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Agency Goals, Adaptation and

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Agency Goals, Adaptation and Capability Sets

TANIA BURCHARDT

Tania Burchardt is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion and Academic Fellow in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics, UK

Abstract ‘Agency goals’ play an important role in Sen’s capability approach. They are an acknowledgement that individuals aspire toachieve objectives other than their own immediate well-being. This articleargues that using agency goal achievement as a basis for evaluatinginequality or disadvantage is problematic. In particular, one of the principalcharges against utilitarianism made by capability theorists — that based onadaptation or conditioned expectations — can be made with equal forceand validity against a metric based on agency goals. The argument isillustrated using survey data on the educational and occupationalaspirations of a cohort of young people in Britain. The article concludes

that the conventional cross-sectional, objective, definition of a capability setneeds to be broadened. Only if the capability set from which agency goalsare formed and the capability set within which they are pursued areevaluated can we begin to properly assess substantive freedom.

Key words: Capability sets, Agency goals, Conditioned expectations, Adaptation, Aspirations, Autonomy

Introduction

The rejection of utilitarianism by capability theorists rests on the claim thatutility is the wrong ‘object of value’ forevaluating disadvantage or inequality.1

This claim is supported in at least three ways. Firstly, subjective adaptation — for example, the effect of long-term deprivation on a person’s satisfaction with his or her circumstances — means that evaluations based on mentalstates like utility can produce perverse results. Functionings (states of beingand activities) are, it is argued, a more robust foundation for assessment.Secondly, it is asserted that the breadth of interests, values and commitmentsthat human beings have cannot be captured in the uni-dimensional metric of utility. In particular, many people care about things other than their own

happiness or indeed their own well-being: they may also have objectives

Journal of Human Development and Capabilities Vol. 10, No. 1, March 2009

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DOI: 10.1080/14649880802675044



relating to the well-being of others and commitments entirely outsidethemselves, a category Sen refers to as ‘agency goals’ (for example, Sen,1985a). Finally, capability theorists argue that freedom has intrinsic value,such that the achievement of particular functionings is at best an incomplete

account of advantage; one should also consider the capability set from whichthe functionings were chosen.This paper draws attention to tensions between these three

arguments. It seeks to show both theoretically and empirically thatconditioned expectations are a problem for evaluations based on agency goals, as much as they are a problem for utilitarianism. Moreover, if theeffects of adaptation are taken seriously they pose a threat to theusefulness of comparing capability sets altogether, at least if capability isunderstood, as is customary, as defined by present substantive opportu-nities.

The fact that one or other form of capability evaluation has drawbacksand limitations in particular settings is something Sen is very ready toacknowledge; indeed, one of the important contributions of the capability approach is to move away from the idea that we need or should seek a‘one size fits all’ metric. But since Sen (for example, 1985a, 2006)maintains that both well-being and agency goals, whether considered interms of achievement or freedom, can form a useful focus of evaluation, itis important to explore how each stands up in its own right, and in whatspecific contexts each might or might not be a useful focus.

The structure of the article is as follows. In the second section, threekey concepts are explored more fully: subjective adaptation, thedistinction between well-being and agency goals in the capability approach, and the distinction between achievement and freedom toachieve (i.e. between functioning and capability). The third sectiondiscusses how, theoretically, agency goals might also be subject toadaptation, and why the existence of adaptation may make comparisonof capability sets problematic. A case study of the educational andoccupational aspirations of a cohort of young people in Britain ispresented in the fourth section, which provides evidence both for theconditioning of agency goals and for the inequality of substantive freedombrought about by adaptation that remains hidden in standard, cross-sectional analysis of capability, whether defined in terms of well-being or agency goals. Finally, the fifth section considers possible ways forward,outlining an interpretation of capability as autonomy that circumvents thedifficulties identified in the preceding sections.

