IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/103504.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inequality and the capability approach

Author

Listed:
  • Burchardt, Tania
  • Hick, Rod

Abstract

Inequality has acquired a newfound prominence in academic and political debate. While scholars working with the capability approach have succeeded in influencing the nature of debate about the conceptualisation and measurement of poverty, which is increasingly understood in multidimensional terms, the recent literature on inequality focusses overwhelmingly on economic forms of inequality, and especially on inequalities in income and wealth. In this paper we outline how and why the capability approach might be employed to provide a richer understanding of inequality, and of ‘advantage’ in particular. We also discuss three issues that arise when seeking to apply the capability approach to examine inequality rather than the more traditional concern with poverty. Addressing these issues is central to unlocking the potential that the capability approach has to enrich the understanding of inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Burchardt, Tania & Hick, Rod, 2017. "Inequality and the capability approach," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103504, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:103504
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/103504/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. François Bourguignon, 2015. "The Globalization of Inequality," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10433.
    2. Sabina Alkire, 2010. "Human Development: Definitions, Critiques, and Related Concepts," OPHI Working Papers 36, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    3. Jenkins, Stephen P., 2011. "Changing Fortunes: Income Mobility and Poverty Dynamics in Britain," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199226436, Decembrie.
    4. Salverda, Wiemer & Nolan, Brian & Checchi, Daniele & Marx, Ive & McKnight, Abigail & Toth, Istvan Gy (ed.), 2014. "Changing Inequalities in Rich Countries: Analytical and Comparative Perspectives," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199687435, Decembrie.
    5. Prasanta K. PATTANAIK & Yongsheng XU, 1990. "On Ranking Opportunity Sets in Terms of Freedom of Choice," Discussion Papers (REL - Recherches Economiques de Louvain) 1990036, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    6. Martin Van Hees & Marcel Wissenburg, 1999. "Freedom and Opportunity," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 47(1), pages 67-82, March.
    7. Atkinson, Anthony B., 2015. "Inequality: what can be done?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101810, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Howard White & Edward Anderson, 2001. "Growth versus Distribution: Does the Pattern of Growth Matter?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 19(3), pages 267-289, September.
    9. Sebastiano Bavetta, 2004. "Measuring freedom of choice: An alternative view of a recent literature," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 22(1), pages 29-48, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lin Yang, 2017. "The relationship between poverty and inequality: Concepts and measurement," CASE Papers /205, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    2. Yang, Lin, 2017. "The relationship between poverty and inequality: concepts and measurement," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103491, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Nadimi, Reza & Tokimatsu, Koji, 2018. "Energy use analysis in the presence of quality of life, poverty, health, and carbon dioxide emissions," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 671-684.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tania Burchardt & Rod Hick, 2017. "Inequality and the Capability Approach," CASE Papers /201, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    2. Burchardt, Tania & Hick, Rod, 2017. "Inequality, advantage and the capability approach," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 84598, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Rommeswinkel, Hendrik, 2011. "Measuring Freedom in Games," MPRA Paper 106426, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 03 Mar 2021.
    4. Bavaro, Michele & Raitano, Michele, 2024. "Is working enough to escape poverty? Evidence on low-paid workers in Italy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 495-511.
    5. Jenkins, Stephen P., 2015. "The income distribution in the UK: a picture of advantage and disadvantage," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103980, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Rory Horner & David Hulme, 2019. "From International to Global Development: New Geographies of 21st Century Development," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 50(2), pages 347-378, March.
    7. Guillermo Cruces & Gary S. Fields & David Jaume & Mariana Viollaz, 2015. "The growth-employment-poverty nexus in Latin America in the 2000s: Cross-country analysis," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-110, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Valentina VASILE & Daniel ŞTEFAN & Călin-Adrian COMES & Elena BUNDUCHI & Anamari-Beatrice ŞTEFAN, 2020. "FDI or Remittances for Sustainable External Financial Inflows. Theoretical Delimitations and Practical Evidence using Granger Causality," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(4), pages 131-153, December.
    9. Piotr Paradowski & Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz & Eva Sierminska, 2020. "Inequality, Poverty and Child Benefits: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," LIS Working papers 799, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    10. Lustig Nora, 2016. "Inequality and Fiscal Redistribution in Middle Income Countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru and South Africa," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 17-60, June.
    11. repec:aia:aiaswp:wp164 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Christopher T. Whelan & Brian Nolan & Bertrand Maitre, 2017. "Polarization or “Squeezed Middle” in the Great Recession?: A Comparative European Analysis of the Distribution of Economic Stress," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 133(1), pages 163-184, August.
    13. Nora Lustig, 2019. "Measuring the distributional impact of taxation and public spending: The practice of fiscal incidence analysis," Working Papers 509, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    14. Francesco Bogliacino & Daniel Rojas Lozano, 2018. "The Evolution of Inequality in Latin America in the 21st Century: What are the patterns, drivers and causes?," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 71(286), pages 279-308.
    15. Nolan, Brian & Richiardi, Matteo & Valenzuela, Luis, 2018. "The Drivers of Inequality in Rich Countries," INET Oxford Working Papers 2018-15, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    16. Peter Temin, 2015. "The American Dual Economy: Race, Globalization, and the Politics of Exclusion," Working Papers Series 26, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    17. Francisco G. Ferreira & Nora Lustig & Daniel Teles, 2015. "Appraising cross-national income inequality databases: An introduction," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(4), pages 497-526, December.
    18. Gervasio SEMEDO & Bertrand LAPORTE & Asbath ALASSANI, 2022. "How does tax structure affect income inequality? Empirical evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa," LEO Working Papers / DR LEO 2960, Orleans Economics Laboratory / Laboratoire d'Economie d'Orleans (LEO), University of Orleans.
    19. Bogliacino, Francesco & Rojas Lozano, Daniel, 2017. "The evolution of inequality in Latin America in the 21st century: Patterns, drivers and causal hypotheses," MPRA Paper 77803, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Antonelli, Cristiano & Gehringer, Agnieszka, 2017. "Technological change, rent and income inequalities: A Schumpeterian approach," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 85-98.
    21. Wiemer Salverda, 2016. "The tsunamis of educational attainment and part-time employment, and the change of the labour force 1960–2010: what can be learned about self-reinforcing labour-market inequality from the case of the ," ImPRovE Working Papers 16/04, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    capability approach; Inequality; distribution; advantage; measurement; poverty; income; wealth; multidimensional;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:103504. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.