Welfare Approach to Development

The welfare approach to development is a framework that prioritizes the well-being and

quality of life of individuals and communities as the central goal of development efforts. It

emphasizes equitable distribution of resources, social justice, and the reduction of poverty

and inequality. Here's a brief note on the welfare approach to development:

1. Human-Centered Development: The welfare approach places people at the center

of development efforts. It focuses on improving the living conditions, health,

education, and overall welfare of individuals and communities.

2. Social Safety Nets: Welfare-oriented development often includes the

establishment of social safety nets, such as healthcare, education, and social

security programs, to protect vulnerable populations from economic and social

risks.

3. Reduction of Inequality: A core objective of this approach is to reduce disparities in

income, wealth, and access to basic services. Policies aim to create a more

equitable society where the benefits of development are shared more equally.

4. Social Services: Investments in education, healthcare, and social services are key

components. Quality education and accessible healthcare are seen as essential for

human development and well-being.

5. Poverty Alleviation: Poverty reduction is a central goal. Strategies often include

targeted interventions to lift people out of poverty, such as cash transfer programs

and employment initiatives.

 6. Social Justice: The welfare approach aligns with principles of social justice,

seeking to address historical injustices and promote fairness and inclusivity in

society.

7. Participatory Development: It often involves participatory approaches, where local

communities are actively engaged in decision-making processes and the design of

development programs that directly impact their lives.

8. Global Perspective: The welfare approach is not limited to national boundaries. It

recognizes global interdependencies and the importance of addressing global

issues such as climate change, migration, and health pandemics.

9. Sustainable Development: While emphasizing immediate well-being, the welfare

approach also considers long-term sustainability. Sustainable development, which

ensures that the well-being of future generations is not compromised, is a key

consideration.

10. Critiques: Critics argue that the welfare approach can be costly and may

sometimes create dependency on government support. Balancing social welfare

with economic growth and fiscal responsibility remains a challenge.

In summary, the welfare approach to development places the well-being and quality of

life of individuals and communities at the forefront of development goals. It seeks to

reduce poverty, inequality, and social injustices while promoting social safety nets,

equitable access to services, and a sustainable and inclusive future for all. It is a human-

centered approach that addresses not only economic growth but also the broader

dimensions of human development and societal well-being.

The Capability Approach
The capability approach is a broad normative framework for the evaluation of individual well-
being and social arrangements, the design of policies and proposals about social change in society.
The capability approach is used in a wide range of fields, most prominently in development
thinking, welfare economics, social policy and political philosophy. It can be used to evaluate a
wide variety of aspects of people’s well-being, such as individual well-being, inequality and
poverty. It can also be used as an alternative evaluative tool for social cost-benefit analysis, or to
design and evaluate policies, ranging from welfare state design in affluent societies, to
development policies by governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in developing
countries. In academia, it is being discussed in quite abstract and philosophical terms, but also used
for applied and empirical studies. In development policy circles, it has provided the foundations
of the human development paradigm (Fukuda-Parr 2003; Fukuda-Parr and Kumar 2003). The core
characteristic of the capability approach is its focus on what people are effectively able to do and
to be, that is, on their capabilities. This contrasts with philosophical approaches that concentrate
on people’s happiness or desire-fulfilment, or on theoretical and practical approaches that
concentrate on income, expenditures, consumption or basic needs fulfilment. A focus on people’s
capabilities in the choice of development policies makes a profound theoretical difference, and
leads to quite different policies compared to neo-liberalism and utilitarian policy prescriptions.
“The capability approach to a person’s advantage is concerned with evaluating it in terms of his or
her actual ability to achieve various valuable functionings as a part of living. The corresponding
approach to social advantage –for aggregative appraisal as well as for the choice of institutions
and policy – takes the set of individual capabilities as constituting an indispensable and central
part of the relevant informational base of such evaluation” (Sen 1993: 30).

A key analytical distinction in the capability approach is that between the means and the ends of
well-being and development. Only the ends have intrinsic importance, whereas means are only
instrumental to reach the goal of increased well-being and development. However, both in reality
and in Sen’s more applied work, these distinctions often blur.
Well-being and development should be discussed in terms of people’s capabilities to function, that
is, on their effective opportunities to undertake the actions and activities that they want to engage
in, and be whom they want to be. These beings and doings, which Sen calls achieved functionings,
together constitute what makes a life valuable. Functionings include working, resting, being
literate, being healthy, being part of a community, being respected, and so forth. The distinction
between achieved functionings and capabilities is between the realised and the effectively possible,
in other words, 7 between achievements and freedoms.

What is ultimately important is that people have the freedoms (capabilities) to lead the kind of
lives they want to lead, to do what they want to do and be the person they want to be. Once they
effectively have these freedoms, they can choose to act on those freedoms in line with their own
ideas of the kind of life they want to live.

