Abstract: Putting aside the traditional supply-demand model in the study of poverty, Amartya Sen, based on empirical study, put forward his entitlement theory and defines poverty as the result of entitlement failure rather than just insufficient income. In his Poverty and Famine, he used the entitlement method to study hunger and poverty, but this approach was still confined within the economic field. He then put forward the view of ethical development——“development as freedom”. This view, from the actual freedom people have, uses“feasible capabilities”to measure human development, paying attention to the wellbeing of the people at the bottom of the society. Sen’s theory has opened the multidimensional perspective of research on poverty and it has strong practical significance to solving China’s property problem.

Key words: Amartya Sen, poverty, public action, substantive freedom, feasible capability