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Well-being poverty versus income poverty and capabilities poverty?

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Author Info
Geeta Kingdon (Centre for the Study of African Economies)
John Knight (Centre for the Study Of African Economies)

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Abstract

The conventional approach of economists to the measurement of poverty in poor countries is to use measures of income or consumption. This has been challenged by those who favour broader criteria for poverty and its avoidance. These include the fulfilment of 'basic needs', the 'capabilities' to be and to do things of intrinsic worth, and safety from insecurity and vulnerability. This paper asks: to what extent are these different concepts measurable, to what extent are they competing and to what extent complementary, and is it possible for them to be accommodated within an encompassing framework? There are two remarkable gaps in the rapidly growing literature on subjective well-being. First, reflecting the availability of data, there is little research on poor countries. Second, within any country, there is little research on the relationship between well-being and the notion of poverty. This paper attempts to fill these gaps. Any attempt to define poverty involves a value judgement as to what constitutes a good quality of life or a bad one. We argue that an approach which examines the individuals own perception of well-being is less imperfect, or more quantifiable, or both, as a guide to forming that value judgement than are the other potential approaches. We develop a methodology for using subjective well-being as the criterion for poverty, and illustrate its use by reference to a South African data set containing much socio-economic information on the individual, the household and the community, as well as information on reported well- being. We conclude that it is possible to view subjective well-being as an encompassing concept, which permits us to quantify the relevance and importance of the other approaches and of their component variables. The estimated well-being functions for South Africa contain some variables corresponding to the income approach, some to the basic needs (or physical functioning)approach, some to the relative (or social functioning) approach, and some to the security approach. Thus, our methodology effectively provides weights of the relative importance of these various components of well-being poverty.

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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Development and Comp Systems with number 0409040.

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Length: 32 pages
Date of creation: 23 Sep 2004
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Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpdc:0409040

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O - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth
P - Economic Systems

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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    Other versions:
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  8. John F. Helliwell, 2002. "How's Life? Combining Individual and National Variables to Explain Subjective Well-Being," NBER Working Papers 9065, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. B.M.S. van Praag & P. Frijters & A. Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2002. "The Anatomy of Subjective Well-being," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 02-022/3, Tinbergen Institute. [Downloadable!]
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Fafchamps, Marcel & Shilpi, Forhad, 2006. "Subjective Welfare, Isolation and Relative Consumption," CEPR Discussion Papers 6002, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Eliane Badaoui & Eric Strobl & Frank Walsh, 2007. "Is There An Informal Employment Wage Penalty? Evidence from South Africa," IZA Discussion Papers 3151, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Nattavudh Powdthavee, 2003. "Are there Regional Variations in the Psychological Cost of Unemployment in South Africa?," Labor and Demography 0310006, EconWPA, revised 28 Oct 2003. [Downloadable!]
  4. Fafchamps, Marcel & Shilpi, Forhad, 2006. "Isolation and Subjective Welfare," CEPR Discussion Papers 6001, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  5. Francis Teal, 2006. "Consumption and welfare in Ghana in the 1990s," The Journal of Development Studies, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 42(7), pages 1252-1269, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Nattavudh Powdthavee, 2003. "Unhappiness and Crime: Evidence from South Africa," Development and Comp Systems 0310003, EconWPA, revised 17 Mar 2004. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Geeta Kingdon & John Knight, 2004. "Community, Comparisons and Subjective Well-being in a Divided Society," Development and Comp Systems 0409067, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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