Key concepts: adaptation, agency goals and freedom

Adaptation as an argument against utilitarianism

In general terms, subjective adaptation may be said to occur when an

individual’s assessment of his or her situation or outlook for the future

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is influenced by his or her past experience (Elster, 1982). When the pastexperience is one of luxury, such as someone who has becomeaccustomed to fine wine, the issue is often referred to as the problemof ‘expensive tastes’. The individual would feel deprived if denied access

to fine wine, but, intuitively, this deprivation should not be given equal weight to the deprivation felt by someone on the poverty line. At theother end of the spectrum, the same phenomenon is more usually called ‘conditioned expectations’. In an oft-quoted passage, Senremarks:

The battered slave, the broken unemployed, the hopelessdestitute, the tamed housewife, may have the courage to desirelittle, but the fulfilment of those disciplined desires is not a signof great success and cannot be treated in the same way as thefulfilment of the confident and demanding desires of the better

placed. (1987, p. 11)

Nussbaum (2001) makes a similar argument. She reports the experienceof a woman who had been the victim of prolonged domestic violence, who believed at the time the abuse was being perpetrated that this wassimply a woman’s lot in life. Only after having escaped from therelationship did the woman come to recognize that her rights had been violated. This woman’s contemporary subjective evaluation of her situation was not a reliable indicator of whether an injustice was infact taking place.

Adaptation may also occur in more mundane circumstances; for example, a gradual upwards shift in expectations associated with risingliving standards, or coming to terms with a bereavement. The phenom-enon has been studied extensively in psychology (for useful reviews, seeFrederick and Lowenstein, 1999; Teschl and Comim, 2005), and a number of different mechanisms identified: for example, becoming sensitized or de-sensitized by prolonged or repeated exposure to a stimulus, asym-metric valuation of losses and gains, down-grading or up-grading of expectations in response to experience, and shifts in social comparators or reference groups.

There is nothing wrong with adaptation in itself; indeed, in many circumstances it is a beneficial and protective psychological strategy. Butits existence does imply that subjective states, the bedrock of utilitarianism whatever interpretation of utility is adopted, and in particular thedistribution of current subjective well-being, are related to the previousdistribution of advantage and disadvantage in a perverse way: in thepresence of adaptation, previous experience of disadvantage in many instances results in higher subjective well-being with the same currentcircumstances. Sen uses this argument in slightly different forms indifferent places (for example, Sen 1983, 1985a, 1985b, 1987, 1999) as abasis for rejecting utility as the principal object of value, and replacing it

with an informational space based on functionings.


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Well-being and agency goals

While utility is uni-dimensional, functionings are inherently multi-dimensional, and the question therefore arises of which functionings are

relevant for any particular evaluative exercise. A growing literaturediscusses procedures for selecting functionings (for example, Robeyns,2003; Alkire, 2008). Two poles in this debate are represented by Nussbaum (2000, and elsewhere), who has proposed and defended auniversal list of central and valuable capabilities, and Sen (2004, andelsewhere), who argues that the selection of a capability list should beembedded in a process of public scrutiny and democratic deliberation,specific to the context.2

Although resistant to specifying a fixed list, Sen has made a number of observations about the types of functionings and capabilities that may

serve different evaluative purposes; specifically, he distinguishesbetween well-being and agency goals. ‘Well-being’ in this context refersto functionings like being well-nourished, being sheltered and beingable to appear in public without shame, which are self-regarding in thesense that they relate to the ‘‘‘well-ness’ of the person’s state of being’’(Sen, 1993, p. 36). Everyone has reason to value their own well-being,even though they may sometimes prioritize other objectives. Agency goals refer to the objectives the person sets himself or herself, and aretherefore person specific. Thus, Sen states: ‘‘A person’s ‘agency freedom’ refers to what the person is free to do and achieve in pursuitof whatever goals or values he or she regards as important’’ (Sen, 1985a,p. 203). Agency goals may incorporate commitments to other individuals or to causes, and on occasion their pursuit may result inactions deleterious to the individual’s own well-being.3 For example,one person might value being a concert pianist, even if the pursuit of that goal involves hours of painful and frustrating practice, whileanother person might be determined to secure the liberation of theMyanmar from military dictatorship, at great risk to her personal safety,comfort and liberty.

Evaluation of agency goals plays an important role in Sen’s capability approach because it is part of his response to the second line of criticism

against utilitarianism mentioned in the Introduction; namely, thatutilitarianism focuses too narrowly on individual well-being. Since people value ends other than their own well-being, it is important for acomprehensive assessment of advantage and disadvantage that theinformational space is rich enough to reflect achievement, or lack of it, with respect to these other goals.

