, generative AI (gen AI) has come a long way. Every month sees the launch of new tools, rules, or iterative technological advancements. While many have reacted to ChatGPT (and AI and machine learning more broadly) with fear, machine learning clearly has the potential for good. In the years since its wide deployment, machine learning has demonstrated impact in a number of industries, accomplishing things like medical imaging analysis  and high-resolution weather forecasts. A 2022 McKinsey survey shows that AI adoption has more than doubled  over the past five years, and investment in AI is increasing apace. It’s clear that generative AI tools like ChatGPT (the GPT stands for generative pretrained transformer) and image generator DALL-E (its name a mashup of the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and the lovable Pixar robot WALL-E) have the potential to change how a range of jobs are performed. The full scope of that impact, though, is still unknown—as are the risks.

Get to know and directly engage with McKinsey's senior experts on generative AI

Aamer Baig is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Chicago office;  Lareina Yee  is a senior partner in the Bay Area office; and senior partners  Alex Singla  and Alexander Sukharevsky , global leaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, are based in the Chicago and London offices, respectively.

Still, organizations of all stripes have raced to incorporate gen AI tools into their business models, looking to capture a piece of a sizable prize. McKinsey research indicates that gen AI applications stand to add up to $4.4 trillion  to the global economy—annually. Indeed, it seems possible that within the next three years, anything in the technology, media, and telecommunications space not connected to AI will be considered obsolete or ineffective .

But before all that value can be raked in, we need to get a few things straight: What is gen AI, how was it developed, and what does it mean for people and organizations? Read on to get the download.

To stay up to date on this critical topic, sign up for email alerts on “artificial intelligence” here .

Learn more about QuantumBlack , AI by McKinsey.

What every CEO should know about generative AI

What’s the difference between machine learning and artificial intelligence, about quantumblack, ai by mckinsey.

QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI arm, helps companies transform using the power of technology, technical expertise, and industry experts. With thousands of practitioners at QuantumBlack (data engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and software engineers) and McKinsey (industry and domain experts), we are working to solve the world’s most important AI challenges. QuantumBlack Labs is our center of technology development and client innovation, which has been driving cutting-edge advancements and developments in AI through locations across the globe.

Artificial intelligence is pretty much just what it sounds like—the practice of getting machines to mimic human intelligence to perform tasks. You’ve probably interacted with AI even if you don’t realize it—voice assistants like Siri and Alexa are founded on AI technology, as are customer service chatbots that pop up to help you navigate websites.

Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence. Through machine learning, practitioners develop artificial intelligence through models that can “learn” from data patterns without human direction. The unmanageably huge volume and complexity of data (unmanageable by humans, anyway) that is now being generated has increased machine learning’s potential , as well as the need for it.

What are the main types of machine learning models?

Machine learning is founded on a number of building blocks, starting with classical statistical techniques  developed between the 18th and 20th centuries for small data sets. In the 1930s and 1940s, the pioneers of computing—including theoretical mathematician Alan Turing—began working on the basic techniques for machine learning. But these techniques were limited to laboratories until the late 1970s, when scientists first developed computers powerful enough to mount them.

Until recently, machine learning was largely limited to predictive models, used to observe and classify patterns in content. For example, a classic machine learning problem is to start with an image or several images of, say, adorable cats. The program would then identify patterns among the images, and then scrutinize random images for ones that would match the adorable cat pattern. Generative AI was a breakthrough. Rather than simply perceive and classify a photo of a cat, machine learning is now able to create an image or text description of a cat on demand.

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

How do text-based machine learning models work how are they trained.

ChatGPT may be getting all the headlines now, but it’s not the first text-based machine learning model to make a splash. OpenAI’s GPT-3 and Google’s BERT both launched in recent years to some fanfare. But before ChatGPT, which by most accounts works pretty well most of the time (though it’s still being evaluated), AI chatbots didn’t always get the best reviews. GPT-3 is “by turns super impressive and super disappointing,” said New York Times tech reporter Cade Metz in a video where he and food writer Priya Krishna asked GPT-3 to write recipes for a (rather disastrous) Thanksgiving dinner .

