ABSTRACT

“What explains the feeling of being disempowered? The literature on aspirations suggests subjectively deprived people may feel disempowered because they consider that any improvement to their lot is simply out of their reach. The present paper provides original and robust evidence that, alongside the well-known objective capabilities related to skills, assets and opportunities, psychological capabilities linked to aspirations also matter. Based on a Central African household survey and tackling endogeneity issues, we show that: (i) feeling subjectively more deprived decreases the probability of reporting a high level of empowerment, defined as power from within, that is the power to change one’s life; (ii) the probability of reporting empowerment decreases with the size of the aspirations gap, defined as the negative gap between one’s level of subjective wealth and the locality’s mean level; (iii) the capability framework is a relevant one to address the complex links between aspirations and empowerment.”

摘要

“是什么解释了被剥夺权力的感觉？关于抱负的文献表明，主观上被剥夺的人可能会感到被剥夺了权力，因为他们认为对他们的命运有任何改善都是他们无法实现的。本文提供了原始而有力的证据，表明除了众所周知的与技能、资产和机会相关的客观能力外，与抱负相关的心理能力也很重要。基于一项中非家庭调查和解决内生性问题，我们表明：(i) 主观上感觉更被剥夺会降低报告高水平赋权的可能性，赋权定义为来自内部的权力，那是改变人生的力量；(ii) 报告赋权的概率随着愿望差距的大小而降低，愿望差距定义为一个人的主观财富水平与当地平均水平之间的负差距；(iii) 能力框架是解决愿望和赋权之间复杂联系的相关框架。”