As we shall see in the third section below, evaluation of agency goals isproblematic in the presence of subjective adaptation, but evaluation of well-being does not escape unscathed either, when considered inconjunction with the third key concept discussed in this section, that of

‘freedom to achieve’.

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Achievement and freedom to achieve

The distinction between well-being and agency in Sen (1985a) isintroduced together with the distinction between achievement andfreedom to achieve, leading to a four-fold classification: (i) agency

achievement, (ii) agency freedom, (iii) well-being achievement, and (iv) well-being freedom. Sen (2006) subsequently re-iterated that he sees eachof these as a potentially suitable focus for evaluation. Achievement can beassessed in terms of functioning, whereas freedom requires considerationof the capability set: the range of the feasible options within which aparticular functioning vector has been realized. Freedom has intrinsic value, but so do actual activities and states of being. Importantly, ‘freedomto achieve’ refers to a positive (‘real’ or ‘substantive’) freedom, not merely the absence of interference from others.

Gasper has noted that, ‘‘While the capability approach is operationa-

lized in terms of well-being freedom, much of its appeal may come from‘agency freedom’’’ (2007, p. 354), but he questions the feasibility of making comparisons of agency freedom:

How can we specify equality not in terms of ability to achieveone’s own well-being but in terms of ability to achieve one’sgoals? Equality in fulfilling one’s ambitions? What of the person who has none, versus the person whose ambitions are immense?(Gasper, 2007, p. 352)

Similarly, Pogge (2002) has argued that interpersonal comparisons must

use externally set criteria — a standard set of outcomes or freedoms,rather than a person’s ability to promote his or her own ends. Their concerns are echoed and amplified in the discussion which follows.

Role of adaptation in the capability approach

Capability theorists argue that utility is the wrong ‘object of value’ in partbecause it is subject to adaptation. But adaptation may turn out to be aproblem for the capability approach as well.

Qizilbash (1997) discusses the situation in which someone who facessignificant structural or social disadvantage may respond by making anenormous effort to expand and develop their abilities (‘compensatingabilities’, as he terms them), such that they end up with equivalentcapabilities to someone who was not disadvantaged in the first place.Qizilbash argues that, in these circumstances, an equal distribution of capabilities does not imply a socially just outcome.

More generally, it is plausible to imagine that the formation of anindividual’s agency goals is affected by his or her previous circumstancesand experiences, for better or worse. If I have never seen or heard a piano,I am unlikely to form the goal of becoming a concert pianist. Perhaps this

does not matter too much, but if we change the example it becomes


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potentially more problematic: if no-one in my family has ever been touniversity, it is much less likely (although of course not impossible), that I will set myself the objective of obtaining a degree. Thus agency goals may be ‘conditioned’ or ‘adaptive’ in a similar way to utility.4

If this is the case, evaluation of agency goal achievement couldproduce similarly perverse results as evaluation of subjective well-being. Assigning two individuals to the same point in a distribution of advantageand disadvantage, because both are judged to have achieved their significant agency goals, when one has formulated his goals from anarrow range of experience while the other grew up believing ‘the world was his oyster’, is misleading. Sen’s remark about the fulfilment of ‘disciplined desires’ not being a sign of great success, quoted above,applies equally to ‘disciplined agency goals’. If the existence of adaptationis a reason to reject evaluation in utility space, it must also be a reason to

reject evaluation on the basis of agency goal achievement.Sen (2006), responding to an article by Sumner (2006) in the sameissue of the journal Utilitas, argues that it is not the subjective nature of utility that gives rise to difficulties with it as an object of value, but theimpulsive nature of the pleasures, pains, preferences and desires that arethe basis of the calculation. In contrast, Sen advocates a more reflective,‘‘ scrutinized valuation … The difference lies in the need for criticalassessment and scrutiny for reasoned valuation’’ (2006, p. 92; originalemphasis).

