Drivers Of Poverty Research Articles

The Ravages of Resettlement: A Ghanaian Case Study

Tensions characterise life in a resettlement community in Ghana, over 40 years after it was formed. Media reports trace the problem to a 30-acre parcel of land. However, interviews with ordinary people and opinion leaders in the community and officials who played key roles in planning the resettlement scheme reveal that the land conflict is only one part of the problem. More structural and institutional problems exist as the key drivers of poverty and unrest in this resettlement town. From this perspective, some mitigating policies are suggested.

Coupled Dynamical Models of Ecological Drivers of Poverty and Economic Growth

Understanding the causes of the persistence of extreme poverty continues to challenge policy and research in the biological, social and mathemat- ical sciences. Generally, the extremely poor depend on their immediate environment and natural resource base for subsistence and suffer high morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases. In pursuit of general integrated mathematical frameworks for the ecology of poverty, we present a road map for modeling how ecological drivers of poverty such as infectious diseases, renewable resources, population growth, etc., interact with economic dynamics to cause persistent poverty or “poverty traps”. The nonlinearities associated with these interactions can give rise to multiple stable equilibria such that there are tipping points or thresholds that determine whether populations experience virtuous versus vicious cycles in ecological-economic space. Our analysis indicates that 13-30% of the ecological-economic feasible parameter space result in bistability, and hence poverty traps. We also find out that the existence of bistability depends on both key ecological and economic parameters including the background disease transmission and recovery rates, the number of pathogens in the system and the investment rate in human capital. In particular, the number of pathogens in the system increases the intensity of ecological-economic feedback, making poverty traps inevitable at sufficiently high numbers of pathogens that pre- vent the acquisition of human capital. Our framework provides a general approach for theoretically and empirically exploring the dynamics of cou- pled ecological-economic systems, equally reliant on existing paradigms in the social, biological and mathematical sciences. More specifically, it offers a model on the relationship between human health, renewable resources and economic growth. This is a new multidisciplinary research area with significant implications for both policy and research in the biological, social and mathematical sciences.

Multidimensional Poverty, Approach by the Fuzzy Set Theory: The Case of Soubre and Gueyo in Cote DDIvoire

This study allowed us to measure poverty in terms of living conditions by using the fuzzy sets theory and breaking down this poverty by household characteristics. Subsequently, we evaluated the impact of the administration of land and the type of practiced cultures on the living conditions of cocoa farmer households. To make this, we have constructed a multidimensional poverty index with Multiple Component Analysis (MCA) and the fuzzy set theory. By using data from departments of Soubre and Gueyo from the survey on cocoa production systems and livelihoods of populations in areas of cocoa production, conducted by National School of Statistics and Applied Economics (NSSAE) of Abidjan, we evaluated to 43.25% the level of deprivation of the households in these cocoa farmer two cities. We also found that the main dimensions of displacement, ownership of durable goods, education, agricultural equipment, access to finance and training are the key drivers of poverty in households of cocoa farmers of Soubre and Gueyo. Similarly, associating other cultures to cocoa and the fact to own their land improve the living conditions of households cocoa farmers in these two cities.

Modelling Small Area at-Risk-of-Poverty Rates for the UK Using the World Bank Methodology and the EU-SILC

The at-risk-of-poverty rate is a key monitoring indicator in connection with the European Union’s goal to take 20 million people out of the risk of poverty and social exclusion by 2020. Whilst there is comprehensive and up to date coverage at the national level, much less is known about how different regions are performing in this respect. This paper illustrates how the World Bank poverty mapping methodology, combined with the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey, can be used to compute small area estimates of at-risk-of-poverty rates for the UK, and compares the obtained estimates with existing estimates of relative poverty obtained using national surveys. There is considerable spatial dispersion in at-risk-of-poverty rates. The highest rates tend to be found in large cities, but there are also relatively high rates in some remote rural areas. Furthermore, regional differences in housing costs can act as an important driver of poverty, particularly in large cities. Our analysis suggests that the EU-SILC survey, combined with national population census data, can provide a practical basis for developing regional or local estimates of at-risk-of-poverty rates across EU Member States, which would be particularly valuable where national surveys have inadequate regional sampling.

Why should mental health have a place in the post-2015 global health agenda?

