The Anatomy of Wasted Potential: A relational account of potential, and what a claim of waste requires
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: ABSTRACT “Wasted potential” is reported as an outcome and read as a verdict on a person. But if a person’s potential depends on the configuration around them, meaning the paths open under actual conditions and which of those they can reach, then an outcome alone cannot show that potential was wasted. An institution that sets part of that configuration, through its eligibility rules, procedures, support, and the performance measures that shape its decisions, cannot evaluate unrealized potential from individual outcomes alone. An adequate evaluation must also examine the conditions the institution helped set. The same outcome can arise in different ways: a path may never have been recognized, may not have been open, or may have been open but out of reach for this person; participation may have produced no change, a change may not have lasted, or an achievement may have left people less able to pursue what came next. This paper proposes a relational anatomy of potential that makes these distinctions separately inspectable. The anatomy names one path in advance and asks six questions about it: was the path represented, available, reachable for this participant, converted into material change, stabilized, and generative of future capacity? Each question has its own evidence; some may not apply, each that does can be answered yes, no, or not yet known, and an answer to one does not settle another. The paper separates whether a target was met from what pursuing the path left people able to do, and it distinguishes a possibility that went unrealized from one that was foreclosed or wasted. A claim of waste carries burdens: a named participant, a valued and legitimate path, evidence that the path was lost rather than unobserved, and a feasible alternative that would have avoided the loss. Two randomized housing-mobility studies illustrate the distinctions. In Creating Moves to Opportunity, 53.2 percent of families offered additional help leased in a high-opportunity area, compared with 15.4 percent of families given the usual voucher briefings, with no detectable change in whether families leased at all. In Moving to Opportunity, one offer to move produced different later consequences for younger children, adolescents, and adults. The paper is conceptual. It states the evidence each judgment requires and a comparative test of whether the anatomy improves inquiry beyond existing approaches, an advantage not yet shown. Its larger implication is that evaluating potential means examining not only what people achieved, but which paths their circumstances made available, which they could reach, and what pursuing them left possible afterward.
Author: Campillo, Paul
Language: English
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222795607
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