But agency goals formed under conditions of deprivation are notnecessarily impulsive, or unreasoned, and they may have been very carefully scrutinized. For example, a young person may have given her aspiration for future employment as a hairdresser thoughtful considera-tion, despite growing up in an area with high unemployment and a very limited range of occupations available. Of course, we can say that sheexperiences a restriction of her capability for employment (arguably anaspect of well-being); but, in terms of an assessment of agency goal

achievement , the agency goals at which she has carefully and thoughtfully arrived must be taken as sovereign, whether or not they are conditioned by her circumstances.

Perhaps we should focus our efforts instead on evaluation of agency goal freedom. Recall that this is defined as freedom to pursue ‘‘whatever goals or values he or she regards as important’’ (Sen, 1985a, p. 203). Sothis does not circumvent the difficulty; indeed, since modest aspirations(e.g. to be a hairdresser), conditioned by deprivation, are often easier tofulfil than more ambitious plans (e.g. to be a concert pianist), anevaluation of agency goal freedom could compound the perverse orderingof advantage we already noted for agency goal achievement. The freedomto form agency goals in the first place is a kind of meta-freedom, notcaptured by the concept of agency freedom itself.5

An alternative might be to shift attention from agency goal freedom to

well-being freedom (option (iv) in the classification above). This seems to

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help, since the aspiring hairdresser in the example above has less well-being freedom than her counterpart living in an area with a vibranteconomy. But on closer examination a further difficulty emerges. Suppose we transplant the aspiring hairdresser now into the same vibrant economy.

Let us suppose too that, against the odds, our aspiring hairdresser obtained a similar level of educational qualifications to her counterpart who grew up in the more affluent area, so that, in the here and now, bothhave the same set of employment capabilities but different aspirations.Clearly, the functioning they select from the capability set will differ: oneto be a hairdresser and the other to be, perhaps, a stockbroker. That is tobe expected, and indeed is part of the value of freedom that differentpeople can choose different paths. But here the choice is not independentof previous conditions of inequality. Identical capability sets do not affordthe same real chance, in practice, of achieving valuable functionings, andthe reason for this difference is aspirations formed in previous unequaland unjust conditions. This presents a challenge not just to evaluationbased on agency goals but to evaluation based on well-being freedom too;in fact, to any evaluation based on comparison of capability sets.

Pogge (2002, footnote 41) has also noted this difficulty, in passing:‘‘To be sure, it is difficult to identify what persons genuinely have accessto, as when some […] do not avail themselves of certain opportunitiesbecause of social conditioning’’. However, since Pogge’s interest is incomparing the capability approach and resourcism, and since he finds thatthis is a difficulty common to both, he does not pursue the point.

The remaining option in the four-fold classification of types of

evaluation described in the previous section is well-being achievement. A retreat to this position is an admission of defeat: it does not reflect the value of freedom (one of the key lines of criticism against utilitarianism),and it does not reflect the breadth of interests, values and commitmentsthat human beings have (a second key criticism against utilitarianism).Moreover, retaining freedom and agency goals in the frame of evaluation isessential to guard against the charge of authoritarianism that Sugden(2006) levels against the capability approach.

Some more promising responses are canvassed in the fifth sectionbelow, but first we turn to the empirical evidence on conditioning of

agency goals and selection of functionings.

Evidence of ‘conditioned’ agency goals and ‘conditioned’selection of functionings

So much for the problem of adaptation in theory. But perhaps adaptationof agency goals is in practice a minor phenomenon, restricted to dramaticcases such as those Sen is wont to use to illustrate his case againstutilitarianism. In this section, some empirical evidence is presented tosupport the contention that far from being a marginal concern, adaptation

of agency goals is structural and systematic. The example relates to young


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people’s aspirations for their future education and employment. Admittedly, there are many other kinds of agency goals, but previousresearch suggests that young people rate these as among the mostimportant areas of concern as they move into adulthood (Barry, 2001;

Biggeri et al ., 2006). They may also be closely tied up with a youngperson’s sense of self and future identity (Pilling, 1990; Schoon andParsons, 2002; Watts, 2006).

