TITLE:
Understanding Poverty through the Capability Approach Lens: A Bibliometric Analysis
AUTHORS:
Tobias Ndlovu, Thabo Ndlovu, Alice Ncube
KEYWORDS:
Poverty, Wellbeing, Capability Approach, Bibliometrics
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.13 No.12,
December
22,
2025
ABSTRACT: Poverty is one of the world’s greatest challenges, hence the conceptualisation of its causes and solutions are critical to policy and academic debate. The emergency the Capability Approach in 1980’s by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum provided an alternative framework for understating poverty. The study explores trends, gaps and opportunities in scientific literature on understanding poverty through the capability approach lenses. Using bibliometric analysis, 1004 publications from 1995 to 2023 were retrieved from Scopus database and analysed with “Biblioshiny”. The findings show substantial growth of the study predominately in developed countries, while Africa only contributed eight per cent of the global output. Existing literature mainly focuses on social justice, gender and education with limited emphasis on poverty reduction and alleviation. The study highlights the need for contextual research in Africa and emphasis on poverty reduction strategies in vulnerable communities. Future studies should incorporate multiple databased to broaden the analysis.