The impact of public welfare policy on poverty incidence is the widely studied
phenomenon by researchers, academics, development activists etc. during the past
few decades. In the context of Sri Lanka, most of such studies are on the macro level
and based mainly on the secondary data. In this study an attempt was made to
assess the impact of major public welfare policies on the poverty incidence of rural
households in Sri Lanka. In fact, Sri Lanka is considered as the nation that achieved
high level social development as a result of the long standing public welfare
policies. This assessment based mainly on the general framework of Capability
Approach, and the measurement of poverty rates is based on the ‘counting
approach’ suggested by Alkire and Foster.
The achievements of six capabilities namely, access adequately to food, being
educated, being healthy, access to improved sanitation, being safely sheltered and
access to safe drinking water were assessed by employing the empirical data
collected from the 160 households in Sooriyawewa and Katuwan DS divisions in the
Hambantota district of Southern Sri Lanka.
The analysis concluded that the deprivation of access to improved sanitation,
housing (being safely sheltered), health (being health) and access to safe drinking
water capabilities among rural households is still critically high. Public policies on
these spheres have failed to bring the large number of rural people out of
deprivation cut-offs. Only, food and education policies have shown a quite success.