Poverty as capability deprivation: Considering the relational approach,group-based analysis,and socio-structural lens

Abstract

Amartya Sen has argued that poverty means much more than lacking income: it means that a person falls short of securing a basic level of capabilities. His main justification for this claim is that we need to look at what is important in a person's life (what a person's actual functionings are, and what alternative outcomes could be achieved), rather than just at what a person has. In this article, I argue that, although Sen's conceptualisation expands our understanding of poverty, it can limit us when evaluating what is wrong with poverty. Conceptualising poverty in a diverse and unequal society rather requires a broader perspective, one capable of including an explicitly relational approach, group-based analysis, and a socio-structural lens. Otherwise, we miss the fundamental role played by systematic oppression in the context of poverty. In developing these ideas, my aim is to update the picture of poverty as capability deprivation.

Thick

as an apple is thick.

As an apple

is much thicker

if a man eats it

than if a man sees it.

As it is even thicker

if hunger eats it.

As it is thicker still

if it can’t eat it

the hunger that sees it ¹

João Cabral de Melo Neto

(translation by the author, 1994: 103)

Despite the general claim that poverty is a morally bad thing that citizens and governments need to address, there is a conceptual disagreement about what actually constitutes a state of poverty. The unidimensional account defines poverty as inadequate income to meet one's needs, and the multidimensional account understands poverty as a ‘cluster’ of deprivations (in Wolff and De-Shalit's words, 2007), which sees lack of income as only a part of what prevents a person from meeting her needs.

Bearing this in mind, Amartya Sen (1992, 2006) points out that poverty is not only about a lack of income (which sometimes is also referred to as consumption incapacity) but rather a condition in which a person is considered incapable of achieving, by herself, a basic level of capability. Conceptually, he acknowledges that poverty is a ‘failure of certain basic capabilities’ ² (Sen, 2006, p. 34). This is based on what a person's actual functionings are (e.g. being nourished and healthy), and what alternative set of outcomes could be achieved (e.g. a person's freedom to function).

According to Sen, the capability approach (CA from now on) to poverty gives us a more accurate picture of a person's level of deprivation than simply saying that being poor means having too little money (Sen, 1983, p. 168; 1985, p. 670). This is due to three important elements: the multidimensional perspective of poverty, the individual as the unit of analysis and the consideration of conversion factors, meaning the process by which a person can make use of the resources and assets at her disposal. Sen's approach has become a new way of measuring and guiding policy-making processes around the world. For example, the Multidimensional Poverty Index, part of the Human Development Report, has the CA as its normative foundation and uses a threshold to identify who is experiencing poverty along multiple axes, for example, living standards, health and education ³ (Alkire & Santos, 2014; Alkire, 2002). Therefore, Sen's conceptualisation moves the debate from a unidimensional understanding of poverty to a multidimensional one, which aims to grasp the specific and plural sources of deprivations that affect individuals’ well-being.

Drawing on Daniel Putnam's work, we can acknowledge that Sen's move also has a couple of methodological implications. First, as the CA has been used to identify who is experiencing poverty, it brings about the notion that its descriptive dimension (what it is) cannot be entirely separate from the normative (what is wrong with it; and what should we do about it). For instance, to be identified as experiencing poverty one needs to be assessed as being in a state of deprivation (e.g. lacking something important for a decent level of well-being). Second, it also acknowledges that the sources of different conceptualisations of poverty are connected to the existence of different moral standards of disadvantages (2020, pp. 41–44). Then, the CA directly connects its notions of poverty with moral reasons to readdress it.

Although I agree that Sen expands our idea of what poverty is by integrating a broader descriptive account of deprivation, and normative concerns about those experiencing poverty, I argue here that his conceptualisation omits three important elements. First, he does not engage enough with the relational approach of poverty. Second, the CA brings about a normative concern for the individual as the unit of analysis, excluding group dynamics. Third, and relatedly, it establishes the analysis at the microlevel, which focuses on means and conditions that directly prevent a person from escaping deprivation, but overlooks the macrolevel, related to social structures, which is a holistic way to explain the origins of deprivation (e.g. unfair basic institutions, social norms and habits).

