CHAPTER 4: POVERTY AS CAPABILITY o enhanced capabilities in leading a life

DEPRIVATION would tend, typically, to expand a person’s

ability to be more productive and earn a
higher income
- POVERTY: deprivation of basic capabilities rather
- BETTER BASIC EDUCATION AND HEALTH
than merely as lowness of incomes (standard
CARE improve the quality of life directly; they also
criterion)
increase a person’s ability to earn an income and be
- INADEQUATE INCOME: strong predisposing
free of income-poverty as well
condition for an impoverished life.
o JEAN DREZE (dealing with economic
- CLAIMS
reforms): economic reforms opened
o Deprivations that are INTRINSICALLY
opportunities for India that were
IMPORTANT
suppressed by overuse of control and by the
 Low income: instrumentally
limitations (license raj)
significant
- Japan, and then South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong,
o OTHER INFLUENCES than lowness of
and Singapore, and later post-reform China and
income
Thailand  spreading economic opportunities
o The instrumental relation between low
through SUPPORTIVE SOCIAL BACKGROUND:
income and low capability is VARIABLE
high levels of literacy, numeracy, and basic
between different communities, families
education; good general health care; completed land
and different individuals.
reforms
1. the relationship between income and capability
- INDIA: some regions are having higher levels of
would be strongly affected by the age of the person,
education, health care and land reform
by gender and social roles, by location, by
o KERALA: faster rate of reduction in
epidemiological atmosphere, and by other variations
income poverty, great deal on expansion of
over which a person may have no control.
basic need, health care, and equitable land
2. “coupling” of disadvantages between (1) income
distribution for its success in reducing
deprivation and (2) adversity in converting income
penury.
into functioning.
- REDUCTION OF INCOME—not the ultimate
a. Example: handicaps, age or disability
motivation of antipoverty alone
3. distribution within the family raises further
- CAPABILITY IMPROVEMENT helps both
complications with the income approach to poverty
directly and indirectly in enriching human lives and
a. sex bias—deprivation of girls
in making human deprivations more rare
4. relative deprivation in terms of incomes can yield
INEQUALITY OF WHAT?
absolute deprivation in terms of capabilities
- ADAM SMITH’S CONCERN
a. being relatively poor in a rich country can
o IMPARTIAL SPECTATOR—an inquiry
be a great capability handicap
that offers insights on the requirements of
b. more income is needed to buy enough
fairness in social judgment.
commodities to achieve the same social
- JOHN RAWLS’S IDEA
functioning
o JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS—what can be
- ADAM SMITH IN THE WEALTH OF NATIONS
expected to be chosen in a hypothetical
(1776)— sociological understandings of poverty
“ORIGINAL POSITION”; people do not
o analyzed by W. G. Runciman, Peter
yet know who they are going to be provides
Townsend
a rich understanding of the demands of
- The need to take part in the life of a community may
equity, and yields the anti-inequality
induce demands for modern equipment.
features that are characteristic of his
- CAPABILITY PERSPECTIVE IN POVERTY
“principles of justice.
ANALYSIS
- attempts to eradicate inequality can, in many
o enhance the understanding of the nature
circumstances, lead to loss for most
and causes of poverty and deprivation by
- A. B. ATKINSON’S “EQUALLY DISTRIBUTED
shifting primary attention away from
EQUIVALENT INCOME”
means (income) to ends that people have
o a concept that adjusts the aggregate income
reason to pursue, and, correspondingly, to
by reducing its accounted value according
the freedoms to be able to satisfy these ends
to the extent of inequality in income
INCOME POVERTY AND CAPABILITY POVERTY
distribution, with the tradeoff between
- CONNECTION
aggregative and distributive concerns being
o income is such an important means to
given by the choice of a parameter that
capabilities
reflects our ethical judgment
- THE CHOICE OF SPACE
 - the focal variable in terms of which inequality is to
be assessed and scrutinized
o inequality of incomes can differ
substantially from inequality in several
“spaces”, such as well-being, freedom and
different aspects of the quality of life
- a person with high income but no opportunity of
political participation is not “poor”, but is clearly
POOR IN IMPORTANT FREEDOM.
- Someone who is richer than most others but suffers
from an ailment that is very expensive to treat is
deprived, even though she would not be classified as
poor in the usual statistics of income distribution.
