Amartya Sen
Economic development occurs when real freedoms expand rather than when gross domestic product merely increases. Wealth acts only as an instrument to achieve a valuable life, making income growth an insufficient metric for societal progress. When governments evaluate economic proposals, they must measure success by how those policies impact political rights, economic opportunities, and basic security. Expanding human capabilities functions as both the primary method and the ultimate goal of meaningful development.
Functionings represent the various states and activities that make up a person's existence, ranging from basic survival and health to complex achievements like self-respect and community participation. Capabilities describe the actual freedom a person possesses to achieve these valuable functionings. Two individuals might exhibit identical functioning by eating very little food, but if one is fasting by choice and the other is starving due to poverty, their capability sets differ vastly. True progress requires building the institutional frameworks that give individuals the power to choose their preferred functionings.
Poverty operates as a severe capability deprivation rather than a simple lack of financial resources. Social and economic institutions can impose restrictive conditions that severely limit basic human agency. These restrictions manifest as unfreedoms, which include systematic deprivation of healthcare, systemic tyranny, or a lack of educational infrastructure. Removing these systemic unfreedoms is essential because they actively prevent individuals from leading fulfilling lives and block society from achieving equitable economic advancement.
Five distinct instrumental freedoms interlink to advance human capabilities. Political freedoms guarantee civil liberties and the right to dissent, while economic facilities determine how individuals can utilize resources for production and exchange. Social opportunities encompass the fundamental societal arrangements for education and health that directly influence an individual's ability to participate in economic and political activities. Furthermore, transparency guarantees foster trust by demanding openness in social interactions, and protective security provides a necessary social safety net to prevent extreme vulnerability.
Famines do not occur in functioning democracies because open public discourse and regular elections hold governments accountable to their citizens. When leaders face the threat of being voted out of office, they actively intervene to prevent severe nutritional crises. The presence of a free press and unrestricted political opposition ensures that the needs of the vulnerable reach the public consciousness quickly. This causal relationship proves that political rights possess an instrumental value in securing basic survival.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum systematized the capability approach by identifying ten central human capabilities necessary for a decent political order. These core principles demand that governments protect life, bodily health, and bodily integrity as nonnegotiable minimums for every citizen. The framework extends to safeguarding emotional development, practical reason, and the ability to interact with other species and the natural world. Securing a threshold level of these capabilities for all individuals establishes the foundation for human dignity and true social justice.
The focus on human freedoms directly altered how international bodies evaluate global progress. Organizations moved away from strict utilitarian calculations to embrace multidimensional assessments of welfare. This shift catalyzed the creation of the Human Development Index and the Multidimensional Poverty Index, which integrate life expectancy, educational attainment, and standard of living into formal rankings. By demanding that policymakers look beyond aggregate income, the capability perspective compelled governments to directly target social exclusion and healthcare inequalities.
Critics argue that an intense focus on individual capabilities neglects the powerful structural forces that perpetuate global poverty. Scholars contend that focusing on individual choices obscures the systemic class dynamics and international power relations that create underdevelopment. Furthermore, historical evidence suggests that Western colonial powers intentionally displaced populations to enforce private property laws, generating poverty that simple capability expansion cannot reverse. Resolving these deep structural inequalities requires robust collective action and macroeconomic restructuring alongside the promotion of individual freedoms.