Comment on “What the Welfare State Left behind: Securing the Capability to Move for the Vulnerable”

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has increased poverty and inequality within and across countries (Narayan et al., 2022). The World Bank (2020) has estimated that between 88 million and 115 million more people moved into extreme poverty globally in 2020. Some countries fared worse situations than others because of the weak responses from governments in terms of the adequacy of the health system, the vaccination rollout, as well as the deployment of fiscal resources to support households and businesses. The need for urgent economic policy responses to the pandemic and its consequences has also resulted in the use of interventions that were primarily based on consumption and income metrics. Such policies are likely to be more effective had they incorporated the notion of human capabilities, a concept in the capability approach to inequality.

Gotoh and Kambayashi (2022) apply the capability approach to help us understand why and how physical mobility should matter in formulating policies that are aimed to support persons that are vulnerable in terms of being disabled, requiring nursing care and the elderly. Several analytical and empirical innovations are required to do this.

A theoretical framework is first constructed to analyze differences in the level of capability across groups (in terms of vulnerability—disabled, in nursing care and the elderly) which are then further divided into sub-groups in terms of different (discrete) degrees of physical mobility (going-out/staying-home). Associated with these sub-groups is a vector of individual functioning (with each element indexed by vulnerability and mobility). To provide a quantitative measure of how mobility affects functioning, a vector of maximum attainable level of functioning based on different mobility levels is constructed. The “damage” associated with different combinations of vulnerability and mobility can be derived by computing the difference between the maximal functioning vector and each sub-group's functioning vector (via a Euclidean distance function).

The empirical innovations in Gotoh and Kambayashi (2022) entail the implementation of surveys to collect information on the sets of utilization ability and functioning. This leads to an assessment of how human capabilities are relatively affected across the different types of vulnerability and levels of physical mobility. Although not emphasized by Gotoh and Kambayashi but much emphasized in the capability approach literature, the freedom interpretation of capabilities is very important.

A significant contribution of Gotoh and Kambayashi (2022) is providing an example of how an empirically grounded approach based on the capability approach can be used in formulating policies that are aimed at improving the lives of the vulnerable during the Covid pandemic. One can further argue that the scope of the application of the capability approach to inequality is very wide indeed. This is because human activities and capabilities have many dimensions that include various types of advantages and vulnerabilities that change not only over the lifespan of individuals but are also affected by technological changes (which alters all elements of the function—commodity characteristics mapping and utilization ability).

A key challenge to realizing the full potential of applying the capability approach to inequality would be the design and implementation of surveys aimed at collecting information about human capabilities. This should take advantage of new technologies such as the Internet of Things that enable the collection of real-time information that sheds some light on various aspects of well-being such as physical mobility and interactions with others. Gotoh and Kambayashi (2022) provides an insightful glimpse into the potential of policy interventions based on the capability approach to inequality.