In this sense, while I agree with Sen that we have reasons to be concerned by conversion factors, an individual's lack of certain basic capabilities and multidimensional sources of deprivation, his approach may lead us to a restrictive normative perspective of poverty. This narrow conceptualisation may, in turn, overlook or exclude necessary features, such as those that involve the dynamics and interactions between different groups, which are embedded in oppressive systems. In developing those elements, I will gradually expand upon the picture of poverty as a capability deprivation, which should encompass a relational approach, a group-based analysis and social-structural lens. This should be in accordance with Sen's own understanding of poverty.

This article advances novel contributions for understanding poverty by suggesting an expanded framework for the CA to poverty, and by looking at the constitutive role of oppressive relations in the experience of poverty, using a group-based analysis as well as unpacking its macro scope. Section one is devoted to exploring the conceptualisation of poverty as a capability deprivation. Sections two, three and four challenge the existing CA. The last section will consider some objections to the expanded conceptualisation of poverty as a capability deprivation I defend in this article, and directly respond to them.

Poverty as capability deprivation: A brief overview

To understand what poverty is, we must delineate the fundamental conditions of what a person should be able to access to have a decent life (Putnam, 2020). In general, poverty is conceptualised as an insufficiency, and, in particular, it has been defined in terms of income: that is, by standards that focus on the biological and/or material factors that would allow a person to live a decent life (US Census Bureau, 2017). Amartya Sen famously argues that income thresholds cannot fully explain the moral and political harm of poverty. By this, he means that we should look at what a person can do and be (i.e. her actual functionings), and what alternatives (i.e. opportunities and freedoms) she is able to achieve with the resources available to her (Hick & Burchardt, 2017, p. 2; Sen, 1992, Ch. 4). Poverty is, according to this account, framed by an understanding of a person's lack of certain capabilities, which are made visible by a low level of well-being, resulting from a lack of sufficient income, valuable social relations and an inability to avoid and escape from poverty.

As outlined in the introduction to this article, Sen's account sees poverty as much more than a mere lack of income (Sen, 1983, p. 168; 1985, p. 670). As we have likewise already recognised, Sen's conceptualisation of the CA is predicated on three central elements: the individual as the unit of analysis, multidimensionality, and accounting for conversion factors (Brando & Pitasse Fragoso, 2020; Sen, 2006). The first element is devoted to identifying the combinations of basic functionings and capabilities that a person should have access to in order to avoid poverty. It places a significant normative weight on the individual, which, according to Robeyns, would limit the analysis of social structures, institutions and groups only to their role in fostering or hindering individual capabilities (2005, p. 107).

The second highlights that poverty is not only about income, but also plural sources of deprivation, for instance, related to health, literacy, or having access to shelter. What exactly ‘basic capabilities of being and doing’ are is an ongoing debate. So far, Sen has not provided a specific list, delegating such tasks to those actually living in the contexts in question, through a collaborative and deliberative process (Sen, 2006, p. 35). Martha Nussbaum, the most important capability theorist alongside Sen, on the other hand, presents a detailed list of capabilities to which everyone should have access to live a decent life (Nussbaum, 2000, p. 84). I am more sympathetic to Sen’s approach because I believe that a list of capabilities should be drawn up democratically involving those directly concerned: they have a deep understanding of their social perspectives, so they can reflect on their actual circumstances in ways that would be informative for experts’ own biased perspective and empowering for these individuals and communities who get a say over what is important for their lives.

The third element considers what a person can do and be with the set of resources at her disposal. This takes into account the fact that there is a range of variations in individuals’ capacities to make use of opportunities and resources available to them. These are the internal conversion factors, which refer to the fact that people have different needs and abilities to convert resources into well-being. Sen highlights that the connection between having a decent level of income and achieving a basic level of capability will also vary according to the different contexts and environments to which people are attached. These are the external conversion factors, which include political conditions, social norms, and geographical location (Sen, 1992, p. 88).