BackgroundThe tenure of the Millennium Development Goals formally expires in 2015 and will be replaced with a new development agenda. The MDGs did not include goals or targets for mental health. Despite gathering momentum during the last 15 years, mental health has not enjoyed the same pace of progress as the sectors explicitly mentioned within the MDGs. This article outlines the evidence indicating that mental health should be firmly positioned in post-2015 health policy and discusses strategies to advance the global mental health agenda.DiscussionThe interactions between mental health and other development goals are numerous and complex. Consequently, investment in mental health pays dividends on a wider level than simply psychiatric clinical outcomes. Mental health’s reciprocal relationship with poverty is consistent with the strong focus on economic development, rather than health in isolation, detailed in the post-2015 UN statements to date. A focus on the quality of mental health care provided in low and middle-income countries deserves priority in the new health agenda. This should include consideration of the accessibility of mental health care and the use of evidence based diagnosis and management in these settings.SummaryLack of investment in the mental health of populations is a key driver of poverty and inequality in low and middle-income countries. Renewed focus on mental health post-2015 is an opportunity to address the global burden of mental disorders and make a positive impact on the wider development agenda.

The ‘girl effect’: liberalism, empowerment and the contradictions of development

The ‘girl effect’ – the idea that investment in the skills and labour of young women is the key to stimulating economic growth and reducing poverty in the global South – has recently become a key development strategy of the World Bank, the imf, usaid and dfid, in partnership with corporations such as Nike and Goldman Sachs. This paper examines the logic of this discourse and its stance towards kinship in the global South, situating it within the broader rise of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ as development objectives over the past two decades. Empowerment discourse, and the ‘capability’ approach on which it is based, has become popular because it taps into ideals of individual freedom that are central to the Western liberal tradition. But this project shifts attention away from more substantive drivers of poverty – structural adjustment, debt, tax evasion, labour exploitation, financial crisis, etc – as it casts blame for underdevelopment on local forms of personhood and kinship. As a result, women and girls are made to bear the responsibility for bootstrapping themselves out of poverty that is caused by external institutions – and often the very ones that purport to save them.

Chronic Poverty in Rural Ethiopia through the Lens of Life-histories

Studying chronic poverty using retrospective qualitative data (life-histories) in conjunction with longitudinal panel data is now recognized to provide deep and reliable insights. This paper uses three rounds of panel data and life-histories collected by Young Lives, a longitudinal study of childhood poverty, to identify factors that contribute to households becoming or remaining poor in rural Ethiopia. It combines a case-centred and a variable-centred approach, analysing and comparing the experiences of individual households (cases) using qualitative and quantitative techniques and interrogating these findings by looking at attributes of households (variables) across a larger sample. The substantive findings on poverty ‘drivers’ and ‘maintainers’ support those of previous studies: rainfall, illness, debt, exclusion from the main social protection scheme. But by mixing different types of data and analysis, the paper shows that combinations of factors rather than single events drive households into poverty, and that household characteristics play an important role. The primary contribution of the paper is methodological as it presents a novel method of using life-histories to investigate chronic poverty in rural Ethiopia by generating or testing hypotheses/findings on poverty drivers and maintainers.

Why payment systems matter to financial inclusion: Examining the role of social cash transfers

There is growing realisation that financial inclusion and social inclusion are part of the same effort. As a result, financial inclusion has become a policy priority for many governments, seeing this as a complement to financial stability, and viewing financial exclusion as a risk to financial integrity. Advances in understanding the drivers of poverty and developments in technology provide new opportunities to governments to address the fight against poverty and meet the objectives of financial inclusion. One of the most successful tools in the fight against poverty is social protection via cash transfers. These regular payments of money, provided by the government, assist in decreasing chronic or shock-induced poverty and reduce economic vulnerability. Where social cash transfers are national public policy, the objective is to provide safety, transparency and cost efficiency in the delivery of the cash transfers. Government agencies delivering the cash transfers seek the means to lower the processing costs, reduce fraud and leakage, as well as improve access for the financially underserved. For the recipient, there is a need for safety and control over the funds, convenient access and reliable payment methods. As a result there is a strong argument in favour of leveraging the technological advances in financial services with government payment programmes to promote financial inclusion.

Lack of access to health care for African indigents: a social exclusion perspective

BackgroundLack of access to health care is a persistent condition for most African indigents, to which the common technical approach of targeting initiatives is an insufficient antidote. To overcome the standstill, an integrated technical and political approach is needed. Such policy shift is dependent on political support, and on alignment of international and national actors. We explore if the analytical framework of social exclusion can contribute to the latter.MethodsWe produce a critical and evaluative account of the literature on three themes: social exclusion, development policy, and indigence in Africa–and their interface. First, we trace the concept of social exclusion as it evolved over time and space in policy circles. We then discuss the relevance of a social exclusion perspective in developing countries. Finally, we apply this perspective to Africa, its indigents, and their lack of access to health care.ResultsThe concept of social exclusion as an underlying process of structural inequalities has needed two decades to find acceptance in international policy circles. Initial scepticism about the relevance of the concept in developing countries is now giving way to recognition of its universality. For a variety of reasons however, the uptake of a social exclusion perspective in Africa has been limited. Nevertheless, social exclusion as a driver of poverty and inequity in Africa is evident, and manifestly so in the case of the African indigents.ConclusionThe concept of social exclusion provides a useful framework for improved understanding of origins and persistence of the access problem that African indigents face, and for generating political space for an integrated approach.