The first machine learning models to work with text were trained by humans to classify various inputs according to labels set by researchers. One example would be a model trained to label social media  posts as either positive or negative. This type of training is known as supervised learning because a human is in charge of “teaching” the model what to do.

The next generation of text-based machine learning models rely on what’s known as self-supervised learning. This type of training involves feeding a model a massive amount of text so it becomes able to generate predictions. For example, some models can predict, based on a few words, how a sentence will end. With the right amount of sample text—say, a broad swath of the internet—these text models become quite accurate. We’re seeing just how accurate with the success of tools like ChatGPT.

What does it take to build a generative AI model?

Building a generative AI model has for the most part been a major undertaking, to the extent that only a few well-resourced tech heavyweights have made an attempt . OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, former GPT models, and DALL-E, has billions in funding from bold-face-name donors. DeepMind is a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and even Meta has dipped a toe into the generative AI model pool with its Make-A-Video product. These companies employ some of the world’s best computer scientists and engineers.

But it’s not just talent. When you’re asking a model to train using nearly the entire internet, it’s going to cost you. OpenAI hasn’t released exact costs, but estimates indicate that GPT-3 was trained on around 45 terabytes of text data—that’s about one million feet of bookshelf space, or a quarter of the entire Library of Congress—at an estimated cost of several million dollars. These aren’t resources your garden-variety start-up can access.

What kinds of output can a generative AI model produce?

As you may have noticed above, outputs from generative AI models can be indistinguishable from human-generated content, or they can seem a little uncanny. The results depend on the quality of the model—as we’ve seen, ChatGPT’s outputs so far appear superior to those of its predecessors—and the match between the model and the use case, or input.

ChatGPT can produce what one commentator called a “ solid A- ” essay comparing theories of nationalism from Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner—in ten seconds. It also produced an already famous passage describing how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible. Image-generating AI models like DALL-E 2 can create strange, beautiful images on demand, like a Raphael painting of a Madonna and child, eating pizza . Other generative AI models can produce code, video, audio, or business simulations .

But the outputs aren’t always accurate—or appropriate. When Priya Krishna asked DALL-E 2 to come up with an image for Thanksgiving dinner, it produced a scene where the turkey was garnished with whole limes, set next to a bowl of what appeared to be guacamole. For its part, ChatGPT seems to have trouble counting, or solving basic algebra problems—or, indeed, overcoming the sexist and racist bias that lurks in the undercurrents of the internet and society more broadly.

Generative AI outputs are carefully calibrated combinations of the data used to train the algorithms. Because the amount of data used to train these algorithms is so incredibly massive—as noted, GPT-3 was trained on 45 terabytes of text data—the models can appear to be “creative” when producing outputs. What’s more, the models usually have random elements, which means they can produce a variety of outputs from one input request—making them seem even more lifelike.

What kinds of problems can a generative AI model solve?

The opportunity for businesses is clear. Generative AI tools can produce a wide variety of credible writing in seconds, then respond to criticism to make the writing more fit for purpose. This has implications for a wide variety of industries, from IT and software organizations that can benefit from the instantaneous, largely correct code generated by AI models to organizations in need of marketing copy. In short, any organization that needs to produce clear written materials potentially stands to benefit. Organizations can also use generative AI to create more technical materials, such as higher-resolution versions of medical images. And with the time and resources saved here, organizations can pursue new business opportunities and the chance to create more value.

We’ve seen that developing a generative AI model is so resource intensive that it is out of the question for all but the biggest and best-resourced companies. Companies looking to put generative AI to work have the option to either use generative AI out of the box or fine-tune them to perform a specific task. If you need to prepare slides according to a specific style, for example, you could ask the model to “learn” how headlines are normally written based on the data in the slides, then feed it slide data and ask it to write appropriate headlines.

What are the limitations of AI models? How can these potentially be overcome?

Because they are so new, we have yet to see the long tail effect of generative AI models. This means there are some inherent risks  involved in using them—some known and some unknown.