All three elements are connected and constitute necessary elements for the conceptualisation of poverty: conversion factors require individual-based analysis and the idea of multidimensional sources of deprivation in order to identify the poor and the nature of that poverty. Consider, for instance, the difference in terms of well-being achievements between a child and an adult living in poverty. Children are deprived of decent clothing, nutrition, housing, education, health, care and love; a lack of household income is not necessarily responsible for their deprivation of well-being. In this sense, a child's needs go far beyond the basic standard of living provided by an adult's measurement, and Sen's approach highlights this complexity (Narayan et al., 2000; Wolff & De-Shalit, 2007).

Furthermore, these three elements imply a more robust measure of poverty; one able to reflect the level of a person's well-being. Poverty as a basic capability deprivation has been operationalised by the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which is a paradigmatic example of measurement based on the CA. This international index, designed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, aims at delimiting an absolute threshold of well-being to define who is poor along the axes of education, health and standards of living. These dimensions are divided into ten indicators that have equal weight within the respective dimensions, making three dimensions count for a third each: two indicators for education (years of schooling and school attendance), two for health (nutrition and child mortality rates), and six for the standard of living (cooking fuel, sanitation, water, electricity, floor and assets). The MPI is a measure that reflects the percentage of the population who are poor and identifies the intensity of deprivation experienced by those living in poverty (Alkire & Sumner, 2013, p. 2). According to the MPI, a person is considered poor if she has a cumulative low level of education, health and standard of living which positions her below the poverty threshold (Alkire et al., 2015, pp. 3–8). This means that reaching a threshold level of basic capability is necessary for avoiding poverty.

However, stated in this way, Sen's approach only provides us with a partial understanding of poverty. Although his conceptualisation of poverty expands upon the way we identify the poor by focusing on the need for multidimensionality, individual assessment, and accounting for conversion factors, it undermines the relational approach, the intrinsic significance of group-based deprivation and social structures as a necessary lens. In the following sections, I will explain his approach via the three elements highlighted in this section and explore how these should be adapted.

The first challenge: Building the connection between basic capabilities and the relational approach

Sen's understanding of poverty brings about intrapersonal evaluations of one's state of affairs based on multidimensional sources of deprivation. ⁴ In the last section, I argued that although we can recognise that this conceptualisation is an achievement in terms of scholarship and real-world measurement, it can be challenged as lacking an explicitly relational approach to public policy design (Deneulin & McGregor, 2010; Deveaux, 2021). In this section, I will claim that poverty as capability deprivation cannot sufficiently describe the role played by relational inequalities that are features of extreme deprivation.

Many authors have argued that Sen's account of capabilities is relational (Deneulin, 2008; Owens et al., 2022), while other authors have argued that it should be more explicit about the relational dimensions, especially when it comes to the measurement and understanding of poverty (Brando and Pitasse Fragoso, 2020; Deveaux, 2021; Putnam, 2020; Wolff, 2020). I will build on the proposals by Deveaux, Brando and Pitasse Fragoso, and Putman and Wolff, that Sen's understanding of poverty should go beyond a causal explanation of the relational inequalities in the context of poverty. As Deveaux highlights, poverty can be ‘the outcome of relations of inequality and subordinations’ (Deveaux, 2021, p. 108) and ‘inequalities of power, status, and political voice are themselves both a cause and a feature of poverty’ (Deveaux, 2018, p. 229). Such inequalities occur against the backdrop of intergroup relations, such as when a group has some negative stereotypes and a diminished status in relation to another due to forms of oppression regarding their cultural or social identification (Putnam, 2020; Wolff, 2020; Young, 1990).

