Core Poverty, Basic Capabilities and Vagueness: An Application to the South African Context.

This paper applies a framework which addresses the vagueness of poverty. The 'core poor' are those who are unambiguously poor. In applying the framework we use Sen's capability approach and results from a recent survey. These results suggest that some South Africans set tough standard...

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Main Authors: Clark, D, Qizilbash, M
Format: Working paper
Language:English
Published: GPRG 2005
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author Clark, D
Qizilbash, M
author_facet Clark, D
Qizilbash, M
author_sort Clark, D
collection OXFORD
description This paper applies a framework which addresses the vagueness of poverty. The 'core poor' are those who are unambiguously poor. In applying the framework we use Sen's capability approach and results from a recent survey. These results suggest that some South Africans set tough standards for someone to qualify as poor. Even by these standards, our lower bound estimate of core poverty is higher than existing estimates of the 'most deprived' and 'ultrapoor'. This result is sensitive to the criteria used in applying the framework, though other results are more robust. While there is evidence that respondents adapted to their living conditions, it was not merely those who were deprived in specific dimensions who endorsed very low cut-offs in those dimensions.
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spelling oxford-uuid:3d2942da-fdce-47a0-880c-80591fe85d8c2022-03-26T14:17:52ZCore Poverty, Basic Capabilities and Vagueness: An Application to the South African Context.Working paperhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042uuid:3d2942da-fdce-47a0-880c-80591fe85d8cEnglishDepartment of Economics - ePrintsGPRG2005Clark, DQizilbash, MThis paper applies a framework which addresses the vagueness of poverty. The 'core poor' are those who are unambiguously poor. In applying the framework we use Sen's capability approach and results from a recent survey. These results suggest that some South Africans set tough standards for someone to qualify as poor. Even by these standards, our lower bound estimate of core poverty is higher than existing estimates of the 'most deprived' and 'ultrapoor'. This result is sensitive to the criteria used in applying the framework, though other results are more robust. While there is evidence that respondents adapted to their living conditions, it was not merely those who were deprived in specific dimensions who endorsed very low cut-offs in those dimensions.
spellingShingle Clark, D
Qizilbash, M
Core Poverty, Basic Capabilities and Vagueness: An Application to the South African Context.
title Core Poverty, Basic Capabilities and Vagueness: An Application to the South African Context.
title_full Core Poverty, Basic Capabilities and Vagueness: An Application to the South African Context.
title_fullStr Core Poverty, Basic Capabilities and Vagueness: An Application to the South African Context.
title_full_unstemmed Core Poverty, Basic Capabilities and Vagueness: An Application to the South African Context.
title_short Core Poverty, Basic Capabilities and Vagueness: An Application to the South African Context.
title_sort core poverty basic capabilities and vagueness an application to the south african context
work_keys_str_mv AT clarkd corepovertybasiccapabilitiesandvaguenessanapplicationtothesouthafricancontext
AT qizilbashm corepovertybasiccapabilitiesandvaguenessanapplicationtothesouthafricancontext