An Application of Sen's Capability Approach to the Poverty in East and Southeast Asian Countries.

这项研究的主要目的是将阿玛蒂亚·森的能力方法应用于东亚和东南亚国家的贫困和收入不平等问题。1990年代，发展中国家经济发展政策的重点转向扶贫政策。然而，扶贫政策在减少贫困方面并不成功。一个原因是，这些政策或含蓄地或明确地采用收入法，即根据收入水平来衡量贫穷。一般来说，收入等单一衡量标准不适合衡量贫困等多维现象。贫困应该用多维的幸福指标来衡量，如由功能向量组成的“能力”。虽然能力法长期以来一直被认为可以突破收入法的困难，但由于操作上的困难，它并没有被广泛应用于贫困的实际问题。在本研究中，CA…更多的可能性方法被应用到越南、老挝、中国等国家的贫困和收入不平等的案例研究中。对现有扶贫政策的评价表明，收入法的低效是由于收入作为贫穷的衡量标准的间接性造成的。相反，作为直接衡量人民福祉的能力，可以作为直接的政策目标，而不是武断的，允许生活方式的多样性。选择功能的困难通常被认为是能力方法的不足，当它应用于一个社区的特定案例研究时，选择功能并不是那么困难，因为在这个社区中，许多没有争议的功能可以被忽略。研究成果发表在期刊和出版物上，并在国际会议上发表，例如2001年和2002年在剑桥大学举行的能力方法会议。这项研究的想法也反映在对老挝政府的政策建议中。实际上，它也被应用于越南一项灌溉工程影响人群的基线调查中。较少

The main purpose of this research is to apply Amartya Sen's capability approach to the poverty and income inequality in East and Southeast Asian countries. In the 1990s the focus of economic development policies in the developing countries was shifted to the poverty alleviation policies. However, the poverty alleviation policies were not successful in reducing poverty. A reason is that these policies adopted implicitly or explicitly the income approach in which poverty is measured in terms of income level. In general, a single measure such as Income is not suitable to measure a multi-dimensional phenomenon such as poverty. Poverty should be measured by multi-dimensional indicator of well-being such as "capability" which is composed of vectors of functionings. Though the capability approach has long been expected to break through the difficulty of the income approach, it was not widely applied to the actual problems of poverty due to the difficulty to operationalize.In this study the ca … More pability approach was applied to the case studies of poverty and income inequality in Vietnam, Laos, China and so on. The evaluation of the existing poverty alleviation policies revealed that the inefficiency of the income approach was brought about by the indirectness of income as a measure of poverty. To the contrary, the capability, which is a direct measurement of well-being of people, can be used as a direct policy target without arbitrariness, allowing for the diversity in the way of life. The difficulty of selecting functionings, which is often argued as a deficiency of the capability approach, is not so difficult when it is applied to a certain case study of a community where many uncontested functionings can be neglected.The research results were published in journals and publications and presented at international conferences such as the conferences on the capability approach held at University of Cambridge in 2001 and 2002. The idea of this research is also reflected in the policy recommendations for the government of Laos. Practically it is also applied in the baseline survey for the people affected by an irrigation project in Vietnam. Less