A question that arises in this context is: what kinds of relational inequalities that affect groups’ interactions give rise to poverty? There are two main ways to reply to this question. One is Sen's claim that unjust relations might be based on class hierarchies that negatively affect a person's level of functioning and capabilities, as subjects might feel ashamed or lack self-respect. Sen (1983, p. 162) relies on Adam Smith's example of the linen shirt to make the point that a lack of certain resources is conditioned by the comparative value of these goods. According to Smith, ‘[a] linen shirt is strictly speaking not a necessity of life … But in the present time … a credible day labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt’ (Smith 1976 (1776), p. 691). This is used to explain the idea that there is, in any society, a hierarchical system of class status set by the social norms of that society. If a person does not have access to certain resources, she will be ashamed to act in society, which will directly intensify her deprivation and decrease her ability to participate in society. Consider the need for a mobile phone as a contemporary example: a mobile phone is valuable as a competitive good, but also necessary for establishing and maintaining social relations. Here, the key element is a positional good conditioned by the comparative value of such a good, where any inequality in access to it will intensify disadvantages throughout a person's life: not having one of the latest mobile phone models, or a well-known mobile phone brand, may cause, in teenagers and young adults, feelings of shame and affect the way a person interacts with others (Brighouse & Swift, 2006; Wolff, 2020).

When a person has fewer positional goods relative to others, not only does she lack the means to satisfy her basic needs of being nourished and healthy, but she also lacks the means to be recognised properly by herself and others as a person in society. This, then, ought to be considered an element of poverty, insofar as it affects how a person sees herself (feeling inadequate and disempowered in public spheres), and how others see her (being looked down upon by them), which has a particularly negative effect on her ability to do and be what matters to her in a given society (Honneth & Fraser 2003, 135–159). Furthermore, the lack of certain positional goods, among other things, is the condition that leads a person to be unable to nurture social relationships that are important to her (Putnam, 2020; Sen, 2009; Wolff, 2020). The lack of the latest mobile phone may threaten relations with friends, family, and neighbours, thereby reducing a person's level of basic capabilities.

Although Sen does not provide a complete list of basic capabilities, leaving us with only an idea of what they might be, he points to some relational components affecting interaction between individuals that are context-dependent. For instance, ‘having self-esteem in public’ or ‘being able to achieve self-esteem in public’ are positive relational functionings and capabilities, opposed to the negative relational functionings and capabilities of ‘not having self-esteem in public’ or ‘being unable to appear in public without shame’ (Sen, 1983, p. 168; Wolff & De-Shalit 2007, p. 10). Thus, we can say that Sen's capabilitarian understanding of deprivation acknowledges that there is a link of causality between having less social standing than others and a person's ability to achieve a basic level of capability (e.g. being nourished, being healthy; Sen, 1999, p. 88). Relatedly, Nussbaum argues for considering the dignity of people living in deprivation within the framework of a theory of justice, which requires poverty studies to consider how relational inequalities constrain one's ability to live a flourishing life. Nussbaum includes in her list the capability of affiliation, which means the ability to form and take advantage of integration and social relations (Nussbaum, 2000, pp. 78–80). In Nussbaum's approach, the capability of affiliation (even if under-described) is a constitutive element of having a flourishing life (2000, pp. 79–80). Therefore, poverty may result from larger relational inequalities or not enough achievement related to a constituted capability.

Another way to identify which kinds of relational inequalities are linked to poverty is through the relational approach. In this approach, social relations are at the centre of the analysis and are viewed as a constitutive component of poverty with an intrinsic significance. This means that being poor is often a symptom of lacking valuable relations (e.g. social capital) or being trapped in oppressive relations because of insidious stereotypes rooted in the systems of society, which threaten groups’ abilities to interact with each other as equals (Putnam, 2020, p. 12). For centuries, the poor have been represented and considered to be second-class citizens by privileged groups – in Simmel's terms, they have been considered as ‘nothing but poor’ ⁵ (Simmel, 1908 (1965)).

From this vantage point, there are at least two forms of oppressive intergroup relations which are constitutive components of poverty: first, when a person (or group) has an invisible role in public spaces. Included in this group are low-wage workers, cleaners, the unemployed, and homeless people. Second, when a poor person (or group) is noticed by others but is placed in an inferior position within the society's social, economic and political structures. In this case, the individual (or group) is not positioned as she should be, because she carries the negative social stigma that follows joblessness, alleged laziness, and criminality (Anderson, 2010, p. 98; Mosse, 2010, pp. 1157–1158).

