Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Poverty, inclusivity and wellbeing'

Although economic growth has brought significant improvements in the standard of living in the UK over recent decades, there are still individuals living in poverty. Furthermore poverty in the UK is expected to rise. Although monetary poverty has wide ranging impacts such as poor health, low educational attainment and employability and reduced life expectancy, it does not (in the form of a poverty line at 60% of the median equivalised household income) appear to have an impact on wellbeing when the threshold was tested. Instead, multidimensional poverty – that purported by the Capabilities Approach – is a more individually relevant measure of poverty. Using a list, developed by Nussbaum, of core capabilities seen as essential for human life, capability measures were taken from the British Household Panel Survey. In analysis, some are found to be significant determinants of wellbeing, individually and in sum. Furthermore, individuals within the dataset experience loss aversion to capabilities. This thesis concludes that poverty measurement should be meaningful at the individual level, and to that aim, the Capabilities Approach provides a richer and more relevant evaluation of what poverty really means.

Levels of poverty and wellbeing among older people in poor, urban settings in Africa have been under-researched, yet absolute numbers of older people are set to increase in this continent in the coming decades. The urban experience of wellbeing for older people is relatively unknown as research tends to focus on older people residing in rural places. This study addresses this research gap and investigates patterns of poverty and wellbeing among older people in two slum settlements in Nairobi. The study uses data collected by the African Population and Health Research Centre. Livelihood information for households in a demographic surveillance system operating in two Nairobi slums is combined with data from a survey on the social, health and overall wellbeing of older people. Absolute expenditure poverty and expenditure quintiles are calculated to build a money-metric poverty profile of the older people. Sensitivity analyses of the poverty estimates are also calculated to explore different assumptions of equivalence scales. A multidimensional conceptual framework then measures how older people’s wellbeing varies across a range of different dimensions. Two-thirds (66%) of older people in the two slum settlements are living in absolute material poverty. Within the slums there are also significant differences in absolute poverty among older people. Wellbeing is found to vary greatly within dimensions and across them; overall, there are disadvantages for women and the oldest old in terms of poverty and wellbeing. Formal support mechanisms are limited with few older people receiving a pension. Conversely, informal reciprocal familial support patterns are strong with many older people giving support to other members of their family. Levels of absolute poverty are high, suggesting that policies should be targeted here to reduce poverty. The different dimensions of wellbeing also indicate that non-monetary policy interventions should be considered.

This dissertation aims at improving the official measurement of wellbeing in Malawi by proposing the incorporation of popular understanding of wellbeing. The objective is to reduce targeting errors that come due to differences in the understanding of wellbeing and poverty between those that identify the poor (villagers) and those who evaluate the quality of the targeting (experts). The dissertation compares the official measure of household wellbeing (consumption expenditure) against subjective measures of wellbeing (self and peers assessments) that are applied on the same households at the same time. Four comparisons are made; household rankings, poverty rates, households determined as poor, and characteristics of poor households. The comparisons determine similarities and differences and, where different, whether the characteristics unique to subjective assessments can be incorporated in the official wellbeing assessment. The dissertation finds that the three assessments are not similar, although there are some overlaps. The ranking of the households based on consumption expenditure is significantly different from that based on peers-assessment. Likewise, poverty rates for three assessments are different. While some households identified as poor are the same, these are less than discordant households. In terms of characteristics, some are common in all the three assessments while some features associated with subjective assessments are absent in the official wellbeing assessment system. An assessment of the absent features shows that it is possible to improve the official assessment without radical changes. Modifications can be made in data collection and analysis, and wellbeing profiling. In particular, qualitative aspects of wellbeing like type and frequency of meals, food security, quality and quantity of clothing would improve the relevance of the operational definition of poverty. Likewise, wellbeing profiling that includes subjective wellbeing assessment is likely to resonate with what is on the ground.

