Expression of human entitlements

Each person in society can command a set of alternative commodity bundles using the totality of rights and opportunities that he or she faces. On the basis of this entitlement, a person can acquire some capabilities and fail to acquire others. The process of economic development can be seen as a process of expanding the capabilities of people. Given the functional relationship between entitlements of persons over goods and their capabilities, a useful (though derivative) characterization of economic development is in terms of expansion of entitlements. For most of humanity, about the only commodity a person has to sell is labour power, so that the person's entitlements depend crucially on his or her capability to find a job, the wage rate for that job and the price of commodities that he or she wishes to buy.

When the concern is for such notions as the well-being of a person, or standard-of-living, or freedom in the positive sense, there is a need for the concept of capabilities. The concern is with what a person can do. This is not the same thing as how much pleasure or desire fulfilment he gets from these activities ("utility"), nor what commodity bundles he can command ("entitlements"). Ultimately one has to go not merely beyond the calculus of the national product and aggregate real income but also beyond the calculus of entitlements over commodity bundles viewed on their own. The focus on capabilities differs also from concentration on the mental metric of utilities, and this contrast is similar to the general one between pleasure on the one hand and positive freedom on the other. The particular role of entitlements is through its effects on capabilities. It is a role that has substantial and far-reaching importance but remains derivative on capabilities.