Inequality, Advantage and the Capability Approach

Abstract

Inequality has acquired a newfound prominence in academic and political debate. While scholars working with the capability approach (CA) have succeeded in influencing the conceptualisation and measurement of poverty, which is increasingly understood in multidimensional terms, recent scholarship on inequality focusses overwhelmingly on economic forms of inequality, and especially on inequalities in income and wealth. In this paper we outline how the conceptual framework of the CA (focusing on ends rather than means, multidimensionality, and recognising the value of freedoms as well as attained functionings) has the potential to enrich the study of distributional inequality through offering a rationale for why inequality matters, exploring the association between different forms of inequality, and providing an analysis of power. But applying the CA in the context of advantage exacerbates some existing challenges to the approach (defining a capability list, and the non-observability of capabilities) and brings some fresh ones (especially insensitivity at the top of the distribution). We recommend a stronger and clearer distinction between concepts and measures. Capability inequality is a more appropriate and potentially revealing conceptual apparatus, but economic resources are likely to remain a crucial metric for understanding distributional inequality for the forseeable future.

Ghana’s Planting for Food and Jobs Programme: A Look at the Role of Capability in Farmers’ Participation

“…In the language of Sen (1993), the means are the capabilities, while the ends are the functionings (which are the realized outcomes). The means approach is considered more suitable for interpersonal comparison of wellbeing because people differ in the rate of conversion of capabilities into valuable capabilities based on available conversion factors (Burchardt and Hick 2018). The absence of conversion factors for some category of farmers could simply make certain functionings infeasible to attain.…”

Retrofit Poverty: Socioeconomic Spatial Disparities in Retrofit Subsidies Uptake

“…Assessing the ethical implications of energy policies is relevant in the context of energy poverty as a risk to health and well-being and global efforts to reduce distributional inequalities (United Nations 2019). The analysis of (in)equalities may focus on the distribution of resources, opportunities or outcomes (Burchardt & Hick 2017). This study follows the approach of Day, Walker & Simcock (2016), who have placed a capabilities framework as central to a broader view of energy inequality and advanced the theoretical foundation of strategies that aim to recognise and ameliorate energy deprivation.…”

“…As capabilities are positively linked to freedom and autonomy, constraints in enacting functionings equate to limited capabilities. Analyses of equality may focus on thresholds or distributional inequality and explore horizontal comparisons between groups or vertical comparisons within groups or populations (Burchardt & Hick 2017).…”

Contextualizing Dependency Syndrome in International Disaster Management: Support from Sen's Capability-Based Approach

“…Sen rejects the criterion of preference as a precondition for distributive justice. 7 Sen draws on the notion of adaptive preferences to denote the circumstances of economic constraints and socially repressive traditions that influence the person's preferences or perceptions of satisfaction with his/her state of being as he tends to adapt his desires to what is viable. Thus, preferences depend on social arrangements; for example, gender biases such as making female secondary to male have influence on the intra-family distribution of food and health care (Sen, 1999,126).…”