Gleichzeitig mit der weit verbreiteten Verwendung von traditionellen einkommens- oder konsumbasierten Maßnahmen zur Messung menschlicher Armut und Entwicklung gibt es seit den späten 70er Jahren zunehmendes Interesse an der Ökonomie des Glücks. Ebenso gibt es einen breiten Literaturbereich, der Indizes definiert und diskutiert hat, die „functionings" auf der Grundlage des „Capabilities Approach“ von Sen (1985) auf sich vereinen, welche auf einer Vielzahl von ideologischen Urteilen und Zielen zur Bestimmung des objektiven Wohlbefindens (1984), S. 187) beruhen. Beide Ansätze sind ähnlich in ihrer Prämisse, dass Einkommen oft eine unzureichende Determinante des Wohlbefindens ist – ein latenter Begriff, dass besser mit anderen, breiteren Definitionen- subjektiv oder objektiviert- erfasst wird. Beide Konzepte des Wohlbefindens wurden im Hinblick auf ihr Verhältnis zum Einkommen untersucht, und es wurde ein klarer Unterschied zwischen Einkommen und diesen beiden Maßnahmen festgestellt. Angesichts der relativen Neuheit und Komplexität beider Ansätze sind sie jedoch bislang selten in wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten zusammengebracht worden. Den dritten Aufsatz in dieser Arbeit ist ein Versuch, diese beiden Ansätze zu kombinieren und damit diese Lücke in der Literatur zu erfüllen. Subjektives Wohlbefinden wird mit verfügbaren Daten, die Zufriedenheit messen, festelegt, während das objektive Wohlbefinden durch einen Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) operationalisiert wird (Alkire & Santos, 2010). Der MPI ist einer der neuesten Versuche zur Messung des menschlichen Wohlbefindens im Rahmen des Capabilities Approach. Die Entwicklungspolitik erkennt ebenfalls graduell diese Maße als eine genauere Beschreibung des Wohlbefindens an, oder betrachtet diese zumindest als eine sinnvolle Ergänzung zu metrisch-monetären Maßen. Angesichts der vielen nationalen und internationalen Programme, die eine umfassende Verbesserung des menschlichen Wohlbefindens zum Ziel haben, gibt es erstaunlich wenige Arbeiten, die dazu beitragen können, die Auswirkungen eines bestimmten Programms auf das allgemeine Wohlbefinden und nicht nur auf eine bestimmte Dimension zu quantifizieren und zu bewerten. Der zweite Aufsatz in dieser Arbeit beschäftigt sich kritisch mit diesem Ansatz und betrachtet dabei den besonderen Fall Südafrikas. Aufgrund der steigenden Beliebtheit der mehrdimensionalen Armutsmaße besteht ein zunehmender Bedarf an einer Überprüfung ihrer grundlegenden Eigenschaft, ebendies zu erreichen. Eine wachsende Zahl von Forschern hat sich mit den Problemen beschäftigt, die ein zusammengesetztes Maß wie der MPI mit sich bringen kann und dessen Fähigkeit zur Messung multidimensionalen Wohlbefindens beeinträchtigen kann. Ein bestimmter Aspekt ist hierbei die Gewichtung der einzelnen Dimensionen und Indikatoren, um Armut über verschiedene Regionen hinweg zu definieren. Diese Dissertation schafft in Aufsatz eins eine Brücke zwischen den statistischen Methoden und den optimalen Gewichtungsschemata, die speziell zur Messung des multidimensionalen Wohlbefindens in verschiedenen Ländern genutzt werden können.

