The Capability Approach to Adolescent Poverty in China: Application of a Latent Class Model

Abstract

After 2020, poverty alleviation in China will shift from eliminating absolute poverty to alleviating unbalanced and insufficient relative poverty. Based on Amartya Sen’s capability approach, this article aimed to realize the freedom of “capability” of children and ensure the well-being and development of Chinese adolescents, who are often ignored in child poverty research. The study sought to estimate the 10–15-year-olds in a multidimensional capabilities poverty group. Our analysis was based on the adolescent capability methodology framework, using data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to investigate the types and influencing factors of adolescent capability poverty in China. The result of latent class analysis showed that there are four types of capability poverty among the Chinese adolescents, namely, Extreme Capability Poverty Class, Goal Capability Poverty Class, Opportunity Capability Poverty Class, and Capability Non-Poverty Class. Multinomial logistic regression showed that the personal factors of gender, ethnic minority, hukou, and pocket money; the family factors of parents’ marital status, parents’ education level, and region of residence; and the family economic factor of per capita family income had a significant impact on the types of China’s adolescent capability poverty. The article provides empirical and quantitative evidence for the adolescent (ages 10–15) class of capability poverty. The findings provide a reference for policy makers to target poverty-alleviation efforts according to different types of poverty and to interrupt the intergenerational transmission of poverty.