Development as Freedom

by Sen, Amartya

Obviously, “total comparison” is the most ambitious of the three—often much too ambitious. We can go in that direction—maybe quite far—by not insisting on a complete ranking of all the alternatives. Examples of “distinguished capability comparison” can be seen in concentrated attention being paid to some particular capability variable, such as employment, or longevity, or literacy, or nutrition.

  It is possible, of course, to go from a set of separate comparisons of distinguished capabilities to an aggregated ranking of the sets of capabilities. This is where the crucial role of weights would come in, bridging the gap between “distinguished capability comparisons” and “partial rankings” (or even “total comparisons”).57 But it is important to emphasize that despite the incomplete coverage that distinguished capability comparisons provide, such comparisons can be quite illuminating, even on their own, in evaluative exercises. There will be an opportunity to illustrate this issue in the next chapter.

  2) The supplementary approach: A second approach is relatively nonradical, and involves continued use of traditional procedures of interpersonal comparisons in income spaces, but supplements them by capability considerations (often in rather informal ways). For practical purposes, some broadening of the informational base can be achieved through this route. The supplementation may focus either on direct comparisons of functionings themselves, or on instrumental variables other than income that are expected to influence the determination of capabilities. Such factors as the availability and reach of health care, evidence of gender bias in family allocation, and the prevalence and magnitude of joblessness can add to the partial illumination provided by the traditional measures in the income space. Such extensions can enrich the overall understanding of problems of inequality and poverty by adding to what gets known through measures of income inequality and income poverty. Essentially, this involves using “distinguished capability comparison” as a supplementary device.58

  3) The indirect approach: A third line of approach is more ambitious than the supplementary approach but remains focused on the familiar space of incomes, appropriately adjusted. Information on determinants of capabilities other than income can be used to calculate “adjusted incomes.” For example, family income levels may be adjusted downward by illiteracy and upward by high levels of education, and so on, to make them equivalent in terms of capability achievement. This procedure relates to the general literature on “equivalence scales.” It also connects with the research on analyzing family expenditure patterns for indirectly assessing causal influences that may not be observed directly (such as the presence or absence of certain types of sex bias within the family).59

  The advantage of this approach lies in the fact that income is a familiar concept and often allows stricter measurement (than, say, overall “indices” of capabilities). This may permit more articulation and perhaps easier interpretation. The motivation for choosing the “metric” of income in this case is similar to A. B. Atkinson’s choice of the income space to measure the effects of income inequality (in his calculation of “equally distributed equivalent income”), rather than the utility space, as was originally proposed by Hugh Dalton.60 Inequality can be seen in Dalton’s approach in terms of utility loss from disparity, and the shift that Atkinson brought in involved assessing the loss from inequality in terms of “equivalent income.”

  The “metric” issue is not negligible, and the indirect approach does have some advantages. It is, however, necessary to recognize that it is not any “simpler” than direct assessment. First, in assessing the values of equivalent income, we have to consider how income influences the relevant capabilities, since the conversion rates have to be parasitic on the underlying motivation of capability evaluation. Furthermore, all the issues of trade-offs between different capabilities (and those of relative weights) have to be faced in the indirect approach just as much as in the direct approach, since all that is essentially altered is the unit of expression. In this sense the indirect approach is not basically different from the direct approach in terms of the judgments that have to be made to get appropriate measures in the space of equivalent incomes.

  Second, it is important to distinguish between income as a unit in which to measure inequality and income as the vehicle of inequality reduction. Even if inequality in capabilities is well measured in terms of equivalent incomes, it does not follow that transferring income would be the best way to counteract the observed inequality. The policy question of compensation or redress raises other issues (effectiveness in altering capability disparities, the respective force of incentive effects and so on), and the easy “reading” of income gaps must not be taken as a suggestion that corresponding income transfers would remedy the disparities most effectually. There is, of course, no need to fall into this mistaken reading of equivalent incomes, but the clarity and immediacy of the income space may pose that temptation, which has to be explicitly resisted.

  Third, even though the income space has greater measurability and articulation, the actual magnitudes can be very misleading in terms of the values involved. Consider, for example, the possibility that as the level of income is reduced and a person starts to starve, there may be a sharp drop at some point in the person’s chances of survival. Even though the “distance” in the space of incomes between two alternative values may be rather little (measured entirely in terms of income), if the consequence of such a shift is a dramatic change in the chances of survival, then the impact of that small income change can be very large in the space of what really matters (in this case the capability to survive). It may thus be deceptive to think of the difference as being really “little” because the income difference is small. Indeed, since income remains only instrumentally important, we cannot know how significant the income gaps are without actually considering the consequences of the income gaps in the space that is ultimately important. If a battle is lost for want of a nail (through a chain of causal connections that the old verse outlines), then that nail made a big difference, no matter how trivial it may be in the space of incomes or expenditures.