The outputs generative AI models produce may often sound extremely convincing. This is by design. But sometimes the information they generate is just plain wrong. Worse, sometimes it’s biased (because it’s built on the gender, racial, and myriad other biases of the internet and society more generally) and can be manipulated to enable unethical or criminal activity. For example, ChatGPT won’t give you instructions on how to hotwire a car, but if you say you need to hotwire a car to save a baby, the algorithm is happy to comply. Organizations that rely on generative AI models should reckon with reputational and legal risks involved in unintentionally publishing biased, offensive, or copyrighted content.

These risks can be mitigated, however, in a few ways. For one, it’s crucial to carefully select the initial data used to train these models to avoid including toxic or biased content. Next, rather than employing an off-the-shelf generative AI model, organizations could consider using smaller, specialized models. Organizations with more resources could also customize a general model based on their own data to fit their needs and minimize biases. Organizations should also keep a human in the loop (that is, to make sure a real human checks the output of a generative AI model before it is published or used) and avoid using generative AI models for critical decisions, such as those involving significant resources or human welfare.

It can’t be emphasized enough that this is a new field. The landscape of risks and opportunities  is likely to change rapidly in coming weeks, months, and years. New use cases are being tested monthly, and new models are likely to be developed in the coming years. As generative AI becomes increasingly, and seamlessly, incorporated into business, society, and our personal lives, we can also expect a new regulatory climate  to take shape. As organizations begin experimenting—and creating value—with these tools, leaders will do well to keep a finger on the pulse of regulation and risk.

Articles referenced include:

• " Implementing generative AI with speed and safety ,” March 13, 2024, Oliver Bevan, Michael Chui , Ida Kristensen , Brittany Presten, and Lareina Yee
• “ Beyond the hype: Capturing the potential of AI and gen AI in tech, media, and telecom ,” February 22, 2024, Venkat Atluri , Peter Dahlström , Brendan Gaffey , Víctor García de la Torre, Noshir Kaka , Tomás Lajous , Alex Singla , Alex Sukharevsky , Andrea Travasoni , and Benjamim Vieira
• “ As gen AI advances, regulators—and risk functions—rush to keep pace ,” December 21, 2023, Andreas Kremer, Angela Luget, Daniel Mikkelsen , Henning Soller , Malin Strandell-Jansson, and Sheila Zingg
• “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” June 14, 2023, Michael Chui , Eric Hazan , Roger Roberts , Alex Singla , Kate Smaje , Alex Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Rodney Zemmel
• “ What every CEO should know about generative AI ,” May 12, 2023, Michael Chui , Roger Roberts , Tanya Rodchenko, Alex Singla , Alex Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Delphine Zurkiya
• “ Exploring opportunities in the generative AI value chain ,” April 26, 2023, Tobias Härlin, Gardar Björnsson Rova , Alex Singla , Oleg Sokolov, and Alex Sukharevsky
• “ The state of AI in 2022—and a half decade in review ,” December 6, 2022,  Michael Chui ,  Bryce Hall ,  Helen Mayhew , Alex Singla , and Alex Sukharevsky
• “ McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2023 ,” July 20, 2023,  Michael Chui , Mena Issler,  Roger Roberts , and  Lareina Yee  
• “ An executive’s guide to AI ,” Michael Chui , Vishnu Kamalnath, and Brian McCarthy
• “ What AI can and can’t do (yet) for your business ,” January 11, 2018,  Michael Chui , James Manyika , and Mehdi Miremadi

This article was updated in April 2024; it was originally published in January 2023.

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CDAO Announces New Approach to Scaling Data, Analytics and AI Capabilities

Today the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) announced a new approach to scaling data, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities called Open DAGIR, which stands for the Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories. Open DAGIR will be a multi-vendor ecosystem with supporting business models that enables industry and government to integrate data platforms, development tools, services, and applications in a way that preserves government data ownership and industry intellectual property.

