Poverty as Capability Deprivation: Conceptualising and measuring poverty in contemporary Europe

Poverty analysis is in the midst of a multidimensional turn due, in part, to the growing awareness of the limitations of relative income measures of poverty. In this paper, we argue that the conceptualisation of poverty remains a neglected aspect of this multidimensional turn to date, and demonstrate that the counter-intuitive results which flow from relative income analyses are not problems of measurement, but are entirely consistent with the conceptualisation of poverty under Peter Townsend s dominant Poverty as Relative Deprivation framework. In response to these problems we articulate an alternative framework, Poverty as Capability Deprivation, drawing on Amartya Sen s capability approach, and argue that this provides more persuasive explanations for why some nations have greater poverty than others and why poverty remains a problem even in the richest nations.