The Capability Approach: Mapping Measurement Issues and Choosing Dimensions

In their opening chapter of Poverty and Inequality, David Grusky and Ravi Kanbur observe that “there is growing consensus among academic, policy makers, and even politicians” that attention to multidimensional poverty and inequality should not be treated as soft social issues that can be “subordinated to more important and fundamental interested in maximizing total economic output.” While the authors view this “newfound concern with poverty and inequality” positively, they observe that it creates a set of conceptual questions that are really quite pressing. One such question is how to define the dimensions of concern. They argue that this question merits active attention because “economists have not reached consensus on the dimensions that matter, nor even on how they might decide what matters.”