The 1970 British Cohort Study

In order to examine agency goals and conditioning empirically, we needdata on individuals’ past experience, their aspirations for the future, andtheir subsequent functionings. Such data are hard to come by. Thesource used here is the British Cohort Study, which has followed anationally representative sample since their birth in a particular week inthe year 1970. Information was collected from parents and othersassociated with the children during the cohort’s childhoods, and fromthe cohort members themselves periodically from age 10 onwards. Itcontains rich information on socio-economic and demographic back-ground during childhood and on educational and employment out-comes in early adulthood. In addition, at age 16, respondents wereasked about their hopes, expectations and goals in terms of further education and occupation. This unusually rich dataset thereforeprovides the basis for a case study of the formation and pursuit of agency goals among young people in relation to education andemployment.

The sample size at birth was 16 135 (a 98% response rate), falling to11 628 at age 16 (72% of the original sample) and to 9 003 at age 26 (56%of the original sample). Some attrition is inevitable in such a long-runninglongitudinal survey but it nevertheless raises concerns about attrition bias(see Despotidou and Shepherd, 2002). Generally, those who are moredisadvantaged are slightly under-represented in the sample by age 26.6

This means that the circumstances of the remaining sample at age 26cannot be taken to be representative of the general population. However,it does not invalidate comparisons among those who remain in the

sample; for example, between those with high and low aspirations, or highand low social class backgrounds.

Aspirations and agency goals

At various points in the questionnaire at age 16, respondents were askedabout their future intentions and expectations with respect to their principal (economic) activity. For example, one question asks ‘What will you be doing in five years’ time?’, while another gives respondents theopportunity to specify ‘what you will want to do in life’. Respondents gave

a wide range of answers. A selection is reported below.

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In 5 years’ time I will be working in a profession.

Builder’s assistant.

I want to be a megastar female vocalist.

Preferably working somewhere.

Any job, you can’t pick and choose these days.

I think I will be unemployed.

I already have a baby.

This offers some insight into the states of mind of these young people onthe brink of adulthood. Some have clearly defined goals and confidencethat they will be able to achieve them (‘… I will be working in aprofession’; emphasis added) – while others are more aspirational, not tosay unrealistic (‘… a megastar …’). Yet others are vague (‘… workingsomewhere’), fatalistic (‘… you can’t pick and choose …’) or feel that their capability set has already been reduced to one functioning vector (‘Ialready have a baby’), at least as far as their future principal activity isconcerned. Indeed, for the fatalistic and highly constrained (as repre-sented by the last three quotes above), it is not clear that they have been

able to formulate any agency goals at all. This presents an immediateproblem for any evaluation in terms of achievement of agency goals.One question on the extent to which individuals feel able to define

and pursue their own goals asks respondents to say whether the statement‘I think there is no point planning for the future, you should take things asthey come’ is very true, partly true or not true at all. Overall, 8% said they thought this was ‘very true’, but the proportion varies considerably by socio-economic background. For example, only 3% of those with a parenteducated to degree level thought there was no point in planning,compared with 11% of those with parents with no educational qualifica-tions. The young person’s own experience also matters: 7% of those leastlikely to have been bullied at school thought it was pointless to plan,compared with 18% of those most likely to have been bullied.7 In amultivariate regression, low parental education and low parental socialclass are large, and statistically significant, predictors of the belief thatthere is no point in planning. Being an Indian ethnic minority (compared with being White) and a high likelihood of having been bullied are alsostatistically significant, although with smaller coefficients.8

These results suggest that the confidence to define objectives for oneself for the future is strongly influenced by socio-economic status andpast experience.9 In other words, it appears that the ability to formulate

agency goals at all is conditioned by pre-existing inequality.


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Even among those who are able to express aspirations and make plansfor the future, similar patterns of conditioned expectations can beobserved. Overall, 31% of young people said that they intended to leaveeducation at the age of 16, and 20% said they intended to carry on rightthrough to higher education.10 But again there is significant variation by parental background, as shown in Figure 1. Young people whose parentshave no educational qualifications are more than four times as likely asthose with at least one parent with a degree to intend to leave education atthe earliest opportunity. Conversely, young people with a parent educatedto degree level are five times more likely than those whose parents have noeducational qualifications to intend to carry on through to higher education.