The capability approach to well-being and development thus evaluates policies according to their
impact on people’s capabilities. It asks whether people are being healthy, and whether the
resources necessary for this capability, such as clean water, access to medical doctors, protection
from infections and diseases, and basic knowledge on health issues, are present. It asks whether
people are well-nourished, and whether the conditions for this capability, such as sufficient food
supplies and food entitlements, are met. It asks whether people have access to a high quality
education, to real political participation, to community activities which support them to cope with
struggles in daily life and which foster real friendships, to religions that console them and which
can give them peace of mind. For some of these capabilities, the main input will be financial
resources and economic production, but for others it can also be political practices, such as the
effective guaranteeing and protection of freedom of thought, religion or political participation, or
social or cultural practices, social structures, social institutions, public goods, social norms,
traditions and habits. The capability approach thus covers the full terrain of human wellbeing.
Development and well-being are regarded in a comprehensive and integrated 8 manner, and much
attention is paid to the links between material, mental, spiritual and social well-being, or to the
economic, social, political and cultural dimensions of life.
Sen initially argued for five components to assess capability:

11. The importance of real freedoms in the assessment of a person's advantage

12. Individual differences in the ability to transform resources into valuable activities
13. The multi-variate nature of activities giving rise to wellbeing
14. A balance of materialistic and nonmaterialistic factors in evaluating human welfare
15. Concern for the distribution of opportunities within society
Basic needs versus capabilities
The main differences between the needs based approach and the capability approach seem to be
as follows:

• While the capability approach advocate that people should be both beneficiaries and agents
of development through entitlements to development, the basic needs approach reduces
people in the development process to beneficiaries of development.
• While the capability approach values the importance of freedoms in the development
process, the basic needs approach focus mostly on resources, i.e. goods and services.
• While the capability approach advocates that the goal of development must be to increase
people’s choices, the goal of a needs based approach will be to increase goods and services.

Also rights thinkers have argued for the necessity to cover basic minimums. Henry Shue advocate
what he calls basic rights; ‘social guarantees against actual and threatened deprivation of at least
some basic needs’ (Shue p18) and argues that rights are basic only if the enjoyment of them are
necessary for enjoying all other rights. They are the rights that nobody should be allowed to sink
below. He identifies three such groups of basic rights: security rights-pertaining to physical
security and subsistence rights pertaining to minimal economic security or subsistence like food,
shelter, minimal healthcare etc in order to have a decent chance to live a normal life. In addition
he advocates some liberties, like participation and freedom of physical movement.( Shue, 1996, p
19-82).
While the basic rights approach is close to the basic needs approach in its focus on basic minimums,
it also goes further in 2 important ways; by actually advocating some liberties as basic minimums
and by advocating that such basic minimums should be entitlements that can be claimed and thus
connected to corresponding obligations of the state. While the idea of entitlements in Shue’s
approach would have some emancipatory value, such a narrow focus on basic minimums makes it
unlikely that people could actually have hope of the empowerment needed to better their own
situation. This is even truer for the basic needs approach. Since such basic minimum approaches
are more concerned with protection than empowerment, the emancipatory possibilities seem small
compared to the capability approach that goes one step further by adding concerns with a larger
set of freedoms to the development agenda. Although Nussbaum refers to her list of capabilities
as basic, it seems clear that this list goes well beyond such basic minimums since she for example
includes capabilities relating to play.

Further, Sen convincingly argues that since individuals vary greatly in their need for resources and
ability to convert resources into valuable functionings a list of only resources may actually
reinforce inequalities. Resources, he argues is thus not a good metric to measure who is better and
worse off. (Nussbaum, 40-41)

In practice, it is important to remember that the lines between the needs based approach and the
capability approach may become somewhat more blurred in the implementation of the human
development agenda. Nussbaum argues that; ‘the most illuminating way of thinking about the
capabilities approach is that it is an account of the space within which we make comparisons
between individuals and across nations as to how well we are doing’ (Nussbaum p 36). It seems
difficult to ignore however that the Human Development Index (HDI) created to measure human
development does not measure freedoms and uses mostly resource metrics to evaluate
development. Indeed a Human Freedom Index (HFI) based on six civil and political freedoms was
launched in 1991 but it was not successful and only lasted for a couple of years. While the
capability approach, with a focus on both protection and empowerment, promises more potential
of emancipation than the basic needs approach it thus also has some practical problems. In the next
sections problems concerning the capability approach will be highlighted by comparing
capabilities with human rights. Before that however, it is necessary to give a brief description of
human rights.

The Basic Needs Approach

The basic needs approach, in particular, recognises that so long as the poor remain deprived of the
essentials required for an economically productive life, they would neither contribute to, nor
benefit from, economic growth, but rather remain outside the economic process for all practical
purposes. Overall economic development cannot occur unless it reaches all sections of the
population, and this is not possible if large groups of people are impoverished.

Todaro (1981, p 62) suggests: All people have certain basic needs without which life would be
impossible. These 'life-sustaining' needs include indisputably, food, shelter, health and protection.
When any of these is absent or in critically short supply, we may state, without reservation, that a
condition of 'absolute underdevelopment' exists. A basic function of all economic activity,
therefore, is to provide as many people as possible with the means of overcoming the helplessness
and misery arising from a lack of food, shelter, health and protection. To this extent, we may claim
that economic development is a necessary condition for the improvement in the 'quality of life'
which is 'development' . Without sustained and continuous economic progress at the individual as
well as at the societal level, the realization of the human potential would not be possible.

