The primary purpose of this article is to further promote academic discussion concerning poverty. It also draws attention in today's academic environment, to the widely spreading ' capacity deprivation approach', developed by Amartya Sen. Such approach can be complemented by the surveys of Deepa Narayan which focus on the poor' s view of poverty. It also affords the reader the benefit of understanding historical poverty perceptions and their evolution over time: the survival approach, the basic needs theory, the relative deprivation idea and the "Consensus of Washington" theory. In summary, the article aims to heighten awareness, expand discussion and make available information about poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon by means of a simplified summary of poverty approaches, complemented by the work of Sen and Narayan.
Poverty; capacity deprivation; hear; voices of the poor; multidimensional