Similarly, among those able to express an aspiration for their futureoccupation, the class into which the occupation they mentioned fell washighly correlated with the social class of their parents. For example, 44% of those with professional or managerial class parents aspired to professionaloccupations, compared with 16% of those with parents in unskilled or

partly-skilled social classes.In multivariate analysis, higher occupational aspirations were found

to be strongly and significantly associated with higher parental social class,higher parental education and being from an Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi ethnic background (compared with White). Having moresupportive parents was also weakly but significantly and independently associated with higher occupational aspirations.11

There is nothing deterministic about this process, and there are someinspiring exceptions within the survey — like the young man whose father died when he was 10 years old and whose mother left school at age 16; he

has a sight impairment, is bullied at school and unhappy at home, but is

FIGURE 1. Young people’s educational aspirations, by parental qualifications.

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nevertheless determined to complete higher education, and intends tomarry and become a bank manager. In general, however, among thoseable to formulate agency goals, the aspirations expressed are conditionedby their socio-economic background and experience. One possible

challenge to this interpretation of the results is that the patterns observedare not the result of conditioning, but of free choice. This is implausible: while it is undoubtedly the case that young people have different interestsand inclinations that will tend to lead them towards different occupations(working with computers or working with animals, for example), there isno reason to assume that this natural variation would be strongly correlated with parental social class, or parental education, in the absenceof conditioned expectations.

Following these young people through into early adulthood, we canobserve the extent to which the aspirations they had at the age of 16 were

fulfilled by age 26, the next age at which the full sample was surveyed. Of course, much of their adult life is still ahead of them at this time, but their first forays into the labour market have been taken. Not surprisingly, those who had modest aspirations were more likely to have attained them, or indeed to have exceeded them, while those who had higher occupationalaspirations were, on the whole, less likely to have achieved them. Four-fifths (79%) of those who had aspired to partly-skilled manual occupations were in such an occupation or one of a higher status, while less than one-fifth (18%) of those who had aspired to a professional occupation were ina professional job.12

It will be clear from the evidence so far that an evaluation of disadvantage or inequality based on the attainment of agency goals willrun into difficulties. Firstly, it is necessarily incomplete since some people(principally the most disadvantaged) are not in a position to formulateagency goals of this kind at all. Secondly, among those who are able toformulate agency goals, the goals they define are constrained by their previous experience, such that the more disadvantaged have more modestgoals. The final piece of evidence is that those who have more modestgoals are more likely to attain them. Consequently, a ranking of advantageand disadvantage based on attainment of agency goals — for example,occupational aspirations — produces the counter-intuitive result that

those at the top of the scale are those who were bullied at school, receivedlittle support from their parents and were poorly educated, while those atthe bottom of the scale are disproportionately from a high social class, well-supported and well-educated background. This is an exact parallel tothe arguments Sen and others use to demonstrate the perversity of evaluations based on utility.

Choosing a functioning from a capability set

A further problem arises when we consider the process of someone

selecting a functioning vector from his or her capability set. To make the


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case more concrete: at the age of 16, young people in Britain face adecision as to whether or not to continue in full-time education. There aremany constraints on this decision; for example, pupils must generally obtain good results in five or more national examinations in order to be

eligible to enter further education. Their family must be able to afford tocontinue to support them financially, relieving them of the economicimperative to leave school in order to start earning. In addition to financialmeans, young people may need to draw on other resources from their parents, sometimes referred to as ‘human capital’.

These conditions can be modelled approximately in the 1970 BritishCohort Study data. Not all relevant factors can be included but the resultsprovide a useful illustration of the theoretical difficulty under discussion.The analysis concentrates on 16 year olds who have passed five or more O-levels,13 whose current parental income is in the top half of the

distribution (approximately),

14

and who have one or both parents witheducation at further or higher levels.15 We can therefore assume that these young people have the functioning of remaining in education within their capability set.

If the decision to remain in education were a matter of real freedom, we would not expect to find a systematic relationship between thedecision to continue and socio-economic characteristics. In fact, we findthat the outcome is strongly patterned by previous experience of economic inequality. Figure 2 shows that the father’s social class basedon his occupation when the young person was aged 10 (the previous waveof the survey) is strongly associated with whether or not the young person

FIGURE 2. Percentage continuing in education at age 16, by childhood disadvantage.