  Each of these approaches has contingent merit that may vary depending on the nature of the exercise, the availability of information, and the urgency of the decisions that have to be taken. Since the capability perspective is sometimes interpreted in terribly exacting terms (total comparisons under the direct approach), it is important to emphasize the catholicity that the approach has. The foundational affirmation of the importance of capabilities can go with various strategies of actual evaluation involving practical compromises. The pragmatic nature of practical reason demands this.

  CONCLUDING REMARKS

  Euclid is supposed to have told Ptolemy: “There is no ‘royal road’ to geometry.” It is not clear that there is any royal road to evaluation of economic or social policies either. A variety of considerations that call for attention are involved, and evaluations have to be done with sensitivity to these concerns. Much of the debate on the alternative approaches to evaluation relates to the priorities in deciding on what should be at the core of our normative concern.

  It has been argued here that the priorities that are accepted, often implicitly, in the different approaches to ethics, welfare economics, and political philosophy can be brought out and analyzed through identifying the information on which the evaluative judgments rely in the respective approaches. This chapter was concerned particularly with showing how these “informational bases” work, and how the different ethical and evaluative systems use quite different informational bases.

  From that general issue, the analysis presented in this chapter moved to specific evaluative approaches, in particular utilitarianism, libertarianism and Rawlsian justice. In line with the view that there are indeed no royal roads to evaluation, it emerged that there are distinct merits in each of these well-established strategies, but that each also suffers from significant limitations.

  The constructive part of this chapter proceeded to examine the implications of focusing dire
ctly on the substantive freedoms of the individuals involved, and identified a general approach that concentrates on the capabilities of people to do things—and the freedom to lead lives—that they have reason to value. I have discussed this approach elsewhere as well,61 as have others, and its advantages and limitations are also reasonably clear. It does appear that not only is this approach able to take direct note of the importance of freedom, it can also pay substantial attention to the underlying motivations that contribute to the relevance of the other approaches. In particular, the freedom-based perspective can take note of, inter alia, utilitarianism’s interest in human well-being, libertarianism’s involvement with processes of choice and the freedom to act and Rawlsian theory’s focus on individual liberty and on the resources needed for substantive freedoms. In this sense the capability approach has a breadth and sensitivity that give it a very extensive reach, allowing evaluative attention to be paid to a variety of important concerns, some of which are ignored, one way or another, in the alternative approaches. This extensive reach is possible because the freedoms of persons can be judged through explicit reference to outcomes and processes that they have reason to value and seek.62

  Different ways of using this freedom-based perspective were also discussed, resisting in particular the idea that the use must take an all-or-none form. In many practical problems, the possibility of using an explicitly freedom-based approach may be relatively limited. Yet even there it is possible to make use of the insights and informational interests involved in a freedom-based approach—without insisting on ignoring other procedures when they can be, within particular contexts, sensibly utilized. The analysis that follows builds on these understandings, in an attempt to throw light on underdevelopment (seen broadly in the form of unfreedom) and development (seen as a process of removing unfreedoms and of extending the substantive freedoms of different types that people have reason to value). A general approach can be used in many different ways, depending on the context and on the information that is available. It is this combination of foundational analysis and pragmatic use that gives the capability approach its extensive reach.

  CHAPTER 4

  POVERTY AS CAPABILITY DEPRIVATION

  It was argued in the last chapter that, in analyzing social justice, there is a strong case for judging individual advantage in terms of the capabilities that a person has, that is, the substantive freedoms he or she enjoys to lead the kind of life he or she has reason to value. In this perspective, poverty must be seen as the deprivation of basic capabilities rather than merely as lowness of incomes, which is the standard criterion of identification of poverty.1 The perspective of capability-poverty does not involve any denial of the sensible view that low income is clearly one of the major causes of poverty, since lack of income can be a principal reason for a person’s capability deprivation.

  Indeed, inadequate income is a strong predisposing condition for an impoverished life. If this is accepted, what then is all this fuss about, in seeing poverty in the capability perspective (as opposed to seeing it in terms of the standard income-based poverty assessment)? The claims in favor of the capability approach to poverty are, I believe, the following.

  1) Poverty can be sensibly identified in terms of capability deprivation; the approach concentrates on deprivations that are intrinsically important (unlike low income, which is only instrumentally significant).

  2) There are influences on capability deprivation—and thus on real poverty—other than lowness of income (income is not the only instrument in generating capabilities).