More precisely, drawing on Jiwei Ci's work, these cases bring about two negative meanings. First, being poor carries a ‘negative social meaning’ (Ci, 2010, p. 112), stemming from interactions between certain disadvantaged groups and other groups as well as disadvantaged groups and social institutions. This phenomenon should be understood as an unjust, oppressive label attached to those living at disadvantages which places the responsibility on such groups for their own condition and justifies the privilege of other groups controlling society's resources. Second, being disadvantaged also carries a ‘negative political meaning’ (Ci, 2010, p. 113). This occurs in the way the disadvantaged are often misrepresented in our society, considered to be part of a group that is less valuable than others, and hence occupying an inferior social and political position. They are those who are systematically regarded as dependent on others to escape deprivation, at times viewed even as parasites. They lack the political status necessary either to be seen as equals or to advance their interests in society (Young, 1990). This political misrepresentation affects those living in poverty and shapes the ways non-poor people interact with them: they do not properly hear them or take their genuine interests into account (Fourie, 2015). Such a picture, contributing to a negative perception in our societies, ⁶ is still common in the public sphere and explains the insistence of certain oppressor groups that the disadvantaged group does not deserve equal treatment. However, such treatment does not correspond to what they are in and of themselves: human beings and full members of society, with the same rights, voices, and needs as that of the members belonging to oppressor groups.

Therefore, we can say that poverty is a basic capability deprivation that encompasses negative perceptions and inferior positions, which may create or intensify an individual's or group's deprivation. Indeed, relational inequalities between poor and non-poor groups should be taken into account not only as having a causal link to low degrees of well-being but also because of their constitutive role when conceptualising poverty. In this sense, as I see it, poverty is not solely a lack of basic individual capabilities such as being healthy, educated and nourished, but also often entails and follows from being in a group that is trapped in oppressive relations, which determines how they are seen and treated, and consequently, how they can access social relations and resources.

The second challenge: Going beyond the individual as the unit of analysis

Sen does not think that ‘all social phenomena are to be explained wholly and exclusively in terms of individualism’, but he nevertheless argues that the main unit of our moral concern is the individual (Ibrahim, 2020, p. 207; Sen, 2009, p. 244). This is called ‘ethical individualism’ in the literature, and it places individual subjects at the centre of well-being evaluation. However, this approach has been challenged for not recognising the intrinsic significance of groups. ⁷ Drawing on this criticism, and complementary to Sen's approach, I will argue in this section that a conceptualisation of poverty also requires a group-based analysis.

At first glance, we understand poverty as a person's lack of certain basic capabilities, which places fundamental opportunities and resources to achieve a decent level of well-being outside the reach of some individuals. But there is a second way in which we can understand the deprivation that restricts a person's basic capacities, which is not linked to her socioeconomic needs, but rather to groups’ traits, representation or identification that reinforce patterns of interaction and negative stigmas and stereotypes. Recent datasets show that poverty is spread unequally within society and that it is compounded by instances of intersecting oppression.

In Brazil, according to the 2016 IBGE data, among those identified as poor, 78.5% are Black while only 20.8% are white. Along the same lines, the average income of Black workers in the formal sector (an average of R$1287.55 or $260.39) is 42% lower than that of white workers in that same sector (R$1823.39 or $368.75). Furthermore, women's access to cash labour income is systemically lower than men's. White women receive on average 20.5% less than white men, while for Black women the average income is equivalent to 44% of the salaries of white men (IBGE, 2017; UN, 2015). Finally, surveys carried out by II VIGISAN between November 2021 and April 2022 found that one in five families headed by a Black person is experiencing hunger (20.6%), which is double the number of households headed by a white person experiencing the same (10.6%). When considering the gender dimension, 22% of households headed by a Black woman go hungry, which is higher compared to households headed by a white woman, 13.5% (VIGISAN, 2023).

These numbers show clearly how poverty directly correlates to oppression and how membership in more than one oppressed group implicates a significantly inflated risk of poverty. They also show that Black women, who in Brazil belong to two distinct minority groups, are more likely to experience poverty and endure more deprivation than someone who belongs to only one minority group – say a white woman. ⁸ Indeed, they demonstrate how in the real world race and gender intersect to render people especially vulnerable to poverty (Crenshaw, 1989).