Note: Young people with 5+ examination passes, parental income in top half of distribution, and

parent(s) with further or higher education.

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remains in education at age 16, even among this group who we haveidentified as having broadly equivalent current capabilities. Similarly, thehigher the family’s income when the young person was aged 10, the morelikely he or she is to continue in education at age 16, even among this

select group who have high current incomes and good examinationresults.The reason for these differences is not hard to find: the aspirations of

these 16 year olds, with roughly equal capability to remain in education inthe present, differ significantly by previous disadvantage. Only 33% of those in the bottom income bracket at age 10 say, at age 16, that they wantto continue through to higher education, compared with 70% of those inthe top income bracket. Indeed, the effect of past deprivation on thedecision to continue in education (among those who have the currentcapability to do so), seems to operate mainly through the mechanism of

lower aspirations: a probit regression on whether or not 16 year olds withthe capability to continue in education in fact do continue shows thatfamily income at age 10 is no longer significant after controlling for the young person’s aspirations.16

The point is not that it is irrational to choose to leave formaleducation at age 16; indeed, it is not difficult to imagine circumstances in which someone with wide substantive freedom earlier in life would formagency goals best served by leaving school; for example, to write music or start a business or to travel.17 Nor would we wish to define all influenceson, or conditioning of, a person’s choice as incompatible with realfreedom. The crucial question is what types of influence or conditioningare compatible with real freedom, and which are not. There are no doubttricky borderline cases, drawing us into philosophical debates about free will and determinism, but influences that are systematically related toprevious experience of socio-economic inequality must surely fall into thecategory of being incompatible with real freedom. This is not a matter of culture or taste, but of injustice.

The chances of selecting an advantageous functioning (staying on ineducation) from a given capability set is, it appears, strongly correlated with previous experience of socio-economic inequality, and this associa-tion gives rise to the suspicion that simply looking at contemporary capability sets is an insufficient basis on which to compare individuals’ well-being freedom. Differences in aspirations, which are shaped by earlier experiences, produce different chances of selecting a given functioning vector from broadly equivalent contemporary capability sets. Where thefunctioning vector in question is one that is likely to produce significantlong-term advantage, as is often — although not invariably — the case withremaining in education, and where the earlier experiences are experiencesof inequality, this is a matter of concern. In the presence of conditionedaspirations, equal capability sets do not produce equal real freedombecause they do not produce an equal chance of securing an advantageous

outcome.


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Possible responses: capability as autonomy

To re-cap, we have three results. Firstly, agency goals, at least in the formof aspirations for future education and employment, are adaptive.Secondly, this adaptation means that evaluation of inequality or

disadvantage based on agency goal achievement produces perverseresults, in the same way that evaluation based on utility may do, withthose experiencing significant past disadvantage forming lower aspirationsand thereby being more likely to achieve their goals. Thirdly, adaptation inaspirations and agency goals casts doubt on the assumption thatequivalent capability sets produce equal real freedom, even when wemake an assessment based on well-being freedom, because the likelihoodof choosing an advantageous functioning vector from a capability set turnsout to depend on past experience of disadvantage.

Aside from retreating to evaluation solely of well-being achievement,

discussed and rejected as a strategy at the end of the third section above,another possible move would be to incorporate the subjectiveconstraints (such as low aspirations) into the definition of what limitsa person’s capability set. So, for example, ‘being a stockbroker’ wouldnot be treated as part of the capability set of someone whoseoccupational expectations had been conditioned by growing up in aneconomically deprived area, even if they ‘objectively’ now had access to acareer in the City.

But where should we draw the line? What other mental states anddispositions should be incorporated into the definition of constraints on

action? Identifying constraints on action is what enables us to identify whatlies inside, and what lies outside, a person’s capability set. Would weeventually reach the conclusion that the only option an individual couldhave chosen, given all of the external and internal factors operating onthem, was the one they in fact chose? In that case, the capability set isreduced to a single functioning vector, and we are back to evaluation of achievement rather than freedom. Any approach that places value onindividual freedom must define and protect a sphere within whichindividual choices are respected.