This thesis examines the impacts of human-elephant conflict on human wellbeing and the implications for elephant conservation and management in Trans Mara District, Kenya. The District comprises communal lands bordering the world-famous Masai Mara National Reserve in southwestern Kenya. Trans Mara supports a range of land use types and provides refuge to one of Kenya’s large elephant population comprised of over 3,000 transient and 500 resident animals. This study used interdisciplinary methods to gain insights into the nature and consequences of conflict on the wellbeing of communities living with elephants. In particular, I used a combination of existing wellbeing indices and a set of indicators developed through consultations with local communities in TM to measure impacts of HEC on specific wellbeing domains. The results show that elephants still use the communal lands in Trans Mara but are increasingly restricted to the riverine forest remnants in central Trans Mara. However, there was no evidence of a further decline in the elephant range. Instead, this study points to a shift in elephant range against a background of increasing human settlement, land sub-division and agricultural expansion. The wellbeing of Trans Mara residents comprised eight indicators. Human-elephant conflict negatively affected peoples’ wellbeing, but the impacts were limited to certain dimensions. Elephants affected school-going children within elephant range. Attitudes towards elephants and its conservation in TM were influenced by the location of human residence relative to elephant refuge, diversity of income sources, and age and gender. Finally, conflict mitigation in Trans Mara is still elusive and challenging, but opportunities exist to develop simple and dynamic mitigation tools. The findings of this study have important implications for the future of elephant conservation in the face of competing human needs, both in Trans Mara District and elsewhere in Africa.

This thesis has two main objectives. First, it investigates how social support relationships - embedded within kinship systems, friendship networks and associational groups - contribute to the wellbeing of cash transfer beneficiaries in two urban districts in Ghana. Second, it explores how a formal social protection programme affects the wellbeing of beneficiaries both directly and indirectly via its effect on these other support relationships. The thesis takes the Ghana Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) cash transfer programme as a case study, examining how it is implemented in practice within an urban setting, and how social support relationships influence its effect on the wellbeing of cash recipients. Throughout this thesis wellbeing is used as a discursive space for looking at the often neglected non-material dimensions of wellbeing. In particular, it takes a relational wellbeing approach which emphasises how material, emotional and cognitive dimensions of wellbeing are embedded in social relationships. It uses a Qualitative Longitudinal Research (QLR) approach, complemented by a qualitative social network analysis to map the constellation of relationships on which urban recipients of LEAP transfers rely, and to explore the motivations and rationalities underpinning them. The findings of the thesis add to existing research on social relationships and cash transfers in Africa by extending the analysis to a contemporary urban context. They challenge the assumption that urban residents can draw upon a vibrant support system, by finding that such relationships can be unreliable, provide inadequate support and can be associated with exclusion and marginalization. In addition, the thesis finds that norms underpinning support relationships are constantly being reshaped and challenged. The thesis also highlights the important but diverse effects that formal social protection programmes can have on material, emotional and cognitive wellbeing of recipients, both directly and indirectly via their effect on other significant social relationships of beneficiaries.

