Compare capabilities approaches to poverty with monetary approaches. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? In your view, which is better for understanding poverty? Explain your answer. “What a weary time those years were- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability” (Bukowski, 1982). Poverty affects billions of people worldwide, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. Defining poverty is almost as difficult as eradicating it. For the purpose of this essay, I will take poverty to mean the state of being exceptionally poor. Furthermore, poorness will be defined as an extremely low quality of life, which culminates as a result of social, political and economic factors. In order to examine the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, it is necessary to identify who these are strengths and weaknesses for; a strength of an approach may be considered a weakness from a different perspective. Governments and international organisations, with a common goal of lifting poverty from disadvantaged countries, are the main focus of this essay. Leading policy makers around the world have adopted a “uni-dimensional perspective on poverty” (Wong, 2012) which largely focuses on a lack of income. This definition provides the basis for the Monetary Approach to poverty. However, this is an exceptionally constricted view of poverty, disregarding many social and political factors that contribute to the current, bleak situation. The Capabilities Approach to poverty provides a far better understanding of poverty, as it takes into account many, relevant issues that are overlooked in the Monetary Approach. The Capabilities Approach to poverty focuses on what functionings individuals are able to achieve in their lives given the freedom and rights that they withhold (Wells, 2012). Functionings refers to “the various things a person may value doing or