UNEMPLOYMENT AND CAPABILITY DEPRIVATION
- EUROPEAN CONTEXT:
o wide prevalence of unemployment in
contemporary Europe
o loss of income  be compensated by
income support
o unemployment has serious effects on the
lives of the individuals, causing deprivation
of other kinds, then the amelioration
through income support would be to that
extent limited
- Unemployment has risen dramatically in much of
Western Europe, whereas there has been no such
trend in the United States.
o American social ethics seems to find it
possible to be very non-supportive of the
indigent and the impoverished, in a way
that a typical Western European, reared in
a welfare state, finds hard to accept
o Underlying this contrast is a difference in
attitudes toward social and individual
responsibilities
HEALTH CARE AND MORTALITY: AMERICAN AND
EUROPEAN SOCIAL ATTITUDES
- RELATIVE DEPRIVATION of African
Americans: African Americans are decidedly poorer
than American whites.
o Death of black young men: prevalence of
violence
- black-white mortality differential remains
remarkably large for women even after adjustment
for income differentials
- In American official priorities, there is little
commitment to providing basic health care for all
- In Europe, where medical coverage is seen as a basic
right of the citizen irrespective of means and
independent of preexisting conditions, would very
likely be politically intolerable
POVERTY AND DEPRIVATION IN INDIA AND SUB-
SAHARAN AFRICA
- lowest levels of per capita income among all regions
- The whole of South Asia except Sri Lanka (i.e.,
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan) and
the whole of sub-Saharan Africa except South
Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Botswana, and a
collection of tiny islands (e.g., Mauritius and the
Seychelles) belong to the group of the other forty-
six low-life-expectancy countries
- survival problems that compare with conditions in
the third world
- INDIA: accounts for more than half of the combined
population of these 52 deprived countries
o large regional variations:
 India may do significantly better
on average than the worst
performers (such as Ethiopia or
Zaire, now renamed the
Democratic Republic of Congo)
in terms of life expectancy
 there are large areas within India
where life expectancy and other
basic living conditions are not
very different from those
prevailing in these most-deprived
countries
1. India
2. Rajasthan
3. Bihar
- there is no country in sub-Saharan Africa where
estimated infant mortality rates are as high as in the
DISTRICT OF GANJAM IN ORISSA
- where the adult female literacy rate is as low as in
the district of Barmer in Rajasthan
- LIFE EXPECTANCY IN INDIA: 60 years-old
- Contrast between India and Sub-Saharan Africa:
MORTALITY and NUTRITION
- MEDIAN age at death in India: 37 years-old
- the problem of premature mortality is sharper in
Africa than in India
- UNDERNOURISHMENT: higher in India (40-
60%) than in sub-Saharan Africa (self-sufficient: 20-
40%)
- Since independence, INDIA has been relatively free
of the problems of famine and also of large-scale and
persistent warfare
- many countries of SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA have
had specific experiences of economic decline—
related to wars, unrest and political disorder
- PERSISTENCE OF ENDEMIC ILLITERACY:
common to India and sub-Saharan Africa
- WOMEN are “hardier” than men and, given
symmetrical care, survive better
- low female-male ratios in countries in Asia and
North Africa indicate the influence of social
factors— lower general life expectancy and higher
fertility rate
- INDIA: the age-specific mortality rate for females
consistently exceeds that for males until the late
thirties
CONCLUDING REMARKS
- ADAM SMITH
o Father of Modern Economics
- INCOME INEQUALITY
 o effect of contributing to the neglect of other
ways of seeing inequality and equity
o policy debates
 overemphasis on income poverty
and income inequality, to the
neglect of deprivations that relate
to other variables, such as
unemployment, ill health, lack of
education, and social exclusion
- “EQUALITY AS A MORAL IDEAL” HARRY
FRANKFURT
o “ECONOMIC EGALITARIANISM,”
defining it as the doctrine that there should
be no inequalities in the distribution of
money
- INCOME inequality VS. ECONOMIC inequality
o giving a larger share of income to a person
with more needs can be seen as militating
against the principle of equalizing incomes,
but it does not go against the broader
precepts of economic equality, since the
greater need for economic resources due to
the disability must be taken into account in
judging the requirements of economic
equality
- MORTALITY DIFFERENCES can, in fact, serve as
an indicator of very deep inequities that divide races,
classes and genders, as the various illustrations in
this chapter bring out.