Chapter 1: The Impact of Culture on the Second-Generation Immigrants’ Level of Trust in Canada Trust is one of the main elements of social capital; it determines the extent to which an individual cooperates with others. In this chapter, I assess whether cultural factors influence the level of trust in the population of second-generation immigrants in Canada. This paper is related to two strands of empirical literature. The first analyses the determinants of trust and the second studies the cultural transmission of values, attitudes and beliefs. I follow closely the literature on the cultural transmission and use an epidemiological approach to assess whether trust of second-generation immigrants is affected by their cultural heritage. This approach consists of comparing information about the outcomes of second-generation immigrants with that of the country of origin of their ancestry. We apply this approach using the Ethnic Diversity Survey (EDS), the World Value Survey (WVS) and the European Value Survey (EVS). Estimation results show that the average level of trust in the countries of origin of the ancestors of the second-generation immigrants has a strong significant impact on their level of trust. Thus, individual whose country of ancestry displays a high level of trust, tend to have a high level of trust. This provides evidence that individuals’ level of trust is not only explained by their personal experiences, characteristics, and the environment in which they live; but also by the culture in their country of ancestry. This means that culture does matter! I find that the results remain robust even if certain key countries are omitted or a different data set is used. Chapter 2: Decomposing Health Achievement and Socioeconomic Health Inequalities in Presence of Multiple Categorical Information This chapter presents a decomposition of the health achievement and the socioeconomic health inequality indices by multiple categorical variables and by regions. I adopt Makdissi and Yazbeck's (2014) counting approach to deal with the ordinal nature of the data of the United States National Health Interview Survey 2010. The findings suggest that the attributes that contribute the most to the deviation from perfect health in the United States are: anxiety, depression and exhaustion. Also, I find that the attributes that contribute the most to the total socioeconomic health inequality are ambulation, depression and pain. The regional decomposition results suggest that, if the aversion to socioeconomic health inequality is high enough, socioeconomic health inequalities between regions are the main contributors to the total socioeconomic health inequality in the United States. Chapter 3: Accounting for Freedom and Economic Resources in the Assessment of Changes in Women Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa This chapter assesses the importance of freedom in women’s wellbeing in twelve Sub-Saharan Africa countries by using data from Demographic Health Surveys. This paper presents a poverty comparison by using the stochastic dominance approach and relies on the economic resources and freedom as the two aspects of wellbeing which evokes the multidimensionality of poverty. This study is related to the following three pieces of literature: the sequential stochastic dominance, the multidimensional poverty, the Sen’s capability approach which is based on freedom. This paper is built on Makdissi et al. (2014) but differs from it in a number of respects. First, it focuses on poverty instead of welfare. Secondly, it applies the Shapley decomposition to determine the contributions of the economic resource distribution and the incidence of the threat of domestic violence to poverty changes over time. Consistent with previous work on the importance of freedom, I find that more freedom, i.e. less threat of domestic violence, affects women’s wellbeing positively since it decreases women’s poverty. The results indicate that women’s wellbeing has improved in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, Senegal, and Zimbabwe and deteriorated in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania.

This thesis is an attempt to better understand the inter-relationship between deprivation, locality and health. This study explores the views of different residents in St Ann s, a deprived neighbourhood in Nottingham, to find out how they make sense of their health. The thesis is based on some participant observation in the area but mainly draws on qualitative interviews with diverse residents in St Ann's: (including, in particular, working-class older adults of different ethnicities; some working-class parents with children; middle-class younger adults living in the area; and activists and professionals providing services to the area, such as volunteers running the food bank, the local priest and GPs. As I asked all of my participants questions about their lives and their health, as well as their perceptions of what health was like in St Ann s generally, I realised they did not mention what talk about things that I, or public health professionals, would expect them to i.e. whether they took regular exercise or ate fruits and vegetables. Rather than individual lifestyle choices , people mostly talked about places, doing rounds and routines. They also talked about other groups, which allegedly were less healthy than them. Further, different groups of people in the area spoke about health quite differently. It is these broader discussions and concerns, and differences between groups of people, that I make sense of throughout my thesis. I argue that existing quantitative research on health, deprivation and the physical environment typically focuses on how health varies across different neighbourhoods. Some of these studies examine how factors, such as the proximity of supermarkets or leisure facilitates, produce health inequalities. However, while I found residents in St Ann s mentioned the proximity of shops, I also found that health and place had broader meanings to people in terms of gathering together and structuring routines. Additionally, I found that different people had conflicting ideas about health, place and one another. Addressing health therefore needs to take these conflicts into consideration rather than implementing public health policy that mainly articulates the views and habits of the middle-class. I use concepts from Bourdieu (1979), such as habitus , field and symbolic violence to make sense of these conflicts, arguing that the reasons why people act as they do is beyond their cognitive and rational understanding. In circumstances such as those in St Ann's, where the working-class residents were most at home in their given social space where habitus meshes with field - their apprehension of their social environment is more practical than it is theoretical and more tacit than it is explicit. In other words, I argue that residents in St Ann s are curtailed by their habitus. Additionally, I argue that there is insufficient previous work which has acknowledged and validated the experiences of residents in deprived neighbourhoods. Residents may articulate deprivation and lack of understanding of what constitutes health, but they also draw attention to important issues that, whilst often mentioned in the literature (e.g. social cohesion and health), have not been sufficiently accounted for, such as the importance of sociability, community activities, amenities and services. Finally, it should be acknowledged that these issues are not equally or similarly important for all residents, so that middle-class residents are unlikely to mix with locals at the community centre for example and that also older and younger residents considered different places important. So, instead of accepting the premise inherent in much public health research that seeks to identify the barriers to change with individuals, there first needs to be a more rigorous examination of the practices and lifestyles of the working-class residents within deprived communities such as St Ann s. We should seek to understand that their current practices are important for their well-being and sense of community. However, and, at the same time, we should seek to identify appropriate approaches that can improve their health that does not only fit the middle-class agenda. A key element of this is to take the various elements of their practical, tacit knowledge more seriously as part of these conditions of possibility. Then, it may be possible to more fruitfully identify how and why such practices are created, and what might be the conditions of possibility for change.

