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The Palgrave Handbook of Development Economics pp 441–468Cite as

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Capability Approach and Human Development

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Abstract

Human development is a development paradigm that puts people at the center of development—as its principle end and means. Human development is built on the theoretical concepts of capabilities originated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, which provides a normative framework for assessment of individual well-being, social outcomes and public policies. In systematically and consistently applying the capability approach in empirical evaluation of development progress, and in the analysis of policy alternatives, the human development paradigm challenges standard prescriptions in a broad range of areas including social, macroeconomic, political, environmental and cultural arenas. It is often misinterpreted as an agenda for social welfare programs and social investments. The rich and complex concept of human development is imprisoned in its reductionist measurement tool, the Human Development Index that only includes education, income, and a decent standard of living. This chapter provides an overview of the capability approach and human development paradigm and situates them within development economics, thought and practice, highlighting its contrasts with conventional thinking, and complementarities with human rights and feminist economics. It argues that the capability approach and human development paradigm have had enormous reach and influence in development thought and practice. It has strengthened complementary approaches that are also motivated by human freedom and flourishing, notably human rights and feminist economics. All these paradigms have led to the rise of a ‘people centered’ approach to development as a discourse, and the consensus on poverty as a principle objective of development as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals. However, the concepts of capabilities and human development have only been partially reflected in these discourses about policy agendas given the misrepresentation of human development as an agenda for meeting basic needs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘Capability’ and ‘capabilities’ are both used widely in the literature. While Sen uses the singular form to refer to a set of capabilities, Nussbaum prefers the plural ‘in order to emphasize that the most important elements of people’s quality of life are plural and qualitatively distinct: health, bodily integrity, education, and other aspects of individual lives cannot be reduced to a single metric without distortion’ (Nussbaum 2011, p. 18). See Robeyns (2017) for a discussion of these and other differences.

  2. 2.

    Sen describes ‘fasting’ as exemplifying a ‘refined functioning’, which is different from the ‘unrefined functioning’ of ‘starvation’—the latter not reflecting a matter of choice (1989, p. 49). He introduces the concept of ‘refined functioning achievements’ in his Dewey lectures and uses it alongside that of ‘capability sets of primitive functionings’—both noting the choices exercised given relevant alternatives available (Sen 1985b, p. 202).

  3. 3.

    See Minujin et al. (2002) and UNICEF (2016) for similar exercises.

  4. 4.

    Choice is a problematic proxy for ‘capabilities’. Expanding choices implies that the goal of human development is to expand all choices, that more choices is always better than less, even when not all choices are desirable or important (Alkire 2010; Alkire and Deneulin 2009).

  5. 5.

    Sen acknowledges the contribution that collaborations with HDRs have made to his own publications such as Development as Freedom (1999), Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (2007), and Idea of Justice (2009).

  6. 6.

    This has been a common theme in feminist advocacy positions in international negotiations, especially in UN fora. See, for example, publications of the South-based feminist network: Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era (DAWN): http://dawnnet.org/resources/publications/ accessed 09.20.2018.

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  1. New School for Social Research, New York, NY, USA

    Sakiko Fukuda-Parr & Ismael Cid-Martinez

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  1. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr
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Correspondence to Sakiko Fukuda-Parr .

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  1. Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies University of London, London, UK

    Machiko Nissanke

  2. Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia

    José Antonio Ocampo

  3. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    José Antonio Ocampo

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Fukuda-Parr, S., Cid-Martinez, I. (2019). Capability Approach and Human Development. In: Nissanke, M., Ocampo, J.A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Development Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14000-7_13

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