Chapter 1: The Impact of Culture on the Second-Generation Immigrants’ Level of Trust in Canada Trust is one of the main elements of social capital; it determines the extent to which an individual cooperates with others. In this chapter, I assess whether cultural factors influence the level of trust in the population of second-generation immigrants in Canada. This paper is related to two strands of empirical literature. The first analyses the determinants of trust and the second studies the cultural transmission of values, attitudes and beliefs. I follow closely the literature on the cultural transmission and use an epidemiological approach to assess whether trust of second-generation immigrants is affected by their cultural heritage. This approach consists of comparing information about the outcomes of second-generation immigrants with that of the country of origin of their ancestry. We apply this approach using the Ethnic Diversity Survey (EDS), the World Value Survey (WVS) and the European Value Survey (EVS). Estimation results show that the average level of trust in the countries of origin of the ancestors of the second-generation immigrants has a strong significant impact on their level of trust. Thus, individual whose country of ancestry displays a high level of trust, tend to have a high level of trust. This provides evidence that individuals’ level of trust is not only explained by their personal experiences, characteristics, and the environment in which they live; but also by the culture in their country of ancestry. This means that culture does matter! I find that the results remain robust even if certain key countries are omitted or a different data set is used. Chapter 2: Decomposing Health Achievement and Socioeconomic Health Inequalities in Presence of Multiple Categorical Information This chapter presents a decomposition of the health achievement and the socioeconomic health inequality indices by multiple categorical variables and by regions. I adopt Makdissi and Yazbeck's (2014) counting approach to deal with the ordinal nature of the data of the United States National Health Interview Survey 2010. The findings suggest that the attributes that contribute the most to the deviation from perfect health in the United States are: anxiety, depression and exhaustion. Also, I find that the attributes that contribute the most to the total socioeconomic health inequality are ambulation, depression and pain. The regional decomposition results suggest that, if the aversion to socioeconomic health inequality is high enough, socioeconomic health inequalities between regions are the main contributors to the total socioeconomic health inequality in the United States. Chapter 3: Accounting for Freedom and Economic Resources in the Assessment of Changes in Women Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa This chapter assesses the importance of freedom in women’s wellbeing in twelve Sub-Saharan Africa countries by using data from Demographic Health Surveys. This paper presents a poverty comparison by using the stochastic dominance approach and relies on the economic resources and freedom as the two aspects of wellbeing which evokes the multidimensionality of poverty. This study is related to the following three pieces of literature: the sequential stochastic dominance, the multidimensional poverty, the Sen’s capability approach which is based on freedom. This paper is built on Makdissi et al. (2014) but differs from it in a number of respects. First, it focuses on poverty instead of welfare. Secondly, it applies the Shapley decomposition to determine the contributions of the economic resource distribution and the incidence of the threat of domestic violence to poverty changes over time. Consistent with previous work on the importance of freedom, I find that more freedom, i.e. less threat of domestic violence, affects women’s wellbeing positively since it decreases women’s poverty. The results indicate that women’s wellbeing has improved in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, Senegal, and Zimbabwe and deteriorated in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania.