Need is a concept that carries intuitive appeal in moral decision-making. As it stands, need is relatively under-theorised, given its currency not just in philosophical argumentation but in news coverage, charitable appeals, and political practice. Need claims carry compelling normative force, and they are amenable to widespread support as our most basic needs are some of the things we most transparently share with our fellow human beings. However, how should we understand that normative force? Is need best understood to compel us as a matter of justice? I begin my account by considering the kind of need relevant to the project. I build from an understanding of need as a three-place relation, which is by its nature needing for a purpose. I suggest that morally important needs are those which aim at the objective interests that all people have in virtue of what is good for each of us qua human beings ('non-arbitrary needs'). Further, I distinguish the existentially urgent subset of those non-arbitrary needs as 'basic needs.' Given this understanding, I consider how basic needs theory relates to its conceptual neighbours. I focus on capabilities as the nearest neighbours, but also comment on wants, interests, and rights. I judge that the theories developed by Martha Nussbaum (capabilities) and Len Doyal and Ian Gough (needs) benefit from a complementary reading, with each supplementing the other. I then draw from Amartya Sen's early writings on capabilities to ultimately see capabilities and needs as two sides of the same coin. This helps to situate needs theory in relation to a mainstream branch of political theory more generally, and indicates that we can recognise the special significance of needs without eschewing other morally important categories. I then move to establish a scope of justice that allows us to distinguish between duties of justice and other moral duties. If we think that duties of beneficence are weak and optional, whereas duties of justice are binding and enforceable, a great deal rides on how we characterise our duties to the global poor. I offer a 'moral enforceability' account, claiming that duties of justice are those which are, in principle, morally enforceable. It is the in-principle enforceability of justice duties which gives them teeth. Returning to need, I then ask how another's need comes to give me a moral reason for action. I canvas a range of existing accounts, many of which furnish important insights. I then propose that it is the morally relevant capacities of the being in need which gives them moral status such that their needing is morally significant. We are morally required to answer this need with responsiveness, as a demonstration of appropriate respect for the sort of being that the human in need is. If this is right, we are morally required to be responsive to need, even if we are not always required to reduce it. Finally, I bring the diverse strands of the foregoing argument together to return to the relationship between need and justice. I consider what a duty of responsiveness might amount to in practice, and suggest that our duties of responsiveness are best thought of as collective duties, grounded in the capacity of the global well-off to contribute. Further, I argue that duties of responsiveness are a matter of justice, as they are the sort of duties that are, in principle, morally enforceable. A wide range of threats to the necessary conditions for human flourishing, and even human life, are on the horizon, and many of these are uniquely collective challenges. The seriousness of those challenges, and the extent to which we have treated our responsibilities to those in need as discretionary in the past, means collective action and problem solving are called for when there are no easy answers.

