![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
Abstract
‘Agency goals’ play an important role in Sen's capability approach. They are an acknowledgement that individuals aspire to achieve objectives other than their own immediate well‐being. This article argues that using agency goal achievement as a basis for evaluating inequality or disadvantage is problematic. In particular, one of the principal charges against utilitarianism made by capability theorists — that based on adaptation or conditioned expectations — can be made with equal force and validity against a metric based on agency goals. The argument is illustrated using survey data on the educational and occupational aspirations of a cohort of young people in Britain. The article concludes that the conventional cross‐sectional, objective, definition of a capability set needs to be broadened. Only if the capability set from which agency goals are formed and the capability set within which they are pursued are evaluated can we begin to properly assess substantive freedom.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Ian Gough, John Hills, Peter Taylor‐Gooby, Martin van Hees, Polly Vizard, participants in the Priority in Practice workshop at University College London and two anonymous referees for comments on earlier versions of this paper. I am also grateful to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who funded some of the research on which this paper is based. The Data Archive at Essex University supplied data from the 1970 British Cohort Study. Responsibility for any errors of fact or judgement remains mine alone.
Notes
1. ‘Utility’ has several interpretations; for example, happiness, desire fulfilment, choice or revealed preference. Capability‐based arguments against utilitarianism apply to each of these, albeit in somewhat different forms — see for example Sen (Citation1985a). The purpose of this paper is to show that some of these broad arguments against utilitarianism apply also to the capability approach, rather than to rehearse the arguments against utilitarianism in detail.
2. The phenomenon of adaptation gives rise to interesting and difficult issues with respect to democratic deliberation too, but that is not the aspect of the problem that I wish to pursue here.
3. Robeyns (Citation2005) interprets the distinction between well‐being and agency goals in Sen's work slightly differently. She reserves the term ‘standard of living’ for what I have termed ‘well‐being’. Her version of well‐being adds to standard of living “outcomes resulting from sympathies (i.e. from helping another person and thereby feeling oneself better off” (Robeyns, Citation2005, p. 102). Her interpretation of agency is similar to mine, in that it incorporates “commitments (i.e. an action that is not beneficial to the agent herself)” (p. 102).
4. Sumner (Citation1996, p. 66) and Nussbaum (Citation1988, p. 175) also draw attention to this potential difficulty.
5. It is of course included in Nussbaum's (Citation2000) list of central human capabilities, as part of practical reason.
6. Those who are from a minority ethnic background; those who have a health problem; those who were born to a single mother, unemployed father or a parent from a lower social class background; those with low school achievement; those who grew‐up in families with financial problems; and those who have experienced poor housing conditions.
7. The likelihood that the young people have experienced bullying is assessed by a series of four questions about their relationships with their peers at school, yielding a scale from zero to eight.
8. Ordered logit regression. Details available from the author on request.
9. This is consistent with other research on ‘locus of control’ and fatalism — see for example Baistow (Citation2000).
10. These questions were asked separately.
11. Ordered logit regression. Details available from the author on request. ‘Higher occupational aspirations’ refers to aspirations to occupations that are categorized as higher social class. This is not to imply that other occupations are less worthwhile or important. Rather, it is a recognition of the fact that higher social class occupations tend to bring higher financial rewards, better terms and conditions, greater job security and higher social status.
12. Sample restricted to those who had expressed an occupational aspiration at age 16. Hierarchy of occupations at age 26 based on social class classifications; being out of work was treated as the lowest category.
13. At the time of the survey, in 1986, the main national examinations were O‐levels. Eligibility criteria for continuing in education varied somewhat between different educational institutions.
14. Gross family income, reported by respondent's parent in bands, not equivalized.
15. In the British context, this means A‐levels (or equivalent), diploma or degree.
16. Number of observations = 706, pseudo R 2 = 0.44. Further details available on request from the author.
17. Watts (Citation2006) discusses other reasons why not pursuing higher education may be valued, particularly for those from lower social class backgrounds.