Poverty Research Research Articles

Middle class alliances to end poverty?

What role do ‘middle classes’ play in ending poverty, or do they, rather, perpetuate continuous impoverishment? How is poverty socially and racially constructed? What can we learn from comparative and decentred research on poverty? These and other questions are at the forefront in Victoria Lawson’s (2012) essay, which analyzes and theorizes processes and provides facts that cause and reiterate persistent poverty on a global scale. Her writing goes beyond common authoritative framings of poverty, where the poor are defined primarily in terms of lack of income or as a consequence of specific class, gender or racial relations that generate exclusion and impoverishment. Furthermore, poverty is also hegemonically explained in terms of personal inabilities, inappropriate behaviour and lack of entrepreneurial engagement, often attributed to bad governance and overall cultural disposition. These predominant views in mainstream media and in political discourse frame popular perceptions and attitudes to poverty as a measurable fact expressed in statistics, categories and benchmarks used to indicate social change and progress. The results are primarily quantitative analyses of poverty trends and achieved goals, such as expressed in the UN Millennium Development Goals. Nevertheless, do these statistics and standards really tell us about the wellbeing of individuals or communities, and do they in fact help deconstruct the structural reasons and motivations behind poverty generation and poverty maintenance? By introducing the concept of relational poverty Lawson provides the theoretical foundation for understanding persistent poverty as the result of deeply entrenched, historically developed economic and political relations (also see Mosse, 2010). The resulting social categorization reproduces and reiterates inequality and makes continuous exploitation possible. The fact that impoverished people are simultaneously excluded and dominated by the current social, economic and political system becomes the major argument in this thought-provoking essay. Lawson (2012: 5) provides a detailed critique of the conventional quantitative, authoritative approach on poverty research, which basically ‘deemphasizes structural dimensions of poverty’ and responds to these ideological and ontological limits by arguing that ‘people are poor because of powerful others’. This new spin to the debate on poverty in the work of Lawson and the Middle Class Poverty Politics Research Group focuses on the role of middle classes, and the mechanisms in place for acting in opposition to or in solidarity with the poor. Their investigation of the political potential of middle class/subaltern struggles around poverty in Argentina, Canada, South Africa, Thailand, the US and India is anchored in a comparative methodology that will help to understand the integration of communities and places into globalized processes and assist in the interpretation of resulting processes and structures that produce and maintain poverty. bs_bs_banner

Modeling Family Economic Conditions and Young Children’s Development in Rural United States: Implications for Poverty Research

In this study we examined the additive and multiplicative relations between poverty status, material hardship, liquid assets, non-liquid assets, and children’s cognitive skills and social problems at 36 months. The data were from a representative sample of 1,292 children in six rural counties in the United States. Findings indicated that income, material hardship, and non-liquid assets explained unique variation in young children’s development. Material hardship was associated with more social problems for children. Poverty status was associated with lower cognitive skills, and non-liquid assets were associated with higher cognitive skills at 36 months. We concluded that models that estimate the relation between poverty and child outcomes without including measures of hardship and assets could be underspecified.

A Critique of ‘Steady State Economics’

