Thanks for writing this! It’s a well-written introduction and it’s an approach that should be more widely known + highly rated in EA.
Another useful application of the capability approach I’ve encountered is in health. While saving lives is simple to value via lots of approaches, it’s more difficult to know how to weigh disability and disease. The QALY/DALY approach is a useful measurement tool, but I find it helpful to have a theory for why we should care about disability/disease beyond just the lens of QALY/DALYs. Venkatapuram (2011) defends a notion of health as a cluster of basic capabilities—and I find that a really useful foundation to think from.
Thanks for writing this! It’s a well-written introduction and it’s an approach that should be more widely known + highly rated in EA.
Another useful application of the capability approach I’ve encountered is in health. While saving lives is simple to value via lots of approaches, it’s more difficult to know how to weigh disability and disease. The QALY/DALY approach is a useful measurement tool, but I find it helpful to have a theory for why we should care about disability/disease beyond just the lens of QALY/DALYs. Venkatapuram (2011) defends a notion of health as a cluster of basic capabilities—and I find that a really useful foundation to think from.