La pratique infirmière en soins palliatifs en fin de vie à domicile fait l’objet de critiques lorsqu’elle est circonscrite à des paramètres biomédicaux, comme la gestion des douleurs et des symptômes de fin de vie. Cet accent maintiendrait parfois la pratique infirmière en porte-à-faux avec les volontés réelles des personnes soignées, ce qui limiterait leur possibilité de vivre pleinement leur vie dans la période du mourir. Partant de l’idée que la discipline et la pratique infirmière visent la santé des personnes, quelle que soit la période de leur vie, le but de cette thèse est de concevoir des mécanismes actionnables pour une pratique infirmière pour la santé en soins palliatifs en fin de vie à domicile, afin que les personnes soignées vivent la vie qu’elles valorisent dans la période du mourir. Une démarche itérative comportant un volet théorique et un volet empirique est présentée, en cohérence avec les principes de l’épistémologie du constructivisme projectif et une conception systémique de la pratique infirmière. Le volet théorique de la thèse prend appui sur l’approche par les capabilités d’Amartya Sen. Les capabilités des individus représentent l’ensemble des libertés qu’ils possèdent réellement pour vivre la vie qu’ils ont raison de valoriser. À partir d’idées de Sen, nous proposons une modélisation de l’agir complexe de la pratique infirmière comme processus de conversion de ressources vers des capabilités pour la santé. Le volet empirique de la thèse est fondé sur cette proposition théorique. La question de recherche suivante est posée : Comment la pratique infirmière pour la santé en soins palliatifs en fin de vie à domicile peut être conçue comme un processus de conversion vers des capabilités pour la santé? La recherche empirique suit les paramètres d’un devis qualitatif descriptif interprétatif combinant une approche narrative et une méthode d’analyse par questionnement analytique. Une première partie des résultats empiriques présente trois récits coconstruits auprès d’infirmières œuvrant en soins palliatifs en fin de vie à domicile et un quatrième récit assemble les réflexions de l’étudiant-chercheur issues de sa pratique clinique et de recherche. La deuxième partie des résultats empiriques présente quatre mécanismes de la pratique infirmière pouvant participer à la création de capabilités pour que les personnes soignées vivent la vie qu’elles valorisent dans la période du mourir : 1) naviguer entre la vie valorisée par l’Autre et des normes, 2) concevoir l’Autre à la fois capable et vulnérable; 3) engager la réflexivité sur soi, et 4) agir par la présence créative. Ces résultats suggèrent une conception de la pratique infirmière en soins palliatifs en fin de vie à domicile comprise sous l’angle d’une praxis qui appelle à la réflexivité, la réciprocité et la créativité des infirmières pour s’engager dans la relation au mourant. Pour la discipline infirmière, l’approche par les capabilités permet de comprendre comment la pratique infirmière peut s’engager concrètement vers la vie valorisée par les personnes soignées, jusqu’à leur mort. / Home-based palliative care nursing has been critiqued for its focus on biomedical parameters, such as pain or end-of-life symptom management, which tend to maintain nursing practice at odds with patient aspirations, thus limiting their ability to live life to the fullest until death. Based on the premise that the aim of nursing discipline and practice is health throughout all stages of life, the purpose of this thesis is to theorize actionable mechanisms of health-oriented nursing practice in home-based palliative care so that dying people can live the life they value until death. An iterative methodology combining theoretical and empirical work was conducted, in coherence with a pragmatic constructivist epistemology and a systemic model of nursing practice. The theoretical component of this thesis is based on Amartya Sen's capability approach. Capabilities are defined by Sen as the set of effective freedoms people possess to live the life they have reason to value. Based on Sen's ideas, we propose that nursing practice can be conceptualized as the conversion process of resources into health capabilities. The empirical component of this thesis proceeds from the above proposition with the following research question: How can health-oriented nursing practice in home-based palliative care be conceptualized as a conversion process towards health capabilities? A descriptive-interpretive qualitative design, combining narrative inquiry and analytical questioning produced two sets of empirical results. The first presents three stories co-constructed with nurses practicing home-based palliative care; whilst a fourth story recounts the author’s emerging reflections in relation to his own clinical and research practice. The second set of empirical findings presents four nursing practice mechanisms that tend to create capabilities of dying people as they live the life they value until death: 1) navigating between a life valued and norms, 2) seeing a dying person as both capable and vulnerable; 3) reflexively engaging with one’s practice, and 4) being creatively present. These findings suggest that home-based palliative care nursing can be understood as a praxis that engages reflexivity, reciprocity, and creativity in relation to the dying person. For the discipline of nursing, a capability lens reveals how nursing practice can engage with the lives valued by dying people, until their death.