o the estimations of “missing women” show
the remarkable reach of female
disadvantage in many parts of the
contemporary world
- income is a homogeneous magnitude, whereas
capabilities are diverse: not entirely correct
o any income evaluation hides internal
diversities with some special—and often
heroic—assumptions
- issue of public discussion and social participation is
thus central to the making of policy in a democratic
framework
- use of democratic prerogatives—both political
liberties and civil rights—is a crucial part of the
exercise of economic policy making itself
CHAPTER 7: FAMINES AND OTHER CRISES
ENTITLEMENT AND INTERDEPENDENCE
- Hunger relates not only to food production and
agricultural expansion, but also to the functioning of
the entire economy and the operation of the political
and social arrangements that can, direct or
indirectly, influence people’s ability to acquire food
and to achieve health and nourishment.
- Influenced by the working of the entire economy and
society
o Undernourishment
o Starvation
o Famine
- The ability to acquire food has to be earned.
- ENTITLEMENT: The commodities over which she
can establish her ownership and command.
o People suffer from hunger when they
cannot establish their entitlement over an
adequate amount of food.
- INFLUENCES OF ENTITLEMENT
1. ENDOWMENT—The ownership over
productive resources as well as wealth that
commands a price in the market.
a. Significant: LABOR POWER
b. Example:
2. PRODUCTION POSSIBILITIES— Available
technology determines the production
possibilities, which are influenced by available
as well as the ability of the people to marshal
that knowledge and to make actual use of it.
a. Example:
3. EXCHANGE CONDITIONS— The ability to
sell and buy goods and the determination of
relative prices of different products.
a. Example: Staple food
- 1943 BENGAL FAMINE
o CAUSE: exchange rates between food and
the products of particular types altered
radically.
o CAUSE: Big shifts in the relative prices of
fish and food grains
o Worst-affected: BENGAL FISHERMEN
o EQUILIBRIUM OF SURVIVAL:
fishermen selling fish to buy cheaper
calories in staple food
- HAIRCUTTING (BARBERS)
o Two problems
 In situations of distress people
find it quite easy to postpone
having their haircut = demand for
the product decreases
 Sharp fall in relative price of
haircutting: during the 1943
Bengal famine (70-80%)
FAMINE CAUSATION
- The ability to acquire food in the market depends on
their earnings, the prevailing food prices and their
nonfood necessary expenditures.
o Their ability to get food depends on the
ECONOMIC CIRCUMSTANCE:
employment and wage rates for wage
laborers, production of other commodities
and their prices for craftsmen and service-
providers.
- Those who produce food themselves, their
entitlements depend on their individual food output.
- EXCHANGE DEPENDENCE OF THE
AFTRICAN PASTORALIST—having to sell
animal products to buy cheap calories from food
 o A DROUGHT can lead to a fall in the
relative price of animal products  people
shift the pattern of their consumption
against expensive products
- Famines can occur without any decline in food
production or availability.
o A laborer may reduced to starvation
through unemployment, combined with the
absence of a social security of safety nets.
o BANGLADESH FAMINE OF 1974
 Greater food availability per head
than in any other year between
1971 and 1976.
 CAUSE: unemployment caused
by floods which affected food
output many months later when
the reduced crop was harvested.
 CAUSE: the floods led to
immediate income deprivation of
rural laborers in the summer of
1974
 CAUSE: steep rise in food prices
as a result of exaggerated
expectation of future food
shortage.
- Famines survive by DIVIDE-AND-RULE
o A group of peasants may suffer entitlement
losses when food output in their territory
declines, perhaps due to a local drought.
o WOLLO FAMINE IN ETHOPIA IN 1973
 CAUSE: impoverished residents
of the province of Wollo unable to
buy food, despite the fact that food
prices in Dessie (Capital of
Wollo) were no higher than in
Addis Ababa and Asmara.
 CAUSE: food moving out of
Wollo to the more prestigious
regions of Ethiopia; where people
had more income to buy food.
- Such a famine may occur without any decline in
food output, resulting as it does from a rise in
competing demand rather than a fall in total supply.
o BENGAL IN 1943
 CAUSE: Public panic and
manipulative speculation played
its part in pushing prices sky high.
o SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
 Changing environmental and
climatic conditions occupations
gone
- LOSS OF GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT: effect in
initiating a famine
- ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
o INDIAN FAMINE OF 1344-1345
 The Moghul emperor was unable
to obtain the necessaries for his
household.
