Poverty and Human Functioning: Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements
Author(s)
Nussbaum, Martha C.
Abstract
For many years, approaches to poverty in the international development and policy-making world were obtuse in human terms. They focused on economic growth as the primary goal of development and measured quality of life simply by looking at GNP per capita. That crude measure, of course, did not even take distribution into account, and thus was utterly useless in confronting nations with a lot of poverty and high rates of inequality. Today, a different approach is prominent: the capabilities approach, represented in the Human Development Reports of the UNDP. The purpose of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy, and creative lives. This simple but powerful truth is too often forgotten in the pursuit of material and financial wealth. In this chapter I suggest that the capabilities approach is indeed a valuable way to approach the question of fundamental entitlements, one that is especially pertinent to issues of sex equality.