  3) The instrumental relation between low income and low capability is variable between different communities and even between different families and different individuals (the impact of income on capabilities is contingent and conditional).2

  The third issue is particularly important in considering and evaluating public action aimed at reducing inequality or poverty. Various reasons for conditional variations have been discussed in the literature (and in chapter 3, earlier), and it is useful to emphasize some of them specifically in the context of practical policy making.

  First, the relationship between income and capability would be strongly affected by the age of the person (e.g., by the specific needs of the old and the very young), by gender and social roles (e.g., through special responsibilities of maternity and also custom-determined family obligations), by location (e.g., by proneness to flooding or drought, or by insecurity and violence in some inner-city living), by epidemiological atmosphere (e.g., through diseases endemic in a region) and by other variations over which a person may have no—or only limited—control.3 In making contrasts of population groups classified according to age, gender, location and so on, these parametric variations are particularly important.

  Second, there can be some “coupling” of disadvantages between (1) income deprivation and (2) adversity in converting income into functionings.4 Handicaps, such as age or disability or illness, reduce one’s ability to earn an income.5 But they also make it harder to convert income into capability, since an older, or more disabled, or more seriously ill person may need more income (for assistance, for prosthesis, for treatment) to achieve the same functionings (even when that achievement is at all possible).6 This entails that “real poverty” (in terms of capability deprivation) may be, in a significant sense, more intense than what appears in the income space. This can be a crucial concern in assessing public action to assist the elderly and other groups with “conversion” difficulties in addition to lowness of income.

  Third, distribution within the family raises further complications with the income approach to poverty. If the family income is used disproportionately in the interest of some family members and not others (for example, if there is a systematic “boy preference” in the family allocation of resources), then the extent of the deprivation of the neglected members (girls in the example considered) may not be adequately reflected in terms of family income. This is a substantial issue in many contexts; sex bias does appear to be a major factor in the family allocation in many countries in Asia and North Africa. The deprivation of girls is more readily checked by looking at capability deprivation (in terms of greater mortality, morbidity, undernourishment, medical neglect, and so on) than can be found on the basis of income analysis.7

  This issue is clearly not as central in the context of inequality and poverty in Europe or North America, but the presumption—often implicitly made—that the issue of gender inequality does not apply at the basic level to the “Western” countries can be, to some extent, misleading. For example, Italy has one of the highest ratios of “unrecognized” labor by women vis-à-vis recognized labor included in the standard national accounts.8 The accounting of effort and time expended, and the related reduction of freedom, has some bearing in the analysis of poverty even in Europe and North America. There are also other ways in which intrafamily divisions are important to include among the considerations relevant for public policy in most parts of the world.

  Fourth, relative deprivation in terms of incomes can yield absolute deprivation in terms of capabilities. Being relatively poor in a rich country can be a great capability handicap, even when one’s absolute income is high in terms of world standards. In a generally opulent country, more income is needed to buy enough commodities to achieve the same social functioning. This consideration—pioneeringly outlined by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776)—is quite central to sociological understandings of poverty, and it has been analyzed by W. G. Runciman, Peter Townsend and others.9

  For example, the difficulties that some groups of people experience in “taking part in the life of the community” can be crucial for any study of “social exclusion.” The need to take part in the life of a community may induce demands for modern equipment (televisions, videocassette recorders, automobiles and so on) in a country where such facilities are more or less universal (unlike what would be needed in less affluent countries), and this imposes a strain on a relatively po
or person in a rich country even when that person is at a much higher level of income compared with people in less opulent countries.10 Indeed, the paradoxical phenomenon of hunger in rich countries—even in the United States—has something to do with the competing demands of these expenses.11

  What the capability perspective does in poverty analysis is to enhance the understanding of the nature and causes of poverty and deprivation by shifting primary attention away from means (and one particular means that is usually given exclusive attention, viz., income) to ends that people have reason to pursue, and, correspondingly, to the freedoms to be able to satisfy these ends. The examples briefly considered here illustrate the additional discernment that results from this basic extension. The deprivations are seen at a more fundamental level—one closer to the informational demands of social justice. Hence the relevance of the perspective of capability-poverty.

  INCOME POVERTY AND CAPABILITY POVERTY

  While it is important to distinguish conceptually the notion of poverty as capability inadequacy from that of poverty as lowness of income, the two perspectives cannot but be related, since income is such an important means to capabilities. And since enhanced capabilities in leading a life would tend, typically, to expand a person’s ability to be more productive and earn a higher income, we would also expect a connection going from capability improvement to greater earning power and not only the other way around.

  The latter connection can be particularly important for the removal of income poverty. It is not only the case that, say, better basic education and health care improve the quality of life directly; they also increase a person’s ability to earn an income and be free of income-poverty as well. The more inclusive the reach of basic education and health care, the more likely it is that even the potentially poor would have a better chance of overcoming penury.