The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were heralded as opening a new chapter in international development, and have led to the use of global goals and target-setting as a central instrument defining the international development agenda. Despite this increased importance, little is understood...

What role can aspirations play in small-scale human development interventions? In this paper, we contribute to answering that question with both conceptual and empirical work. Aspirations can play at least two roles in small-scale human development interventions: the capabilities-selecting role...

While both the scientific discourse on the capability approach and the scientific discourse regarding sustainable development in general, and sustainability theory specifically, are broad and well developed, the two discourses are more or less separated. In this contribution I ask if and how far...

We investigate factors responsible for low public sector human capital investment in Pakistan. The debt servicing burden coupled with a rising debt stock can impact on human capital expenditure. To account for this, a Debt Net Cost Index is developed to measure the evolving net cost of public...

This paper has two main objectives. The first is to focus on the role of technology, in combination with human development, in generating the growth needed for further increases in human development, which is seen as the bottom-line output. The second objective is to explore how technology...

This paper employs the capability approach to explore how Latina/Latino migrants in Central Illinois—an area of the Midwest (or Heartland) that lies outside the traditional metropolitan destinations—were coping with the local effects of the global economic crisis of the late 2000s. The...

Adaptive preferences are a central justification and ongoing problem for capability analyses of well-being. Orthodox interpretations of what constitutes human flourishing may lead to the misattribution of adaptive preferences and therefore downgrade the importance of human diversity in...