"Open DAGIR builds upon the momentum created by the Deputy Secretary of Defense's 2021 Creating Data Advantage memo, which included five data decrees for how the Department would retain ownership of its data while maximizing data sharing," said Dr. Radha Plumb, the CDAO. "Open DAGIR brings the best industry has to offer to the Department. It allows us to ensure enduring access to government-owned, contractor-operated technology stacks and infrastructure and retain data rights while also maximizing the ability of other companies to develop applications with government data." The Department will initially leverage the Open DAGIR ecosystem to support the data infrastructure and applications that support the Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control (CJADC2). This week, the Department made awards on mission command applications for combatant commands. The first ensures enterprise access to an open, government owned infrastructure with foundational data integrations, mature software deployment tools, and security architecture for government data. The second award is a prototype other transaction award (OTA) to rapidly and securely onboard third-party vendor and government capabilities into the government owned, contractor-operated data environment to meet priority Combatant Command digital needs. CDAO plans to explore similar approaches to enabling enduring access to infrastructure for enterprise analytics and federated tactical data in the future.

To identify solutions to priority warfighter needs, the CDAO will leverage its Global Information Dominance Experiment (GIDE) series to assess and where appropriate select new solutions to add to the Open DAGIR ecosystem. This will begin with an industry day in mid July.

"We want America's best talent solving DoD's hardest problems," Dr. Plumb said. "Open DAGIR ensures the Department can leverage the innovative solutions from the world-class software developers in both the traditional and nontraditional industrial base to create capabilities for our warfighters and decision makers. Combined with our experimentation-based approach to capability development, we aim to give industry front-row access to both our data and our users to develop relevant and timely software for decision advantage."

The CDAO awarded the prototype OTA through its award-winning Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace, which is a digital repository of post competition, readily awardable pitch videos that address the Department of Defense's (DoD) most significant challenges in the AI/ML, data, and analytics space.   All awardable solutions have been assessed through complex scoring rubrics and competitive procedures and are available to Government customers with a Marketplace account at www.tradewindai.com .

About the CDAO

The CDAO is responsible for accelerating the DoD's adoption of data, analytics, and AI, enabling the Department's digital infrastructure and policy adoption to deliver scalable AI-driven solutions for enterprise and joint use cases, safeguarding the nation against current and emerging threats. For more information about the CDAO, please visit our website at ai.mil . You can also connect with the CDAO on LinkedIn (@ DoD Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office) and X, formally known as Twitter (@dodcdao). Additional updates and news can be found on the CDAO Unit Page on DVIDS.

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How Pew Research Center will report on generations moving forward

Journalists, researchers and the public often look at society through the lens of generation, using terms like Millennial or Gen Z to describe groups of similarly aged people. This approach can help readers see themselves in the data and assess where we are and where we’re headed as a country.

Pew Research Center has been at the forefront of generational research over the years, telling the story of Millennials as they came of age politically and as they moved more firmly into adult life . In recent years, we’ve also been eager to learn about Gen Z as the leading edge of this generation moves into adulthood.

But generational research has become a crowded arena. The field has been flooded with content that’s often sold as research but is more like clickbait or marketing mythology. There’s also been a growing chorus of criticism about generational research and generational labels in particular.

Recently, as we were preparing to embark on a major research project related to Gen Z, we decided to take a step back and consider how we can study generations in a way that aligns with our values of accuracy, rigor and providing a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue.

A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations.

We set out on a yearlong process of assessing the landscape of generational research. We spoke with experts from outside Pew Research Center, including those who have been publicly critical of our generational analysis, to get their take on the pros and cons of this type of work. We invested in methodological testing to determine whether we could compare findings from our earlier telephone surveys to the online ones we’re conducting now. And we experimented with higher-level statistical analyses that would allow us to isolate the effect of generation.

What emerged from this process was a set of clear guidelines that will help frame our approach going forward. Many of these are principles we’ve always adhered to , but others will require us to change the way we’ve been doing things in recent years.

Here’s a short overview of how we’ll approach generational research in the future:

We’ll only do generational analysis when we have historical data that allows us to compare generations at similar stages of life. When comparing generations, it’s crucial to control for age. In other words, researchers need to look at each generation or age cohort at a similar point in the life cycle. (“Age cohort” is a fancy way of referring to a group of people who were born around the same time.)

When doing this kind of research, the question isn’t whether young adults today are different from middle-aged or older adults today. The question is whether young adults today are different from young adults at some specific point in the past.

To answer this question, it’s necessary to have data that’s been collected over a considerable amount of time – think decades. Standard surveys don’t allow for this type of analysis. We can look at differences across age groups, but we can’t compare age groups over time.

