Resumen Hablar del problema social de la pobreza requiere concatenar asuntos tales como causas, condiciones que facilitan el fenomeno, consecuencias y posibles soluciones. Sin embargo, al centrar la atencion en la pobreza, se vislumbran cuestiones como: la falta de consenso acerca de su definicion, de sus dimensiones mas relevantes y de las acciones a emprender para disminuirla y acabarla. En este documento, se sostiene como tesis central que es posible efectuar una vinculacion entre la teoria de las capacidades y los mecanismos causales de la pobreza y que, si se genera este vinculo, se tendria un mejor acercamiento a dicho fenomeno. Una de las conclusiones es que es posible estudiar la pobreza de capacidades mediante mecanismos causales y aunque ello se aleja de la obtencion de indices comparativos, se acerca con mayor claridad a la compresion del problema social. Palabras clave: pobreza, teoria de capacidades, mecanismos causales. Approach to the Social Problem of Poverty: Notions of Poverty to the Causal Mechanisms Astract To speak of the social problem of the poverty requires to concatenate subjects such as the causes, conditions that facilitate the phenomenon, the consequences and the possible solutions, nevertheless, when centering the attention in the poverty, glimpse problems such as: the lack of consensus about its definition, it's more important dimensions and the actions to undertake to diminish it and to finish it. The central thesis is that it is possible to associate the theory of the capacities and the causal mechanisms of the poverty and this would allow a better approach to this phenomenon. One of the conclusions is that it is possible to study the poverty of capacities by means of causal mechanisms and although it moves away of the obtaining of comparative indices, approaches with more clarity the compression of the social problem. Key Words: poverty, theory of capability, causal mechanisms