 The Tughlak emperor
MOHAMMAD BIN TUGHLAK:
no great difficulty in securing
necessaries for his household and
had enough means to organize
illustrious programs of famine
relief.
FAMINE PREVENTION
- Famines = loss of entitlements
- SOLUTION: systematically re-creating a minimum
level of incomes and entitlements for those who are
hit by economic change
- E.G.: if 10% of the total population of the country,
the share of total income going to these typical poor
people would not in normal circumstances exceed
about 3% OF THE GNP.
- Famines = diseases unleashed by debilitation,
breakdown of sanitary arrangements, population
movements and infectious spread of diseases
endemic in the region.
- SOLUTION: sensible public action involving
epidemic control and communal health
arrangements.
- SOLUTION: political arrangements for entitlement
protection
o In richer countries, protection is provided
by ANTIPOVERTY PROGRAMS and
UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE.
- 1973 IN MAHARASHTRA
o to compensate for the loss of employment
because of drought, 5 MILLION
TEMPORARY JOBS were created
o RESULT: no significant rise in mortality,
no great deterioration of the number of
undernourished people
FAMINE AND ALIENATION
- The political economy of famine causation and
prevention involves institutions and organizations,
but it depends particularly on the ALIENATION OF
THE RULES FROM THOSE RULED.
- SOCIAL OR POLITICAL DISTANCE between the
governors and the governed can play a crucial role
in the non-prevention of the famine.
- FAMINE IN IRELAND 1840
o Killing higher proportion of the population;
changed the nature of Ireland in a decisive
way.
o RESULT: level of emigration
o CAUSE: In George Bernard Shaw’s Man
and Superman, Mr. Malone said to Violet
that his father died of starvation in the black
47.
 CAUSE: STARVATION—
because there is no famine when a
country is full of food and
exporting it.
  ROLE OF HUMAN AGENCY:
if those in public authority could
have prevented them.
 ROLE OF PUBLIC POLICY
 The policy issues to be
examined concern acts
of OMISSION and
COMMISSION.
 POTATO BLIGHT
- CORMAC O GRADA—poverty of Ireland and to
the economic deprivation of the Irish victims
- TERRY EAGLETON—Irish lacked the funds to
purchase food
- FOCUS: endemic poverty, special vulnerability of
those whose entitlements are particularly fragile
when there are economic changes.
- SLUMP FAMINES—food countermovement,
overall slump in the economy which makes the
purchasing ability of the consumers go down
sharply, and the available food supply fetches better
price elsewhere.
- WOLLO FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA IN 1973
o Residents of that province were unable to
buy food, despite the fact that food prices
there were no higher—often substantially
lower—than elsewhere in the country.
- SOLUTION: positive policies would be needed;
regenerating the lost incomes of destitute, the food
countermovement could have stopped, since the
domestic purchasers could have commanded food
more affluently.
- CULTURAL ALIENATION
- JOEL MOKYR—Ireland was considered by Britain
as an alien and even hostile nation.
o Discouraged British capital investment in
Ireland.
- RICHARD NED LEBOW—Britain poverty: caused
by economic change and fluctuations, Ireland
poverty: caused by laziness, indifference, and
ineptitude.
- CHARLES EDWARD TREVELYAN—Irish habits
as part of the explanation of the famine; dependent
on POTATO.
- Cultural alienation has to be added to the lack of
political incentives.
- The sense of distance between the ruler and the
ruled—between “us” and “them”—is a crucial
feature of famines.
PRODUCTION, DIVERSIFICATION AND GROWTH
- ECONOMIC EXPANSION—reduces the need for
entitlement protection, and enhances the resources
available for providing that protection.
- PRONENESS OF FAMINE: greater when the
population is impoverished and funds are hard to
secure.
