The Human Development Model of Disability, Health and Wellbeing

Abstract

This chapter sets the conceptual framework for the book. It introduces a new model, the human development model of disability, health and wellbeing, based on Amartya Sen's capability approach. Disability is defined as a deprivation in terms of functioning and/or capability among persons with health conditions and/or impairments. The human development model highlights in relation to wellbeing the roles of resources, conversion functions, agency, and it uses capabilities and/or functionings as metric for wellbeing. It does not consider impairments/health conditions as individual characteristics; instead, they are themselves determined by resources, structural factors, and personal characteristics, and thus the model is informed by the socioeconomic determinants of health literature. This chapter also compares the human development model to the main disability models used in the literature.