Capability Approach and Multidimensional Poverty Analysis: A Theoretical Discussion

Abstract

Capability Approach is very interesting among the researchers, policy makers and political philosophers. It can be used for evaluating several aspects of people's well-being such as inequality, poverty and so on. It is highly interdisciplinary in nature. It can also be used as an alternative tool for social cost-benefit analysis. Thus CA is not a theory that can only explain poverty, inequality or well-being, rather it provides a tool and a framework within which to conceptualize and estimate these phenomena. The capabilities are the freedom that a person enjoys in terms of functioning. A person is multidimensional poor if he/she has failed to attain the threshold limit of functioning. The CA gives a philosophical and theoretical platform for measuring poverty or deprivation in a multidimensional space. Our paper concentrates much on this.

Keywords: Capability, Ends, Functionings, Poverty, Means, Multidimensional, Well-being.