The Capability Approach and Fuzzy Poverty Measures: An Application to the South African Context

Authors: Qizilbash, Mozaffar¹; Clark, David²

Source: Social Indicators Research, Volume 74, Number 1, October 2005 , pp. 103-139(37)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

One way of making the capability approach (CA) operational uses fuzzy poverty measures. In this paper, we present a new approach to applying these measures in the South African context using responses to a questionnaire on ‘The Essentials of Life’ in conjunction with a methodology for dealing with the vagueness of poverty. Our results suggest very low cut-offs for people or households to classify as definitely poor for some social indicators. These cut-offs are far lower than those Klasen used in his application of the CA. The attempt to apply the CA using Cheli and Lemmi’s ‘totally fuzzy and relative’ poverty measure in conjunction with our approach to specifying cut-offs can lead to incoherence. This measure can, nonetheless, be useful when social indicators have a ‘relativist component’. While the Cerioli and Zani measure does not lead to such incoherence, it also has a serious weakness.

Keywords: capability; fuzzy sets; poverty; South Africa; well-being

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11205-005-6527-y

Affiliations: 1: School of Economics, University of East Anglia, NR4 7TJ , Norwich, Email: m.qizilbash@uea.ac.uk mozaffarq@hotmail.com 2: Global Poverty Research Group (GPRG) and Institute for Development Policy Management (IDPM), University of Manchester, Harold Hankins Building, Precinct Centre, Oxford Road, M13 9QH, Manchester, UK, Email: David_A_Clark@hotmail.com

Publication date: 2005-10-01