- DEVISING SENSIBLE PRICE INCENTIVES
- South Korea, Japan, Botswana and Singapore—no
growing hunger because they experience FAST
EXPANSION OF REAL INCOME PER HEAD
THROUGH OTHER MEANS (mining and
industries)
o SHARING OF THE INCREASED
INCOME—able to secure food
o They achieved high growth rates in other
areas of production
o The dependence on food output as a source
of income is much less
- SUB-SAHARAN PROBLEM: lack of economic
growth
THE EMPLOYMENT ROUTE AND THE AGENCY
ISSUE
- IMPORTANT: how the total food supply is shared
between different groups within the country
- PREVENTION: recreating lost incomes of the
potential victims (temporary creation of wage
employment), ability to compete for food in the
market, equally shared supplies
- INDIA, BOTSWANA, AND ZIMBABWE:
prevention through employment creation
- EMPLOYMENT ROUTE: encourage the processes
of trade and commerce; ACTIVE AGENTS rather
than as PASSIVE RECIPIENTS
- PUBLIC POLICY [institutional arrangements]
1. STATE SUPPORT in creating income and
employment;
2. operation of PRIVATE MARKETS for food
and labor;
3. reliance on normal COMMERCE AND
BUSINESS
- IMPORTANCE: adequate broad approach to the
prevention of famines; ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
DEMOCRACY AND FAMINE PREVENTION
- BOGUS CORRELATION: democratic political
rights and absence of famine
- BITSWANA: fall in food production of 17%
- ZIMBABWE: 38% between 1979-1981, and 1983-
1984
- SUDAN AND ETHIOPIA: 11 or 12%
- Famines in many Sub-Saharan Africa were fed by
the POLITICAL IMMUNITY enjoyed by
governmental leaders in authoritarian countries.
- PREVENTION: through regenerating the lost
purchasing power of hard-hit groups, through
various programs—creation of emergency
employment in short-term public projects
- 1973 DROUGHT IN MAHARASHTA IN INDIA
o no famine even though there were very
substantial famine in sub-Saharan Africa
- Since independence and the installation of a
multiparty democratic system, there has been no
substantial famine.
INCENTIVES, INFORMATION AND THE PREVENTION
OF FAMINES
 - DEMOCRACY: spread the penalty of famines to the
ruling groups and political leaders as well
o political incentive to try to prevent any
threatening famine
- INFORMATION: free press and democracy
contribute to bringing out information that can have
an impact on policies for famine prevention
- GREAT LEAP FORWARD IN 1950s
o Massive failure
o lack of a free system of news distribution
also misled the government itself
o the Chinese authorities mistakenly believed
that they had 100 million more metric tons
of grain than they actually did
o CHAIRMAN MAO—informational role of
democracy
 without democracy, you have no
understanding of what is
happening down below
 impossible to achieve unity of
understanding
 disastrous official policies were
caused by the lack of the
informational links
PROTECTIVE ROLE OF DEMOCRACY
- SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
o authoritarian nature
- absence of opposition and the suppression of free
newspapers gave the respective governments an
immunity from criticism and political pressure
INSENSITIVE and CALLOUS POLICIES
- nondemocratic countries have frequently
experienced unprevented famines despite much
more favorable food situations
TRANSPARENCY, SECURITY AND ASIAN ECONOMIC
CRISES
- ROLE OF DEMOCRACY: protective security
- The positive role of political and civil rights applies
to the prevention of economic and social disasters in
general.
- POLITICAL INCENTIVES provided by
democratic governance acquire great practical
significance
- Recent problems of East Asia and Southeast Asia
bring out the PENALTRY OF UNDEMOCRATIC
GOVERNANCE.
o Neglect of PROTECTIVE SECURITY
(present under scrutiny) and
TRANSPARENCY GUARANTEE
(important for the provision of security and
for incentives to economic and political
agents)
1. development of the financial crisis
linked with the lack of transparency in
business
a. lack of public participation in
reviewing financial and
business arrangements
b. INTERNATIONAL
MONETARY FUND—lack
of openness and disclosure
and the involvement of
unscrupulous business
linkages
2. once the financial crisis led to a
general ECONOMIC RECESSION,
the protective power of democracy
was badly missed
CONCLUSION
- challenge of development includes both the
elimination of persistent, endemic deprivation and
the prevention of sudden, severe destitution
- CHINA VS. INDIA
o China has been much more successful than
India in raising life expectancy and
reducing mortality
o CHINA: failure of the Great Leap Forward
o INDIA: not had a famine since
independence
- ROLE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAMINE:
o INEQUALITY
 ABSENCE OF DEMOCRACY
 ENDEMIC POVERTY
 BETWEEN PERSISTENT
DEPRIVATION AND SUDDEN
DESTITUTION
- The connection is both CONSTITUTIVE and
INSTRUMENTAL.
1. Protection against starvation, epidemics, and
severe and sudden deprivation.
2. The process of preventing famines and other
crises is significantly helped by the use of
instrumental freedoms, such as the opportunity
of open discussion, public scrutiny, electoral
politics, and uncensored media.