A Conceptual Analysis of Poverty

Abstract

This Thesis employs the traditional philosophical method of conceptual analysis to look at the concept of poverty, employing H.L.A. Hart’s meta-evaluative approach to that method, as described by W.J. Waluchow. Our common understanding of poverty is that it merely denotes a lack of financial resources, but if one digs deeper into how we actually think about poverty and our practices with regard to the concept, we see that the meaning of that concept is not only about a lack of resources, but about how that deprivation affects us: the vulnerabilities created and the negative effects upon one’s capabilities to meet their basic needs. Those basic needs refer not only to subsistence level goods like food and shelter, but as Amartya Sen argues, one must also have the capability to avoid the shame associated with an inability to afford the goods that one is generally expected to have the ability to obtain in order to be considered free from poverty. Thinking about poverty in terms of capabilities thereby resolves the dichotomy between absolute and relative conceptions of poverty, as well as many of the counterfactuals deployed against the relative conceptions of poverty that are commonly found in affluent societies. The relationship between poverty and shame is also supported by empirical studies of the shame experienced by poor persons in disparate contexts. Poverty is also a moral concept that includes a moral call to action, and we require moral reasoning in order to decide which basic needs one must be able to meet to be considered free of poverty. After first advocating for a non-moral conceptual framework for poverty, I therefore also address three closely-related moral concepts, human rights, equality, and freedom, that variously constitute and inform the concept of poverty, and assist us with our moral reasoning in that regard.