This thesis looks at the relationship between labour migration and socio-economic well-being of the rural households in the communities in Northeastern Thailand, and provides one of the few detailed case studies of the costs and benefits of labour mobility within Southeast Asian labour market system. This research aims to deepen our understanding of the implications of labour migration at micro-level. More specifically, the study aims to examine 'how much such labour migration and remittances do support the rural households and their family members left-behind?' by seeking a holistic assessment based on well-being perspectives with mixed-methods approach. To appreciate this question, we must first understand that there has been rapid economic development and change in Thailand over the past decades, and Thailand is now a leading economy in Southeast Asia that is evolving into a global and regional migration hub for outgoing, incoming, and transiting migrants. The rural communities in Northeastern Thailand, however, have experienced economic and environmental marginality, and as a result, have developed an institutionalised and self-sustaining migration culture after the Vietnam War in 1975. Yet existing research does not tell us much about what are the consequences of the labour migration on well-being for the households in this area. The research explores associations between remittance behaviours and gender difference using sex-disaggregated data, measures dimensions of poverty alleviating effects on the three Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty indices, and assesses economic well-being of the rural households (on the basis of differing participation in labour migration) and non-economic well-being of the family left-behind. On the evidence of this research with various levels of significance in regression analyses, international labour migration and remittances have several implications on rural households in Northeastern Thailand. Firstly, the results show that women and migrants from poorer households behave more altruistically, while men and migrants from richer households behave more contractually. These heterogeneities in remittance behaviours also linked to the asset accumulation patterns for migrants' own future well-being and related to inheritance culture of the rural Thais. Secondly, labour migration is a rational economic strategy of rural households to combat poverty and to improve economic well-being. The analysis reveals clearly that the entire income gap and most of the gap in economic well-being between households with and without migrants can be accounted by availability of remittances. However, the remittances also increase economic inequality (i.e. disparities in well-being) among households in the communities as well-known. Finally, the absence of adult children (for the elderly) or parents (for children) because of international labour migration does not create major disruptions of the non-economic well-being of the family members. The possibilities for frequent correspondence, returns, and the economic benefits of migration contribute to cushion the negative impacts of migration. Most of all, the extended family system plays a decisive role in functioning as a support mechanism.

Ethnic minority children living in relative poverty are a high-risk group for poor outcomes in all aspects of wellbeing. The relationship and interactions between child and parent are a key part of child development and a platform for providing positive experiences which can benefit a child’s wellbeing. There is therefore a need to identify what facilitates wellbeing for ethnic minority children in low-socioeconomic status families. By focusing on protective and promotive factors encompassing the parent-child relationship, factors can be identified which can use family strengths as a basis for interventions and practice within healthcare, social work and education, which is what this systematic literature review set out to do. Through a diligent search of the literature, 12 articles were identified for review according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, containing research on African American, Roma, Native American and Hispanic/Latino youth. The results inform how child wellbeing can be facilitated through several parental factors, including parental involvement and support, maternal attachment, paternal warmth and ethnic identity and ethnic socialization. The findings also indicate a need for further studies on paternal influence on wellbeing in especially Native American and Roma youth, as well as the impact of ethnic socialization on youth wellbeing. Parents have an important role to play in child wellbeing and are vital partners alongside the child when planning interventions. Considerations naturally need to be shown for each ethnic minority, the child’s setting and its individual characteristics.

