4 Human capital and capabilities Given her personal characteristics, social background, economic circumstances, etc., a

Box 9.4 Human capital and capabilities Given her personal characteristics, social background, economic circumstances, etc., a

person has the ability to do (or be) certain things that she has reason to value. The reason for valuation can be direct (the functioning involved may directly enrich her life, such as being well nourished or healthy) or indirect (the functioning involved may contribute to further production or command a price in the market). The human capital perspective can – in principle – be defined very broadly to cover both types of valuation, but it is typically defined – by convention – primarily in terms of indirect value: human qualities that can

be employed as ‘capital’ in production in the way physical capital is. In this sense, the narrower view of the human capital approach fits into the more inclusive perspective of human capability, which can cover both direct and indirect consequences of human abilities.

Consider an example. If education makes a person more efficient in commodity production, then this is clearly an enhancement of human capital. This can add to the value of production in the economy and also to the income of the person who has been educated. But even with the same level of income, a person may benefit from education, in reading, communicating, arguing, being able to choose in a more informed way, in being taken more seriously by others and so on. The benefits of education thus exceed its role as human capital in commodity production. The broader human capability perspective would record – and value – these additional roles. The two perspectives are thus closely related.

There is, however, also a crucial difference between the two approaches – a difference that relates to some extent to the distinction between means and ends. The acknowledgement of the role of human qualities in promoting and sustaining economic growth – momentous as it is – tells us nothing about why economic growth is sought in the first place. If, instead, the focus is, ultimately, on the expansion of human freedom to live the kinds of lives that people have reason to value, then the role of economic growth in expanding these opportunities has to be integrated into that more foundational understanding of the process of development as the expansion of the human capability to lead freer and more worthwhile lives.

The distinction has a significant practical bearing on public policy. While economic prosperity helps people to lead freer and more fulfilling lives, so do more education, health care, medical attention and other factors that causally influence the effective freedoms that people actually enjoy. These ‘social developments’ must directly count as ‘develop- mental’ since they help us to lead longer, freer and more fruitful lives, in addition to the role they have in promoting productivity and economic growth or individual incomes.

Extract from Amartya Sen (1997) ‘Human capital and human capability,’ World Development, vol 25, no 12, pp1959–1961.

In contrast with the arguments made by key writers on human capital above, the human development and capability approach places the quality of human life – and not economic growth – at the centre of its concerns. Concern for human capital should not be neglected as it is alert to the ways in which people

TOPICS

develop skills and enhance their income, but earning power and economic values are ultimately not the only dimensions of human flourishing that are important. Education has wider values for individuals beyond enabling them to contribute to economic growth or enhance their own or their families’ earning power.

Human development goes much further than the human capital approach in thinking about the ways in which education enhances freedom. Education might contribute to overcoming inequalities, and facilitating participation in processes that redress injustice. Sen (1992) has identified three distinct ways in which we can link the importance of education to the expansion of valuable capabilities: first, education fulfils an instrumental social role. Literacy can foster public debate and dialogue about social and political arrangements, for example. Education also has an instrumental process role in facilitating our capacity to participate in decision-making processes at the household, com- munity or national level. Finally, it has an empowering and distributive role in facilitating the ability of disadvantaged, marginalized and excluded groups to organize politically since, without education, these groups would be unable to gain access to centres of power and make a case for redistribution to begin with. Indeed, education has redistributive effects between social groups, households and within families. Overall, education has an interpersonal impact because people are able to use the benefits of education to help others as well as themselves and can therefore contribute to democratic freedoms and the overall good of society as a whole.

It is not easy to translate these broad ideas into simple policies that governments and communities can advocate for and act upon. Nonetheless, attempts have been made to go beyond the simple human capital concerns in international declarations such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Education for All (EFA), the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) and the Beijing Declaration on Women. For example, the MDG targets have indicators not just for access to schooling, but for improved gender equality ratios in earning and political representation, eradicating hunger, support for sustainable development, and improved access to health and water. In comparison, the EFA goals express a vision for quality education, gender equality, adult literacy and early childhood education. A number of governments have also used the expansion of education provision to think about redressing race, gender, class and caste divisions. In addition, a number of large NGO education programmes draw upon ideas about capabilities and rights. 2

The concern with education as a way of developing capabilities for ‘freer and more fruitful lives’, to paraphrase Sen, requires careful analysis of its modalities of provision. It entails dealing with the content of schooling, efficiency in organization and some of the problems encountered by learners with diverse needs. Regrettably, there is not much emphasis on these issues in the human development and capability approach literature. Nevertheless, by emphasizing education as a way of enabling people to live more freely and

EDUCATION

fully, the approach still makes a significant contribution to the field of education. Namely, it stresses the importance of the ability to exercise critical reasoning about their lives and the societies in which they live – something the human capital theory ignored almost entirely. In two recent works, Sen (2005, 2006) emphasizes the importance of education that specifically encourages critical reflection, the ability to debate, public reasoning and the inclusion of traditionally excluded voices.

There is a clear contrast between the emphasis on the value of argument and understanding history, literature and mathematics, on the one hand, and the narrow interpretations of human capital, on the other. For the human development and capability approach, what is important for children is not just developing particular skills that have economic value, but the reflective capacities that would lead to ‘examined lives’ (Saito, 2003).

This more philosophical concern with the nature of human flourishing (and how education helps develop it) has also been discussed by Martha Nussbaum. In a lecture given at the fifth international conference of the Human Development and Capability Association held in Paris at UNESCO, Nussbaum (2006a) argues that education is crucial to the health of democracy itself. She criticizes an education that is narrowly focused on science and technology at the expense of the arts and humanities. She emphasizes the role of education in forming the student’s critical and imaginative capacities. Nussbaum is interested in the content of what is taught and the process of teaching, stressing the importance not just of marshalling facts, but of understanding the worlds of others and critically reflecting on the appearances of things, including one’s own experience (see Box 9.5). This substantive notion of what education should be about is associated with her list of ten central capabilities (see Chapter 2). Education in its widest sense is an important component of nearly all the capabilities on the list. Nussbaum also places a high premium on compassion for people in other cultures, signalling the role of education in expanding the notion of social justice beyond national boundaries (Nussbaum, 2006b). She highlights important content for higher education, noting how it can help to develop global understanding, critical perspectives on one’s own society and the capacity to see the world with the eyes of others (Nussbaum, 1997). She is thus particularly attentive to the complexities of cultural discussion and the educational processes that result from it.