Amartya Sen's Capability Approach: Theoretical Insights and Empirical Applications

by Wiebke Kuklys

Overview

Kuklys examines how Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen’s approach to welfare measurement can be put in practice for poverty and inequality measurement in affluent societies such as the UK. Sen argues that an individual’s welfare should not be measured in terms of her income, but in terms what she can actually do or be, her capabilities. In Chapters 1 and 2, Kuklys describes the capability approach from a standard welfare economic point of view and provides a comprehensive literature review of the empirical applications in this area of research. In the remaining chapters, novel econometric techniques are employed to operationalise the concepts of functionings and capability to investigate inequality and poverty in terms of capability in the UK. Kuklys finds that capability measurement is always a useful complement to traditional monetary analysis, and particularly so in the case of capability-deprived disabled individuals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783642065620
Publisher:	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publication date:	12/17/2010
Series:	Studies in Choice and Welfare
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of hardcover 1st ed. 2005
Pages:	116
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.01(d)

Table of Contents

Sen's Capability Approach to Welfare Economics.- The Measurement of Functionings Achievement: Structural Equation Models as an Alternative.- Functionings-Based vs. Income-Based Inequality Measures: Informational Content and Robustness.- A Monetary Approach to Capability Measurement of the Disabled in the UK.