Research questions: This research was focused on exploring the impact of communication technologies on rural populations in the Congo. In particular, this research posed two questions: 1. Do mobile phones produce development in rural areas of the Congo? 2. Do mobile phones improve the living conditions of people? The questions helped examine ways in which mobile phones were or were not engendering development among these populations. Methods: The research was undertaken using four methods: 1. Phenomenology, 2. Sen's capability approach, 3. Participatory method, and 4. Ecological method. Phenomenology aimed to cater to the experiences and meanings of mobile phone uses. Sen's capability approach allowed the interviews to be focused on the basic needs of the poor. Participatory method provided a greater participation of respondents in discussion groups, and ecological method helped achieve a higher inclusion of key players in the targeted area. Major findings: The major findings of this study included: 1. Much of the literature on mobile phones and development was not representative or inclusive of key players and their day-to-day lives. 2. Studies have tended to present snapshots or single-focused accounts of mobile phone and development. 3. Authors of mobile phone research have tended to see rural populations with an urban-led bias, leaving aside the actual characteristics of rural areas. 4. Mobile phones were not limited to a person and her properties, but rather mobile phones were owned and shared by the community. 5. Participants expressed a need for technical skills and means to be available to the community and their members. 6. Households were not separated, but rather they were connected to allow people take care of one another. 7. People were connected through collective solidarities in order to come to the aid of those with special needs. 8. Literature and mobile phone sponsors or companies were disseminating mobile phones with an extractive and commercial tendency, focused principally on fees of batteries, chargers, and prepaid cards. Major contributions: The major contributions of this research revolved around the focus on: 1. technology to enhance the needed technical skills among concerned populations. 2. shared ownership of mobile phones to cater to both users and non-users of mobile phones among concerned populations. 3. connected households to capitalize on the dynamics of family among concerned populations. 4. collective solidarities to accommodate the processes of aiding one another among concerned populations. 5. capabilities, from a commercial or extractive aspect to capabilities to enhance the capabilities of people to afford mobile phones fees. 6. capabilities, from a corporate or business aspect to capabilities to enhance the capabilities of people who did not and could not own a business. 7. human basic needs to enhance the capabilities of mobile phone users with regard to human basic needs. 8. outliers or the marginalized to attend to those left out among concerned populations. 9. mobile phone-centric libraries to enhance the storage and retrieval of needed information among concerned populations.

Poverty reduction and conservation can seem contradictory as integrated goals. Despite mixed results over the past several decades, both goals are increasingly being sought out together in practice. Using a case study of an integrated conservation and development project in the Azua province of the Dominican Republic, this thesis examines the definitions and measurement of poverty and wellbeing within integrated conservation and development initiatives. It asks whether the inclusion of subjective ideas and participatory approaches may present new opportunities to better integrate poverty measurements within natural resource initiatives. Four focus groups and 250 questionnaires formed the core methods for data collection. The study reveals wellbeing as a concept was better able to capture the multi-faceted nature of capabilities poverty. Wellbeing often engages with the themes of vulnerability and inequity and includes politically-sensitive considerations instead of concepts that are about assets or consumption, ideas based in the outdated income-poverty perspective. Locally developed indicators were best able to reveal nuances related to context that universal poverty indicators would miss or misrepresent. The results also found that the way poverty, wellbeing, problems and solutions are conceptually framed and defined can be highly relevant. Using asset-based concepts and metrics would lead to economic development goals whereas rights-based ideas would promote very different objectives and methods. The comprehensive identification and targeting of stakeholders was found to be a necessary focus in determining the priorities. Participatory processes, especially with a commitment to power devolution, can help ensure that an array of local ideas are accounted for, and contribute to, a nuanced understanding of complex phenomena. Overall, subscribing to a rights-based approach that targets the means (opportunities) of development and not the ends (assets) can facilitate the needed shift towards the new poverty paradigm, in both concept and practice. A more successful integration between poverty reduction and conservation will require such a shift.

No
This report contributes new insights into the growing body of literature on inclusive green economy approaches as a key means for eradicating poverty and advancing the evolving post-2015 sustainable development agenda. The report draws on a range of country experiences and a series of case studies commissioned through the UNDP-DESA-UNEP Joint Programme Supporting a Green Economy Transition in Developing Countries and LDCs: Building Towards Rio+20 and Beyond, with the generous support of the Government of The Netherlands. Its non-prescriptive findings are designed to inform country-led efforts to transition to greener, more inclusive economies in ways that deliver on poverty reduction.