Переход бедности от поколения к поколению: вызовы, стоящие перед Польшей

This article argues that urban poverty pockets emerged in Poland in the course of the system transformation towards capitalism. The main poverty drivers were the three overlapping processes: de-industrialization, ‘dewelfarization’ and de-institutionalization of the family accompanied by the devolution of social care management from the central to the local government. The enclaves of poverty emerged as a result of better-off residents leaving dilapidated blocks of flats and both spontaneous and deliberate accommodation of poorer citizens in these houses as social housing residents. In these areas, poverty tends to take root and reproduce in subsequent generations. The article is based on a 20-year study carried out in the city of Łodź under the author’s supervision. The article summarizes the findings obtained from three sources: 1) narrative interviews held twice — in 1998 and 2008 — among 90 adults belonging to the subsequent generations of a certain extended family residing in a poverty enclave; 2) 73 in-depth interviews with teenage mothers residing in poverty enclaves, 3) a quantitative survey of 500 13-year-old pupils attending schools located in poverty enclaves. The author arrives at the conclusion that poverty enclaves in Łodź resemble neighbourhoods of relegation as conceptualized by Loic Wacquant.

The status of wetlands, threats and the predicted effect of global climate change: the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa

The larger wetlands of Sub-Saharan Africa, cover 2,072,775 km2 (9.01 %) of the landmass. This paper reviews the major threats, including climate change, to these wetlands, a number of which lie in semi-arid regions. Climate change predictions are that the arid or semi-arid regions of Africa in the latitudes around the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer will become drier. The future of wetlands is allied to human well-being, and the effects of climate change cannot be de-linked from human activities occurring in and around wetlands. The high productivity of wetlands supports substantial populations of poor people dependent on ecosystem services for at least part of their livelihood. This is particularly so in the semi-arid Sahel in the North and equivalent latitudes in the south, which are seen as vulnerable to climate change largely due to high levels of poverty and low adaptive capacity. While sustainable ecosystem management is a long-term goal, survival is more immediate to poor people depending on ecosystem services for their livelihoods. Population increase and a decrease in the resource base due to predicted decreased rainfall will lead to over exploitation of the resource base. Certain engineering interventions redistribute ecosystem services to the benefit of those upstream or away from the river system. Governance systems play a key role in the sustainable management of resources. Breakdown of governance systems through civil war is seen as a driver of poverty and a major cause of breakdown in resource conservation, increasing the dependence of poor people on ecosystems.

‘Sufferings Start from the Mothers’ Womb’: Vulnerabilities and Livelihood War of the Small-Scale Fishers of Bangladesh

Due to its deltaic geographical position and precarious socioeconomic and demographic conditions, Bangladesh is recognized worldwide for its exposure to recurring environmental hazards. Based on a 21-month long field study in two fishing villages that are characterized by distinct ecological settings and ethnic groups, this article examines the arrays of cross-scale environmental, social and institutional stressors that singly or cumulatively impact fishers’ livelihood well-being and generational poverty. Analysis of the vulnerabilities makes it clear that the degree to which poor fishers suffer from environmental stressors and calamities is determined not only by the frequency of abnormal events, but also by their internal capabilities of self-protection, resilience against those stressors, position in the social network and asset and resource ownership. Coastal and floodplain fishers identified cyclone and long-standing floods as strong drivers of poverty as their bundles of ‘safety net’ capital are usually disrupted or lost. For a majority of the fishers, income/day/family declines to as low as US$ 0.7–0.9. Fishers lack appropriate sets of endowments and entitlements that would allow them immediate buffer against livelihood stressors. Vulnerability here is intricately related to one’s socio-economic status; poor and ‘socially vulnerable’ ethnic fishers are concurrently ‘biologically vulnerable’ too. The corollary of multi-faceted stressors is that, poverty persists as an ever-increasing haunting presence that thousands of floodplain and coastal fishers of Bangladesh are forced to cope with. It is evident that nature-induced stressors exert ‘ratchet effects’ on fishers with low endowments who critically risk nutritional deprivation and social standing. Lucidly, most of the fishers are trapped in a form of ‘livelihood war’.