In conditions of "absolute underdevelopment" abject poverty may well entrench conservative

attitudes of risk aversion. Although innovative change may carry the promise of increased living
standards, it also contains the risk of failure, which, at subsistence level, may mean starvation or
death. Consequently, before development can become a way of life, it is first necessary to satisfy
the basic needs of the poorest members of society, so as to eliminate ignorance and the fear of
economic change.

The basic needs approach emerged essentially from the work of the World Bank and the ILO.
Cassen (1978, p 3.3.2-1) stresses that the focus on basic needs "appeared to follow naturally" from
the evolution of development thinking during the 1970s, when emphasis shifted from economic
growth towards the issues of poverty and income distribution, after it became evident that previous
development efforts largely by-passed the poor

No distinct theory or set of policies can be isolated and defined as the basic needs approach. Instead
the approach represents a broad outlook on development, which focuses on combating poverty and
raising the productivity of the poorest sections of the population. The basis of the vision is 279 the
belief that economic development can only be said to occur if it reaches all sections of the
population, but this is perceived to be impossible unless the poor satisfy at least those basic needs
required for a productive existence. To achieve this, emphasis is placed, in varying degrees, on
internal self-reliance, changes in the composition of aggregate demand, consumption and
production patterns, and the use of local resources and appropriate technology.

Rights-Based Approach to Development

Central to a rights-based approach to development is the protection and realization of human rights.
It uses established and accepted human rights standards as a common framework for assessing and
guiding sustainable development initiatives. From this perspective, the ultimate goal of
development is to guarantee all human rights for everyone. Progressively respecting, protecting
and fulfilling human rights obligations is seen as the way to achieve development.

A rights-based approach to development is both a vision and a set of tools: human rights can be
the means, the ends, the mechanism of evaluation, and the central focus of sustainable human
development. When speaking of a rights-based approach, we are referring to human rights, not
legal rights1 .

Human rights is a much broader category, including not only the rights guaranteed in national
legislation and constitutions, but the full array of rights outlined at international human rights
conventions (including for example, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

A decent standard of living, adequate health care, gender equality, and basic education are not only
development goals, they are human rights. Within a development framework, human rights are
moral and legal claims on the behaviour of individual and collective agents, and on the design of
social arrangements (such as institutions, laws, enabling environments). This does not mean that
having a right entitles someone to a “hand-out” from the government, but that the person has an
entitlement to the social arrangements necessary to facilitate secure access to the freedom or
resource, such as health care or education. Rights are claims to a set of laws, policies and
institutions that can best secure the enjoyment of human rights, and immediate priority support
should be given to people unable to provide for themselves. The existence of human rights
establishes an obligation to implement policies that put these conditions into place.

A right-based approach may lead to different outcomes than other development models because it
entails a different view of action. Rather than pursuing an action as part of a development project,
such as setting up an income-generating project for example, a rights-based approach may lead to
an action such as making political demands on government, a corporation, or international actors

Difference from other approaches

❖ Central to a rights-based approach is the norm of gender equality. Gender is not an “add-
on”
❖ • A rights-based approach changes the situation of the beneficiary or beneficiary group
from passive aid recipient to rights-holders, empowered to hold responsible actors
accountable to human rights standards.
❖ Higher levels of participation and ownership are required within a rights-based approach –
marginalised.
❖ Accountability is central to a rights-based approach and is often not addressed by other
development approaches. Accountability derives from the duties and obligations of states
and the international community to take steps to respect, protect, promote and fulfill human
rights for all people
❖ Rights-based approaches focus on how development outcomes are brought about, unlike
some human development approaches that are not sensitive to how results are realized
❖ The human rights framework provides a unifying set of standards and a common language,
thereby presenting the potential for greater co-ordination and consistency among
development actors
❖ Looking at poverty through a rights-approach lens (i.e. as a denial of human rights) enables
a richer understanding of the different dimensions of poverty and encourages a more
comprehensive policy response to the structural causes of poverty.
❖ A rights-based approach adds legal force to development work.

• Programmes identify the realization of human rights as ultimate goals of development

• People are recognized as key actors in their own development, rather than passive
recipients of commodities and services.
• Participation is both a means and a goal.
• Strategies are empowering, not disempowering.
• Both outcomes and processes are monitored and evaluated.
• Programmes focus on marginalizedand excluded groups.
• The development process is locally owned.
• Programmes aim to reduce disparities and empower those left behind.
• Situation analysis is used to identify immediate, underlying and root causes of development
problems.
• Analysis includes all stakeholders, including the capacities of the state as the main duty-
bearer and the role of other non-state actors.
• Human Rights standards guide the formulation of measurable goals,targets and indicators
in programming.
• National accountability systems need to be strengthened with a view to ensure independent
review of government performance and access to remedies for aggrieved individuals.
• Strategic partnerships are developed and sustained.