Rural poverty in Rio Grande do Sul: comparing approaches

Abstract

Most of the poverty indicators are based on monetary resources, where income is the main criteria to classify people as poor or not-poor. However, even taking into consideration that this approach is widely accepted and consolidated, one question seems to persist: what is it to be poor in fact? What we are proposing in this paper is to establish a comparative between the monetary approach (traditional approach) and a multidimensional approach, namely the Capability Approach, proposed by Amartya Sen. This paper discusses both the theoretical aspects of the approaches and presents an empirical implementation applied to the rural areas of the state of Rio Grande do Sul.