With that in mind, Deveaux argues that Sen's understanding of poverty ‘cannot easily show poverty patterns afflicting particular groups, classes, and castes; the lack of a group focus is often seen as contributing to poverty's depoliticization’ (Deveaux, 2021, p. 99). This has two implications. First of all, members of poor communities have a particular knowledge of their needs and struggles. ⁹ Second, their organisation into grassroots groups and movements can foster their own collective capability to resist (nurturing identification and social ties) and mitigate their deprivation (nurturing communication and affiliation). For instance, such groups’ organisations can exert pressure on institutions and the government to reform society and change the way society looks at them (Deveaux, 2021, p. 148).

Put simply, the lack of attention towards group dynamics within the CA overlooks patterns of poverty within certain groups and, most importantly, tends to lead to depoliticisation, which means that it does not consider the vital role that poor communities can play in resisting and transforming their deprivations. It also ignores the fact that poverty is co-constituted and reproduced by political structures such as social norms and historical processes. The rationale in Deveaux's argument is related to the fact that Sen does not highlight that poverty is directly connected with systems of oppression that affect social relations, family organisations, social norms and basic institutions. This point is central for Ibrahim as well, who argues that there is a ‘crucial role of collective action and group formation’ in poverty elimination for two main reasons. First, new types of capabilities are generated by being a member of a group (e.g. social affiliation and collective action); and second, groups have an intrinsic role in the formation of a person's values and choices (2006, p. 397; 2020, p. 215).

I agree with Deveaux and Ibrahim that one of the implications of Sen's ethical individualistic approach to poverty is not to recognise the importance of local communities’ knowledge and understanding of their deprivation when diagnosing what is wrong with poverty, and their resistance to guiding transformative public policies. In addition to their criticism, I argue that there are practical limitations to the use of the ethical individualism approach to poverty, as it tends to neglect non-Western groups’ social constitution and consequently their claims and social perspectives. Consider the case of non-Western groups living in a situation of poverty, who do not see themselves as individuals, but as a collective: the indigenous tribe Mybá-Guarani from Paraty (a city located on the green coast of Rio de Janeiro), who have bonds with the landscape, flora and fauna, rocks, plants and their ancestors, and whose way of living is organised by a system of common access to resources and social relations. This is also the case with the traditional population ‘Quilombo de Linharinho’, descendants of fugitive enslaved communities living in the poor rural municipality of Conceição da Barra in Espírito Santo. They have maintained cultural and religious traditions and see themselves as a community, not as individuals per se. Consequently, their demands for socio-political change are related to collective engagement and organisation (Krenak, 2023; Silva, 2013).

It seems plausible to say that there is a set of functionings that are achievable through group interaction, formation and action, and such set of functionings is identified by certain groups as being a ‘collective subject’ (in Krenak's terms, 2023) with intrinsic significance, regardless of its importance to achieve functioning (Ibrahim, 2020, pp. 213–214). Of course, a group-based view does not need to replace or deny the individual analysis of poverty, which is necessary for identifying who is living in deprivation inside a family, a specific group and/or a population. But, as we have seen, we need to acknowledge that groups cannot simply be broken down into their individual members and that we need to view poverty via a broader stratum of society.

Therefore, we need to be able to conceptualise poverty based on what has been collectively perpetuated in such a way that creates and intensifies a group’s deprivation (Garza-Vázquez, 2021). First, it is important to acknowledge that poverty disproportionally affects certain groups, such as Black women. This is caused by certain representations and identifications that follow groups’ interactions. Gender or race, for instance, are fundamental determinants of the deprived position in which a person finds herself. Second, it is necessary to recognise the existence of non-Western organisations in which the group is the unit of social understanding and action. This leads me to explore the third challenge of Sen's conceptualisation of poverty: the need for the inclusion of a socio-structural lens.