Analyzing Water Poverty in Basins

Inadequate provision of water-related services in developing countries continues to undermine strategies for poverty alleviation. The root lies in the inability of policy makers to tackle resource development in a holistic and integrated manner. This requires a multi-faceted approach to combine physical estimates of water availability with the socio-economic drivers of poverty. It is with this in mind that the Water Poverty Index (WPI) was created. However, water resources are dynamic, and the linkages between water scarcity and poverty incorporate complex cause-effect relationships. Water poverty should thus be addressed in a more systemic way. This would allow a comprehensive understanding of the crosscutting nature of water issues and impacts. In this paper, a system approach has been adopted to develop a structured framework for a multi-dimensional evaluation of water poverty in basins. It is an attempt to assess the diverse, interacting components of catchment processes, societal pressures, and policy actions. An enhanced Water Poverty Index (eWPI) has been developed and is proposed in this study. To exemplify the utilisation of the index, and to test its applicability and validity, eWPI has been piloted in a Peruvian watershed as initial case study. Results highlight the likely utility of the tool to identify areas for improvement, and ultimately guide appropriate action towards better service delivery and sustainable management of water resources.

An Exploratory Analysis of Deprivation and Ill-Health Led Poverty in Urban India: A Case Study of Delhi

This paper examines the multi-dimensional nature of urban poverty with special emphasis on ill-health led deprivation. As a driver of poverty, ill-health reduces the income earning potential and increases expenditure on medication, thereby causing asset depletion, increasing debt and worsening poverty. The bulk of ill-health related expenditure in India is borne by households themselves and almost all of this is in the form of out-of-pocket spending. Hence this paper attempts to explore the links between urban poverty and ill-health through a case study based on evidence from150 households with a history of ailment, located in two slum clusters of Delhi. The paper explores the patterns of morbidity, health care utilisation and treatment cost within these households. It further estimates the economic burden of ill-health as measured by illness induced impoverishment, and also brings out its variation across select socio-economic and disease characteristics within the sample households. Using this evidence, it argues for explicitly raising existing poverty lines based on “norm based” expenditure required for meeting the direct and indirect costs of health shocks and their aftermath and for priority provisioning of substantial government resources for the health sector.

Improved Method to Calculate a Water Poverty Index at Local Scale

The Water Poverty Index (WPI) was created as an interdisciplinary indicator to assess water stress and scarcity, linking physical estimates of water availability with the socioeconomic drivers of poverty. This index has found great relevance in policy making as an effective water management tool, particularly in resources allocation and prioritization processes. Two conceptual weaknesses exist in the current index: (1) inadequate technique to combine available data and (2) poor statistical properties of the resulting composite. The purpose of this paper is to propose a suitable methodology to assess water poverty that overcomes these weaknesses. To this end, a number of combinations to create the WPI have been considered, based on indicators selection criteria, simple aggregation functions and multivariate analysis. The approach adopted has been designed for universal application at local scale. To exemplify the utilization of each alternative method, they have been piloted and implemented in the Turkana District (Kenya) as a case study. The paper concludes that the weighted multiplicative function is the most appropriate aggregation method for estimation of water poverty. It is least eclipsing and ambiguous free function, and it does not allow compensability among different variables of the index.

Social protection to support vulnerable children and families: the potential of cash transfers to protect education, health and nutrition

Investing in social protection in sub-Saharan Africa has taken on a new urgency as HIV and AIDS interact with other drivers of poverty to simultaneously destabilise livelihoods systems and family and community safety nets. Cash transfer programmes already reach millions of people in South Africa, and in other countries in southern and East Africa plans are underway to reach tens and eventually hundreds of thousands more. Cash transfers worldwide have demonstrated large impacts on the education, health and nutrition of children. While the strongest evidence is from conditional cash transfer evaluations in Latin America and Asia, important results are emerging in the newer African programmes. Cash transfers can be implemented in conjunction with other services involving education, health, nutrition, social welfare and others, including those related to HIV and AIDS. HIV/AIDS-affected families are diverse with respect to household structure, ability to work and access to assets, arguing for a mix of approaches, including food assistance and income-generation programmes. However, cash transfers appear to offer the best strategy for scaling up to a national system of social protection, by reaching families who are the most capacity constrained, in large numbers, relatively quickly. These are important considerations for communities hard-hit by HIV and AIDS, given the extent and nature of deprivation, the long-term risk to human capital and the current political willingness to act.

The Potential for Calculating a Meaningful Water Poverty Index

One of the most significant failures in the development process has been our inability to match water demand to its supply. For a large portion of the world's population, this has meant a lack of provision of adequate water for domestic use, resulting in a significant loss of time and effort, especially on the part of women. While science can now provide us with detailed assessments of water resource availability, little to date has been done to link this to our knowledge of human resources and their geographical distributions. In order to manage these resources better, it is essential that they be addressed in a more holistic way. This paper provides a preliminary discussion of possible ways in which an interdisciplinary approach can be taken to produce a more holistic assessment of water stress, in such a way as to link physical estimates of water availability with the socio-economic drivers of poverty. To this end, some approaches to creating a Water Poverty Index are discussed, and it is hoped that this paper will generate interest and debate among a wide range of readers.