The Dynamics Of Poverty

The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty builds a common scholarly ground in the study of poverty by bringing together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to provide diverse perspectives on the issue.

This book discusses critical policy issues that need to be addressed if India wishes to achieve the SDG 1 based elusive goal of ending poverty in the country. In its nine chapters, it takes the readers through trends and estimates of poverty in India, explains changes in the way it has been measured over time and the factors that lead to persistence of poverty, draws attention to the fact that hunger is both a cause and an effect of poverty and has gender and age dimensions too. The book revisits strategies that were successful in addressing poverty emanating from situations of conflict, presents a discussion on migration as a critical coping mechanism among poor, analyses the links between ill health and poverty as well as education and poverty to draw attention to the policy imperatives that need attention. India’s report card on poverty remains dismal even though there is recognition of the importance of reducing or eliminating or ending it at both national and global levels. Despite rapid economic growth and improvement on a range of development indicators, an unacceptably high proportion of India’s population continues to suffer poverty in multiple dimensions. SDG 1 or “ending poverty in all its forms everywhere” cannot be achieved unless policies and poverty alleviation programmes understand and address chronic poverty and its dynamics. This requires that we estimate and understand the extent of poverty, the factors that lead to people getting stuck in it and the ways this can be addressed. It also requires understanding the dynamic nature of poverty or the fact that many of those who are poor are able to move out of poverty as well as the fact that many others who are not poor become impoverished. These are the issues that are comprehensively examined and addressed in this book. In addition to students, teachers and researchers in the areas of development, economic growth, equity and welfare, the book is also of great interest to policy makers, planners and non‐government agencies who are concerned with understanding and addressing poverty-related issues in the developing countries.

This collection of essays provides a state-of-the-art examination of the concepts and methods that can be used to understand poverty dynamics. It does this from an interdisciplinary perspective and includes the work of anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and political scientists. The contributions included highlight the need to conceptualise poverty from a multidimensional perspective and promote Q-Squared research approaches, or those that combine quantitative and qualitative research. The first part of the book provides a review of the research on poverty dynamics in developing countries. Part two focuses on poverty measurement and assessment, and discusses the most recent work of world-leading poverty analysts. The third part focuses on frameworks for understanding poverty analysis that avoid measurement and instead utilise approaches based on social relations and structural analysis. There is widespread consensus that poverty analysis should focus on poverty dynamics and this book shows how this idea can practically be taken forward.

Poverty and inequality persist in many dimensions in the developing world. In order to understand the determinants of poverty and its distribution between and within countries, it is necessary to know its dimensions and the channels through which poverty and inequality affect human well-being. This book analyzes the spatial disparities of the outcomes and determinants of poverty, the interdependencies of dimensions of poverty, the distribution of progress in human development over the population and the dynamics of poverty risk over time. The study takes into account the global spread of poverty. Based on cross-country comparisons of countries from Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, this study does not only consider on average outcomes and determinants of different indicators of human well-being, but also examines their distribution between and within countries.

This book examines Gunnar Myrdal's analysis of poverty in relation to Sweden, the United States, South Asia, and the international economy. The chapters investigate Mrydal's methodological development and his focus on the principle of circular and cummulative causation, dynamic economic analysis, institutional frameworks, value premises, and social engineering. The challenge of world poverty, the international dimension of poverty, and the legacy of The American Dilemma and Asian Drama are also discussed. This book aims to explore the development of Myrdal's analysis of poverty during his life. It will be relevant to students and academics interested in the history of economic thought, development economics, the political economy, and labor economics. Mats Lundahl is Professor emeritus of Development Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics, where he held his chair between 1987 and 2013.

Abstract: August 1995 - In urban areas of Côte d'Ivoire, human capital is the endowment that best explains welfare changes over time. In rural areas, physical capital - especially the amount of land and farm equipment owned - matters most. Empirical investigations of poverty in developing countries tend to focus on the incidence of poverty at a particular point in time. If the incidence of poverty increases, however, there is no information about how many new poor have joined the existing poor and how many people have escaped poverty. Yet this distinction is of crucial policy importance. The chronically poor may need programs to enhance their human and physical capital endowments. Invalids and the very old may need permanent (targeted) transfers. The temporarily poor, on the other hand, may best be helped with programs that complement their own resources and help them bridge a difficult period. Results from analyses of panel surveys show significant mobility into and out of poverty and reveal a dynamism of the poor that policy should stimulate. Understanding what separates chronic from temporary poverty requires knowing which characteristics differentiate those who escape poverty from those who don't. In earlier work, Grootaert, Kanbur, and Oh found that region of residence and socioeconomic status were important factors. In this paper they investigate the role of other household characteristics, especially such asset endowments as human and physical capital, in the case of Côte d'Ivoire. In urban areas of Côte d'Ivoire, human capital is the most important endowment explaining welfare changes over time. Households with well-educated members suffered less loss of welfare than other households. What seems to have mattered, though, is the skills learned through education, not the diplomas obtained. Diplomas may even have worked against some households in having oriented workers too much toward a formal labor market in a time when employment growth came almost entirely from small enterprises. In rural areas, physical capital - especially the amount of land and farm equipment owned - mattered most. Smallholders were more likely to suffer welfare declines. Households with diversified sources of income managed better, especially if they had an important source of nonfarm income. In both rural and urban areas, larger households suffered greater declines in welfare and households that got larger were unable to increase income enough to maintain their former welfare level. Households whose heads worked in the public sector maintained welfare better than other households, a finding that confirms earlier observations. The results also suggest that government policies toward certain regions or types of household can outweigh the effects of household endownments. Surprisingly, migrant non-Ivorian households tended to be better at preventing welfare losses than Ivorian households, while households headed by women did better than those headed by men (after controlling for differences in or changes in endowment). The implications for policymakers? First, education is associated with higher welfare levels and helps people cope better with economic decline. Second, targeting the social safety net to larger households - possibly through the schools, to reach children - is justified in periods of decline. Third, smallholders might be targeted in rural areas, and ways found to encourage diversification of income there. This paper - a joint product of the Social Policy and Resettlement Division, Environment Department, and the Africa Regional Office, Office of the Chief Economist - is the result of a research project on The Dynamics of Poverty: Why Some People Escape Poverty and Others Don't, A Panel Analysis for Côte d'Ivoire (RPO 678-70).