The third challenge: Recognising the role of the socio-structural lens

As we saw in the first section, one of Sen's central contributions towards understanding of poverty is directly related to the role of conversion factors. This is to say that poverty requires looking not only at what a person has, but most importantly, at her capacity to translate these resources and opportunities at her disposal into actual functionings. Such an analysis takes into account internal (e.g. personal needs, abilities and agency) and external factors (e.g. environmental and contextual dimensions). Conversion factors, then, are instrumental for achieving well-being and highlight the need to consider who the person is, what she can do and be, and the context in which she is living.

Sen's approach to poverty, therefore, attributes the role of constraining a person's life to social structures. He does this in two ways. First, by the acknowledgement that they are factors which directly influence the current conversion of resources and opportunities into functioning, which is related to what the person has achieved, and second, by considering that social structures also constrain the person's set of choices, which is related to what she can do and be in society in terms of capabilities (Robeyns, 2017; Sen, 2009). What this means is that, for an individual to be considered poor, she must be in a state of deprivation in which she lacks the fundamental internal or external conversion factors required to lead a minimally decent life, such as being unhealthy, undernourished and illiterate combined with a lack of certain capabilities to escape from poverty.

For some scholars, such as Deneulin (2008), Sen fails to recognise the crucial role of socio-historical structures. By ‘socio-historical structures’ Deneulin means the macro-sources of deprivation that endure over time (e.g. past and present basic institutions that shaped how society is organised) and systematically affect certain groups. To Deneulin, socio-historical structures should not be understood as means for the achievement of functionings or capabilities, but rather as past and present conditions that generate the everyday actions that foster people's lives, values, and choices which enable negative representations and stigmas of the poor and disrupt inclusive processes of decision-making in society (2008, p. 115). Put simply, to Deneulin, Sen's approach lacks the information necessary for grasping the sources of poverty (e.g. what set of rules and decisions systematically are leading poor people in deprivation) because it does not consider in a specific way that certain social structures exist and persist historically, throughout community's organisation, institutions, moral systems, languages and culture that shape people's lives (2008, p. 111).

Furthermore, Sen's perspective of social structures not only leads to information loss but is also restricted to a normative diagnosis of why poverty is wrong. By using the conversion factors, Sen ends up focusing on the mere symptoms of poverty, not on the unfair feature of what is at stake: capability deprivations that may intersect with racial, colonial, ethnic and patriarchal systems of oppression (Crenshaw, 1989). And when systems of oppression intersect with a lack of basic capabilities, they should count toward a diagnosis of why poverty is wrong.

In this sense, Iris Young understands social structures as ‘[the] accumulated outcomes of the actions of the masses of individuals, enacting their own projects, often uncoordinated with many others’ (Young, 2011, p. 62). Although not always an injustice, social structures have been used to prevent certain groups from actively advancing their needs, thoughts, and feelings (1990, 2011), as well as directly and indirectly affecting how a person is deprived in society. At the very least, a structural approach to poverty tries to evaluate in which position, within a hierarchical order, groups are allocated and by which script their bodies are constrained (Nuti, 2019; Young, 2011). Indeed, the structural approach recognises that poverty is an enduring result of accumulated decisions made by powerful groups that determine the conditions for accessing resources, and what the poor can achieve in society. That is to say that its attention is on macro-scale processes that produce and reproduce poverty, which include group divisions, imbalances of power and social relations.

For Young, Sen's notion of poverty is limited, because he sees social structures as only one aspect of poverty rather than as ‘the whole explanation’ (in her terms) (Young, 2011, p. 147; Sen, 1992). Consequently, Sen's approaches can lead to mainstream public policies (e.g. cash or voucher transfers), but to Young, this would not be enough to change the social structures in society (e.g. unfair basic institutions, social norms and habits) (Young, 2011, p. 148). This is because basic institutions would continue to exist, which are part of the mainstream project made by powerful groups that create and reproduce systems of oppression between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged groups. According to Young, the first step in our work towards conceptualising and talking about poverty should be focused on exposing that ‘some powerful agents have interest in the status quo’ and acknowledging that our basic institutions should be transformed (Young, 2011, p. 149). Or, as Garza-Vásquez writes, mainstream policies for reducing poverty ‘risks becoming simply a matter of restoring what the person is lacking (income, access to education, health, participation), while leaving the underlying injustice-generating social processes out of the scope of political action’ (2021, p. 19).