Child rights, especially the right to health for children, is a concept of human development. The aim of this qualitative study is to explore the obstacles to gender equality in the right to healthcare for children under five years in East Champaran, Bihar, North India. Ten key informant interviews and nine focus group discussions with mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers were conducted to research the barriers of guardians to accessing healthcare for their children, including their root beliefs and choices, which causes health inequalities. It was found that a strong patriarchal tradition predominates in these communities in North India, which favour sons and disadvantages daughters in healthcare provision. Despite the existing child rights and human rights policies that have been legislated, in India traditional practices that discriminate against female children remain dominant in the society, and limit development in East Champaran, Bihar, North India. / Development Studies / M.A. (Development Studies)

The study aimed to investigate Human Security and Development: A Case of Diepsloot, extension 12 in Johannesburg. There are in total 30 participants who took part in the research, they were all living in this informal settlement. A case study design was used in conjunction with a qualitative research approach. Thirty (30) participants were identified using purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted through an interview guide on their human security and development. The interviews were also recorded. A thematic analysis was used to extract the essence from the data as it emphasises identifying, analysing and interpreting patterns of meaning within qualitative data and presenting the findings according to themes supported by quotes. The research findings demonstrate that the residents of Diepsloot, extension 12, were not provided with human security and opportunities to promote development. The South African government claims to provide service delivery to its citizens in support of the objective of the government’s National Development Plan (NDP) to eradicate poverty by 2030. Yet, the study proved that inhabitants of the Diepsloot settlement were in dire need of support and job opportunities to upgrade their living conditions. The study recommends that: Human security and development should be the government’s priority, focussing on the implementation of development policies, especially in informal settlements / Lesifundvolucwaningo sihlose kuphenya Kuvikeleka Kweluntfu Nentfutfuko: Sehlakalolucwaningo saseDiepsloot Extension 12 eJozi. Linani selilonkhe lalabangenela lolucwaningo bebangu-30; bonkhe bebahlala eDiepsloot Extension 12, lokuyindzawo lehlala bantfu lekangahleleki eJozi. Lesifundvolucwaningo lesehlakalo sisetjentiswe ngekuhlanganisa nendlela yelizingasimo. Kwakhetfwa labatawungenela lolucwaningo labangu-30 ngekusebentisa kukhetsa emasamphula ngenhloso. Kwasetjentiswa inkhombandlela yekwenta i-inthaviyu kute kubanjwe ema-inthaviyu lasakuhleleka nalabo labangenele lolucwaningo. Lama-inthaviyu bekagcile ekuvikelekeni kweluntfu nentfutfuko, futsi arekhodwa. Kwasetjentiswa luhlatiyo ngekwengcikitsi kutfola bunjalo kuleyo datha. Kwakugcilwe ekuboneni, ekuhlatiyeni nasekuhumusheni emaphethini enshokutsi kuleyo datha yelizingasimo, kanye nekwetfula loko lokutfoliwe ngekulandzela tingcikitsi letesekelwa ticashunwa. Lokutfolwe ngulolucwaningo kuveta kutsi bahlali baseDiepsloot Extension 12 bebanganikwa kuvikeleka kweluntfu kanye nematfuba langagcugcutela intfutfuko yabo. Hulumende waseNingizimu Afrika utitjela kutsi yena unika takhamuti tawo tinsita ekwesekeleni inhloso yeLisu lakhe Lavelonkhe Lentfutfuko (i-NDP) kute kucedvwe buphuya nga-2030. Nanome kunjalo, lesifundvolucwaningo siveta kutsi bahlali basendzweni lengakahleli yaseDiepsloot badzinga kakhulu kwesekelwa kanye nematfuba emisebenti kute bente ncono timo tabo tekuphila.Lesifundvolucwaningo sincoma kutsi kuvikeleka kweluntfu kanye nentfutfuko kufanele kutsi kube tintfo hulumende latibeka embili kutsi utawucala ngato