🗓️ Session 3: Human Development and the Capabilities Approach

Author
Affiliation

Claudius Gräbner-Radkowitsch

EUF and JKU

Published

02 10 2026

Modified

02 10 2026

Abstract

This session shifts the focus from income and economic growth to what people are actually able to do and be. We work through Amartya Sen’s framework — resources, conversion factors, functionings, capabilities and agency — and then you build your own list of essential capabilities.

That list is the way into the central disagreement of the field. Martha Nussbaum argues for a universal and binding list of capabilities; Sen argues that fixing one is paternalism, and that the selection belongs to public reasoning. We close on what the compromise looks like in practice: the Human Development Index, how it is actually computed, the criticisms that stick, and the dashboard of further indices the UNDP has built around it.

🖥️ Lecture Slides

Open the slides in a separate tab

Open the slides, click the ☰ button in the top right corner, and choose Tools → PDF Export Mode. Then print the page (Cmd/Ctrl + P) and save it as a PDF.

🎯 Interactive Exercise

Download the worksheet for our in-class exercise on building your own capabilities list:

This exercise will help you engage with the central debate in capabilities. You’ll create your own list of essential capabilities and discuss whether development standards should be universal or context-specific. This is the best preparation for entering the important debate between Sen and Nussbaum about which capabilities — if any — are central.

📚 Mandatory Reading

🏆 Further Readings

  • Technical notes for the 2025 Human Development Report
    • Official, but still straightforward description of how the HDI gets calculated
  • Ravallion (2012)
    • A critical discussion of the HDI methodology, which is still relevant as the underlying methodology has not changed since the publication
  • Sen (2000) , Introduction + Chapter 3
    • The foundational text for the capabilities approach
  • Nussbaum (2013), Chapters 1-2.
    • Clear exposition of capabilities approach, different interpretation than Sen
    • Introduces the 10 central capabilities proposed by Martha Nussbaum
  • Robeyns (2005)
    • A good critical overview of the approach
  • Alkire and Deneulin (2009)
    • Comprehensive but accessible synthesis
  • Stiglitz et al. (2010)
    • Policy-oriented critique of GDP with capability perspective

✍️ After the session

Complete the reflection worksheet. It puts your own list of capabilities next to Nussbaum’s ten and asks which of the two positions you hold — the step the in-class exercise was building towards, and the one you cannot do until you have seen both.

You can post your reflections in the Moodle forum if you would like feedback or a discussion, but this is not required.

These are for recap and exam practice. If questions emerge, feel free to post on the Moodle forum.

Exercise 1: Where income and human development disagree (350–400 words)

Take 10 countries of your choice from the UNDP Human Development Data Center and compare their HDI rank with their GNI per capita rank. Note that the income dimension of the HDI is GNI, not GDP; the statistical annex gives you the difference directly, in the column GNI per capita rank minus HDI rank. That is the same column behind the figure you saw in the lecture.

  • Which 3 of your countries do best on the HDI relative to their income?
  • Which 3 do worst?
  • Explain the gaps using the concepts from the session: conversion factors, functionings, and Sen’s instrumental freedoms. A country can convert income into capabilities well or badly, and the gap is a measure of which.

Exercise 2: Capability Assessment (400 words)

Choose a specific development challenge you’re familiar with (e.g., urban slums, rural education access, youth unemployment, refugee integration). Analyze it through the capabilities lens:

  • Which functionings are people unable to achieve?
  • What conversion factors (personal, social, environmental) are at play?
  • Which of Sen’s five instrumental freedoms are lacking?
  • What would a capability-enhancing policy look like?

If you have questions or problems, please post them in the Moodle forum.

🔗 Additional Resources

References

Alkire, S. and Deneulin, S. (2009) “The Human Development and Capability Approach,” in S. Deneulin (ed.). An Introduction to the Human Development and Capability Approach. Abingdon, UK ; New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 22–48, doi:10.4324/9781849770026.
Nussbaum, M. C. (2013) Creating capabilities: The human development approach, Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: Harvard University Press.
Ravallion, M. (2012) “Troubling tradeoffs in the Human Development Index,” Journal of Development Economics 99(2): 201–209, doi:10.1016/j.jdeveco.2012.01.003.
Robeyns, I. (2005) “The Capability Approach: A theoretical survey,” Journal of Human Development 6(1): 93–117, doi:10.1080/146498805200034266.
Sen, A. (1990) “Development as Capability Expansion,” in K. Griffin and J. Knight (eds.). Human development and the international development strategy for the 1990s. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan [u.a.], pp. 41–58.
Sen, A. (2000) Development as Freedom, New York: Alfred Knopf.
Stiglitz, J. E., Sen, A. and Fitoussi, J.-P. (eds.) (2010) Mismeasuring our lives: Why GDP doesn’t add up, New York: New Press.