Another complication is that the surveys we conducted 20 or 30 years ago aren’t usually comparable enough to the surveys we’re doing today. Our earlier surveys were done over the phone, and we’ve since transitioned to our nationally representative online survey panel , the American Trends Panel . Our internal testing showed that on many topics, respondents answer questions differently depending on the way they’re being interviewed. So we can’t use most of our surveys from the late 1980s and early 2000s to compare Gen Z with Millennials and Gen Xers at a similar stage of life.

This means that most generational analysis we do will use datasets that have employed similar methodologies over a long period of time, such as surveys from the U.S. Census Bureau. A good example is our 2020 report on Millennial families , which used census data going back to the late 1960s. The report showed that Millennials are marrying and forming families at a much different pace than the generations that came before them.

Even when we have historical data, we will attempt to control for other factors beyond age in making generational comparisons. If we accept that there are real differences across generations, we’re basically saying that people who were born around the same time share certain attitudes or beliefs – and that their views have been influenced by external forces that uniquely shaped them during their formative years. Those forces may have been social changes, economic circumstances, technological advances or political movements.

When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

The tricky part is isolating those forces from events or circumstances that have affected all age groups, not just one generation. These are often called “period effects.” An example of a period effect is the Watergate scandal, which drove down trust in government among all age groups. Differences in trust across age groups in the wake of Watergate shouldn’t be attributed to the outsize impact that event had on one age group or another, because the change occurred across the board.

Changing demographics also may play a role in patterns that might at first seem like generational differences. We know that the United States has become more racially and ethnically diverse in recent decades, and that race and ethnicity are linked with certain key social and political views. When we see that younger adults have different views than their older counterparts, it may be driven by their demographic traits rather than the fact that they belong to a particular generation.

Controlling for these factors can involve complicated statistical analysis that helps determine whether the differences we see across age groups are indeed due to generation or not. This additional step adds rigor to the process. Unfortunately, it’s often absent from current discussions about Gen Z, Millennials and other generations.

When we can’t do generational analysis, we still see value in looking at differences by age and will do so where it makes sense. Age is one of the most common predictors of differences in attitudes and behaviors. And even if age gaps aren’t rooted in generational differences, they can still be illuminating. They help us understand how people across the age spectrum are responding to key trends, technological breakthroughs and historical events.

Each stage of life comes with a unique set of experiences. Young adults are often at the leading edge of changing attitudes on emerging social trends. Take views on same-sex marriage , for example, or attitudes about gender identity .

Many middle-aged adults, in turn, face the challenge of raising children while also providing care and support to their aging parents. And older adults have their own obstacles and opportunities. All of these stories – rooted in the life cycle, not in generations – are important and compelling, and we can tell them by analyzing our surveys at any given point in time.

When we do have the data to study groups of similarly aged people over time, we won’t always default to using the standard generational definitions and labels. While generational labels are simple and catchy, there are other ways to analyze age cohorts. For example, some observers have suggested grouping people by the decade in which they were born. This would create narrower cohorts in which the members may share more in common. People could also be grouped relative to their age during key historical events (such as the Great Recession or the COVID-19 pandemic) or technological innovations (like the invention of the iPhone).

By choosing not to use the standard generational labels when they’re not appropriate, we can avoid reinforcing harmful stereotypes or oversimplifying people’s complex lived experiences.

Existing generational definitions also may be too broad and arbitrary to capture differences that exist among narrower cohorts. A typical generation spans 15 to 18 years. As many critics of generational research point out, there is great diversity of thought, experience and behavior within generations. The key is to pick a lens that’s most appropriate for the research question that’s being studied. If we’re looking at political views and how they’ve shifted over time, for example, we might group people together according to the first presidential election in which they were eligible to vote.

With these considerations in mind, our audiences should not expect to see a lot of new research coming out of Pew Research Center that uses the generational lens. We’ll only talk about generations when it adds value, advances important national debates and highlights meaningful societal trends.

• Age & Generations
• Demographic Research
• Generation X
• Generation Z
• Generations
• Greatest Generation
• Methodological Research
• Millennials
• Silent Generation

Kim Parker is director of social trends research at Pew Research Center .

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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