atente; kanye nekutsi kugcilwe ekufezekiseni tinchubomgomo tentfutfuko, ikakhulu etindzaweni letihlala bantfu letingakahleleki / Esi sifundo sajolisa ukuphanda Ukhuseleko Nophuhliso Loluntu: Imeko yase D Diepsloot Extension 12 eRhawutini (Human Security and Development: A Case of Diepsloot Extension 12 in Johannesburg). Bangama-30 abantu abathatha inxaxheba kolu phando; bonke abehlala eDiepsloot Extension 12, indawo yokuhlala engekho sesikweni Rhawutini. Kwasetyenziswa uyilo lophando lwesifundo esingumzekelo kunye nendlela yophando ngokuphonononga izimvo (ukuzathuza). Kwachongwa ngononophelo isampulu yabathathi nxaxheba abangama-30. Kwasetyenziswa isikhokelo sodliwano ndlebe ekuqhubeni iindliwano ndlebe ezingaqingqwanga nabathathi nxaxheba. Iindliwano ndlebe zagxininisa kukhuseleko nophuhliso loluntu kwaye zashicilelwa njengengxelo. Kwasetyenziswa uhlalutyo lwemixholo ukuze kuhluzwe ingxam/undoqo womcimbi kwidatha. Kwakugxininiswe ekuchongeni, ekuhlalutyeni nasekutolikeni iipatheni zeentsingiselo kwidatha yozathuzo, nasekunikezeleni okufunyanisiweyo gokwemixholo exhaswa kokucatshuliweyo. Okufunyaniswe kuphando kwadiza ukuba abemi baseDiepsloot extension 12 abanamathuba okhuseleko anokukhuthaza uphuhliso lwabo. URhulumente woMzantsi Afrika uthi unikezela ngeenkonzo zoluntu kubemi bakhe ngeenjongo zokuxhasa iCebo Lophuhliso Likazwelonke (iNational Development Plan - NDP) ukuze uthi ufika owama-2030 kube kupheliswe tu ubuhlwempu. Noxa kunjalo, olu phando lububungqina bokuba abemi baseDiepsloot badinga ngamandla inkxaso namathuba emisebenzi ukuze baphucule iimeko zabo zentlalo. Esi sifundo siphakamisa ukuba ukhuseleko nophuhliso loluntu ibe yimiba esentloko kulungiselelo karhulumente; kwaye kufuneka kugxininiswe ekusetyenzisweni kweenkqubo zophuhliso, ngakumbi kwiindawo zokuhlala ezingekho sesikweni. / Development Studies / M.A. (Development studies)

It is widely acknowledged that poverty has declined globally over the last few years. In fact, this idea has become so ingrained in our society that it is almost taken for granted and assumed as an incontestable fact. The question that remains unanswered is where all the poor are now. Are they living a prosperous life or are they tinkering on the edge of poverty? This research study focuses on the precarious non-poor, who are the people surviving just above Upper Bound Poverty Line used by Statistics within South Africa. Although they are not ‘officially poor’ they are still a group that is often overlooked or ignored within the global development community since they are not poor enough to warrant intervention yet not secure enough to demand action. As the research study will show through using a mixed-method approach, they are far from being prosperous and in fact, still struggling to survive. The quantitative findings are based on a statistical analysis of the General Household Survey (2011) that overlaps with the latest Income and Expenditure Survey (2011). It gives valuable background to the problem that was also used during the qualitative phase of the research study to inform the sample choice and interview guide. The quantitative analysis shows that the precarious non-poor is not a unique problem, and as a group, they are found across South Africa. The qualitative findings are based on in-depth interviews conducted in Cape Town, Western Cape and Newcastle, KwaZulu Natal. Framed by the capability approach, set out by Amartya Sen, and a focus on basic capabilities such as employment, education and housing, the results show that the precarious non-poor lack access and choice in terms of capabilities and the opportunity to realise them into functionings. The precarious non-poor in this study are mostly employed within insecure, uncertain or underpaying jobs, underpinned by a social support program, living in neighbourhoods where they feel unsafe while trying to secure a better future for themselves and especially their children. In fact, they are probably no better off than their poor counterparts with prosperity remaining out of reach. / Sociology / Ph. D. (Sociology)