ABSTRACT
Poverty is defined as the “pronounced deprivation in well-being” in the 2000/01 World Development Report (WDR). But what does well-being mean? How do we define it? And what are the elements necessary to ensure a decent level of wellbeing? These are not easy questions to answer. Several approaches have been used to describe well-being in the socioeconomic literature, important among them are basic needs, economic growth, quality of life, and welfare. How do these approaches differ? And which approach is the most appropriate to describe well-being? This chapter, briefly, deals with these broad questions.