A more promising response, I would argue, is to make the process by which agency goals, aspirations and the preferences that influenceselection of functionings have been formed an explicit part of theevaluation. Utilitarianism treats tastes and preferences as exogenous, butthe capability approach should not follow suit, since the ‘menu’ of optionsavailable to an individual not only influences his actual choice but can alsoshape the formation of his goals and preferences (Sen, 1997). Thedefinition of agency freedom in particular, and capability in general, needsto be expanded to include the conditions in which these goals, aspirationsand preferences are formed: a definition of capability we might call‘capability as autonomy’, as distinct from a more conventional interpreta-tions of capability as current substantive opportunity. Both Nussbaum

(2000) and, independently from the capability approach, Doyal and Gough

T. Burchardt

16



(1991) have stressed the importance of autonomy, but it has not beenprominent in the literature based on Sen’s capability approach.

This means moving from a static to a dynamic conception of capability assessment, including examining the freedom (or lack of it) an individual

has accumulated over his or her lifetime to date. Only if the capability setfrom which agency goals are formed and the capability set within whichthey are pursued are evaluated can we begin to properly assess the degreeof substantive freedom he or she enjoys. Of course, this is even moredemanding informationally than assessments of capability that treat goalsand preferences as exogenous; but, with suitable longitudinal data, atypology of capability as autonomy can be produced. A typology of thiskind first distinguishes those who had restricted and wider capability setsduring an earlier, formative, period in their lives, and, secondly, divideseach of these groups into those who have restricted or wider capability sets in the present, when they are pursuing their agency goals (Burchardt,2006). The ‘fully autonomous’, who enjoy wide capabilities during bothphases, clearly dominate the position of the ‘doubly deprived’, who wererestricted in both phases, while the relative position of the groups inbetween — wide aspirations but limited contemporary opportunity, or vice versa — remains under-determined.

Defining capability as autonomy does not make the difficulties to whichconditioned expectations give rise disappear; rather, it brings them into theforeground. No one approach to evaluation is sufficient, but each kind — well-being and agency, achievement and freedom to achieve, opportunity and autonomy — has something to offer. An awareness of their specificlimitations,andin particular theirsusceptibility to theproblem of adaptation,should help to evaluate the evaluations, subjecting them to the criticalscrutiny that Sen would be among the first to recommend.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Ian Gough, John Hills, Peter Taylor-Gooby, Martin vanHees, Polly Vizard, participants in the Priority in Practice workshop atUniversity College London and two anonymous referees for comments on

earlier versions of this paper. I am also grateful to the Joseph RowntreeFoundation, who funded some of the research on which this paper isbased. The Data Archive at Essex University supplied data from the 1970British Cohort Study. Responsibility for any errors of fact or judgementremains 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 (1985a). The purpose

of this paper is to show that some of these broad arguments against utilitarianism apply


17



also to the capability approach, rather than to rehearse the arguments againstutilitarianism in detail.

2 The phenomenon of adaptation gives rise to interesting and difficult issues with respectto democratic deliberation too, but that is not the aspect of the problem that I wish topursue here.

3 Robeyns (2005) 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 havetermed ‘well-being’. Her version of well-being adds to standard of living ‘‘outcomesresulting from sympathies (i.e. from helping another person and thereby feelingoneself better off’’ (Robeyns, 2005, p. 102). Her interpretation of agency is similar tomine, in that it incorporates ‘‘commitments (i.e. an action that is not beneficial to theagent herself)’’ (p. 102).

4 Sumner (1996, p. 66) and Nussbaum (1988, p. 175) also draw attention to thispotential difficulty.

5 It is of course included in Nussbaum’s (2000) list of central human capabilities, as partof 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 infamilies with financial problems; and those who have experienced poor housingconditions.

7 The likelihood that the young people have experienced bullying is assessed by a seriesof four questions about their relationships with their peers at school, yielding a scalefrom 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 (2000).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 occupationstend 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 differenteducational 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 5 706, pseudo R2

50.44. Further details available on requestfrom the author.

17 Watts (2006) discusses other reasons why not pursuing higher education may be valued, particularly for those from lower social class backgrounds.

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