The framework in contemporary political philosophy and development economics, developed primarily by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum beginning in the 1980s, that evaluates human well-being in terms of capabilities — what people are actually able to do and be — rather than in terms of resources held, utility experienced, or formal rights possessed. The capabilities approach emerged as an alternative to both Rawlsian frameworks focused on primary goods and utilitarian frameworks focused on subjective satisfaction, arguing that neither adequately captured what matters for human flourishing. The approach has shaped the UN Human Development Index, international development policy, and contemporary debates about global justice, disability rights, and the substantive content of human rights.
Capabilities Approach
The contemporary framework in political philosophy and development economics that evaluates well-being in terms of what people are actually able to do and be rather than in terms of resources, utility, or formal rights.
Amartya Sen
1933–
Amartya Sen is an Indian economist and political philosopher of welfare and justice whose capabilities approach and famine studies reshaped global thinking about poverty, development, and human flourishing
ThinkerMartha Nussbaum
1947–
Martha Nussbaum is an American political philosopher whose capabilities approach, work on emotions and law, and universalist feminism have made her among the most influential living theorists of justice
ThinkerC.K. Prahalad
C.K. Prahalad was a market-oriented management theorist who reframed the world's poor as entrepreneurial consumers, making markets central to debates over poverty and development