Yet, at this point, one can object to this analysis and say that the social conversion factors presented by Sen may be thought to do similar work as looking at the structural scope (Culp, 2020; Robeyns, 2017). I believe, however, that Sen's conversion factors concentrate their analysis on the levels of a person's achievement of well-being rather than on oppressive costs that some groups face to achieve any level of well-being. For instance, it will not matter for a capabilitarian analysis whether a woman has to be more educated than a man when applying for a job (or that a non-white woman needs to be more educated than a white woman) if the person indeed has the higher education and hence an equal chance of being employed. However, this does not capture the oppressive features of the process of having to have a higher education for the same job. At the very least, the mainstream capabilitarian analysis does not grasp issues of how specific structures affect conversion factors (being a woman in a patriarchal society, or other salient social categories which can lead to real-world complexities).

In my view, the social-structural approach is necessary for our understanding of poverty and for identifying the origins, sources and ways poverty shapes and constrains people's lives. Within a socio-structural approach to poverty, we are able to claim that the deprivation of the poor is rarely the result of inadequate conversion factors: rather, it comes from a structuring process – a violent historical past, unjust social norms, international trade, economic recession – which affects groups and their very capacity to survive (Deveaux, 2018; Mosse, 2010; Pitasse Fragoso & Lemay, 2023; Wolff, 2020). This requires not only looking at what the means for a person to achieve functionings and capabilities are, but questioning what kinds of organisation, social norms, rules, and basic institutions disadvantage certain beings over time.

Risks of reframing the conceptualisation of poverty through a broader approach

Some would take the view that adding a relational approach, group-based analysis and social-structural lens to the conceptualisation of poverty as a capability deprivation risks ‘overextending’ its understanding by bringing poverty closer to the idea of inequality (Wolff et al., 2015, p. 25). The first reply to this criticism is to say that the risk of using the term too strictly is higher than that of using it too broadly. Understanding poverty via a too-specific account entails that certain groups living in deprivation may struggle to gain recognition and lay claims to their rights. A broader approach to poverty will help the capabilitarian view to expand and be able to guide public policies to address deprivation due to systems of oppression, which are very often repetitive and historical.

Some may argue that Sen's approach already captures the relational approach, group-based analysis, and social-structural lens (Putnam, 2020). Obviously, Sen does acknowledge the need to consider them, as they are instrumental for a person to achieve well-being. However, what I have tried to argue here is that we have abundant reasons to consider social relations as having more than an instrumental significance, while the group-based analysis reflects diversity, and the social-structural lens provides a necessary perspective to understand the origins of poverty. This changes the picture painted by Sen, as unpacking important constitutive normative elements of poverty that cannot be subsumed to multidimensionality, individual analysis, and to conversion factor levels.

Conclusion

In this article, I have argued that the CA to poverty, which has a multidimensional focus, views the individual as the unit of analysis, and makes use of conversion factors, has nevertheless a limited normative scope of evaluation. I have argued that these three elements need to be further developed to reflect the relational approach to poverty, the role of group-based analyses and social structures in generating poverty. This should help us avoid one of the pitfalls of the current conceptualisation of poverty as a basic capability deprivation, which overlooks systems of oppression that lock a person or group into poverty and undermines their coping mechanisms.

If this line of reasoning is correct, we can say that poverty means a lack of basic capabilities originating directly or indirectly from long-standing structures of oppression due to past events, social norms and cultural attitudes which constrain when, where and how a person or group can access resources and valuable relations in society. Morally, this highlights that fully realising one's beings and doings depends on the conditions underlying society which orient how relations are made, and power is distributed. In practice, this should encourage public policies not only to focus on the superficial symptoms of poverty but to change unfair basic institutions, social norms and habits, which constitute fences that must be addressed if we are to sustainably reduce levels of deprivation in society. This is especially relevant for minority groups living in poverty, whose socially inferior positions are very prominent and who suffer from intersecting injustices.