: Energy poverty affects the health and wellbeing of households and contributes to poverty traps. In 2018, 20 percent of Portuguese households mentioned being unable to keep their home adequately warm. The results of a logit model using 2018 EU SILC data show that younger, less educated tenants living under poor dwelling conditions are among the most vulnerable in Portugal. Although energy poverty is directly linked to income poverty, not all poverty policies have been successful in solving both problems at the same time. Proper identification of those affected and associated socio-economic consequences is vital for adequate policy design.

Gleichzeitig mit der weit verbreiteten Verwendung von traditionellen einkommens- oder konsumbasierten Maßnahmen zur Messung menschlicher Armut und Entwicklung gibt es seit den späten 70er Jahren zunehmendes Interesse an der Ökonomie des Glücks. Ebenso gibt es einen breiten Literaturbereich, der Indizes definiert und diskutiert hat, die „functionings" auf der Grundlage des „Capabilities Approach“ von Sen (1985) auf sich vereinen, welche auf einer Vielzahl von ideologischen Urteilen und Zielen zur Bestimmung des objektiven Wohlbefindens (1984), S. 187) beruhen. Beide Ansätze sind ähnlich in ihrer Prämisse, dass Einkommen oft eine unzureichende Determinante des Wohlbefindens ist – ein latenter Begriff, dass besser mit anderen, breiteren Definitionen- subjektiv oder objektiviert- erfasst wird. Beide Konzepte des Wohlbefindens wurden im Hinblick auf ihr Verhältnis zum Einkommen untersucht, und es wurde ein klarer Unterschied zwischen Einkommen und diesen beiden Maßnahmen festgestellt. Angesichts der relativen Neuheit und Komplexität beider Ansätze sind sie jedoch bislang selten in wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten zusammengebracht worden. Den dritten Aufsatz in dieser Arbeit ist ein Versuch, diese beiden Ansätze zu kombinieren und damit diese Lücke in der Literatur zu erfüllen. Subjektives Wohlbefinden wird mit verfügbaren Daten, die Zufriedenheit messen, festelegt, während das objektive Wohlbefinden durch einen Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) operationalisiert wird (Alkire & Santos, 2010). Der MPI ist einer der neuesten Versuche zur Messung des menschlichen Wohlbefindens im Rahmen des Capabilities Approach. Die Entwicklungspolitik erkennt ebenfalls graduell diese Maße als eine genauere Beschreibung des Wohlbefindens an, oder betrachtet diese zumindest als eine sinnvolle Ergänzung zu metrisch-monetären Maßen. Angesichts der vielen nationalen und internationalen Programme, die eine umfassende Verbesserung des menschlichen Wohlbefindens zum Ziel haben, gibt es erstaunlich wenige Arbeiten, die dazu beitragen können, die Auswirkungen eines bestimmten Programms auf das allgemeine Wohlbefinden und nicht nur auf eine bestimmte Dimension zu quantifizieren und zu bewerten. Der zweite Aufsatz in dieser Arbeit beschäftigt sich kritisch mit diesem Ansatz und betrachtet dabei den besonderen Fall Südafrikas. Aufgrund der steigenden Beliebtheit der mehrdimensionalen Armutsmaße besteht ein zunehmender Bedarf an einer Überprüfung ihrer grundlegenden Eigenschaft, ebendies zu erreichen. Eine wachsende Zahl von Forschern hat sich mit den Problemen beschäftigt, die ein zusammengesetztes Maß wie der MPI mit sich bringen kann und dessen Fähigkeit zur Messung multidimensionalen Wohlbefindens beeinträchtigen kann. Ein bestimmter Aspekt ist hierbei die Gewichtung der einzelnen Dimensionen und Indikatoren, um Armut über verschiedene Regionen hinweg zu definieren. Diese Dissertation schafft in Aufsatz eins eine Brücke zwischen den statistischen Methoden und den optimalen Gewichtungsschemata, die speziell zur Messung des multidimensionalen Wohlbefindens in verschiedenen Ländern genutzt werden können.