Here is a brief account of human history: ‘For the vast majority of human history, the size of the economy was small compared to the size of the biosphere. But over the last hundred years or so, this balance has changed remarkably due to the increase in the number of people in the world and the growth in each person's consumption of goods and services. […] Due to economic growth, humanity now uses eleven times as much energy, and eight times the weight of material resources every year as it did only a century ago. The global economy is now so large that it is undermining the natural systems on which it depends. The result is a wide range of global environmental problems: climate change, biodiversity loss, stratospheric ozone depletion, deforestation, soil degradation, and the collapse of fisheries. The list goes on’ Here is another account of the same phenomenon: ‘From 2 million or 200,000 or 20,000 or 2,000 years ago until the 18th century there was slow growth in population, almost no increase in health or decrease in mortality, […] increase in wealth for a few, and mixed effects on the environment. Since then there has been rapid growth in population due to spectacular decreases in the death rate, rapid growth in resources, widespread increases in wealth, and an unprecedently clean and beautiful living environment in many parts of the world […] In the 19th century the planet Earth could sustain only one billion people. […] Now, 5 billion people are living longer and more healthily than ever before, on average. The increase in the world's population represents our victory over death’ Unlikely as it may seem, both authors are really describing the same planet, representing two diametrically opposed sets of assumptions. The first view, ‘Malthusianism’ or ‘Steady State Economics’ (SSE), holds that the planet's biosphere is highly fragile and can only cope with a low level of human economic activity. If the latter exceeds its ‘planetary boundaries’, it overstretches the biosphere's carrying capacity, and thus depletes the world's ecological capital: according to the SSE view, the lifestyle we have grown accustomed to is akin to the lifestyle of a prodigal heir, who squanders the family wealth in a mindless consumption frenzy. The only way to prevent disaster is to downsize the world economy to a level which the planet can absorb. Since this is deemed impossible in a capitalist economy, an economic system in which the state tightly controls all economic activity is advocated. The second position, ‘rational optimism’ or ‘sceptical environmentalism’, rejects the SSE assumption that people are just passive consumers of the resources they stumble across. Rather, people are seen as potential problem-solvers, who can overcome resource constraints given the appropriate institutional setup: a system of secure property rights and the free formation of market prices. Suppose demand for resource X was growing at a much faster rate than supply. A Steady State Economist would typically extrapolate this trend into the future, calculate the date we will ‘run out of X’, and describe the consequences in a melodramatic fashion. A sceptical environmentalist would argue that if this trend continues, the price of X will increase. This entices X-suppliers to look for ways of tapping into hitherto inaccessible X-deposits, and X-consumers to look for ways of making more with less X. Entrepreneurs, meanwhile, are enticed to look for ways of substituting X. Whichever approach one finds intuitively more convincing, the empirical track record of the optimist position is vastly superior. Over the past 200 years, all kinds of resources have been predicted to run out and all kinds of ecological disasters have been predicted – next to none has ever materialised. On the macro level, the long-term trend since the Industrial Revolution has been for the world to gradually become more populous and more prosperous. If the global ecosystem was in danger of bursting under the weight of our economic activity, it would have burst long ago. Instead, all kinds of social, health and environmental indicators have improved. So what explains the continued fascination with doom-and-gloom theories? Most modern-day Malthusians make no attempt to hide their loathing of mass consumerism (e.g. New Economics Foundation, 2009). So there may be a predisposition, on their side, to ascribe negative consequences to a process which they are opposed to anyway. This highlights, once more, the danger of using economic analysis in order to seek confirmation for one's preconceived intuitions. Kristian Niemietz is the IEA's Poverty Research Fellow (kniemietz@iea.org.uk)

A Synthesis of Current Approaches to Traps Is Useful But Needs Rethinking for Indigenous Disadvantage and Poverty Research

Maru, Y. T., C. S. Fletcher, and V. H. Chewings. 2012. A synthesis of current approaches to traps is useful but needs rethinking for indigenous disadvantage and poverty research. Ecology and Society 17(2): 7. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-04793-170207

Ethnicity and Delay in Measles Vaccination in a Nairobi Slum

The influence of ethnicity on vaccination uptake in urban slums in Kenya is largely unknown. We examined the disparities in timeliness and coverage of measles vaccination associated with ethnicity in the Korogocho slum of Nairobi. The study used data from the Maternal and Child Health component of the Urbanization, Poverty and Health Dynamics Research Programme undertaken in the Korogocho and Viwandani slums by the African Population and Health Research Center from 2006 to 2010. Vaccination information was collected from children recruited into the study during the first year after birth, and a sub-sample of 2,317 who had been followed throughout the period and had the required information on measles vaccination was included in the analysis. Cox regression analysis was used to determine the association of ethnicity with delayed measles in the slum. We found significant disparities in the coverage and timeliness of measles vaccination between the ethnic groups in Korogocho. The Luhya and minor ethnic groups in the slum were more likely than the Kikuyu to have delayed measles vaccination. Ethnic groups with a high proportion of children with delayed measles vaccination need to be targeted to address cultural barriers to vaccination as part of efforts to improve coverage in urban slums.

Researching the Urban Margins: What Can the United States Learn from Latin America and Vice Versa?

Over the decade and a half that I have been conducting research on poverty and marginality in Latin America (with a specific focus on Argentina), I have become increasingly aware of the lack of dialogue between scholars working on similar issues north and south of the border. The striking similarities in the ways neoliberal economic policies and political transformations are now affecting the lives of the urban poor throughout the Americas might present a good (and well overdue) opportunity to break down artificial, but well-entrenched, “area-studies” boundaries and to scrutinize the manifold (sometimes similar, sometimes not) processes that are shaping the dynamics of urban relegation throughout the continent. True, ghettoes, inner-cities, favelas, villas, comunas, poblaciones, colonias (to mention a few of the terms used to describe the territories where multiple deprivations accumulate throughout the region) are not the same urban forms. While a few economic, political, and/or demographic dynamics that gave birth to, say, a villa miseria in Buenos Aires and the ghetto in Chicago (such as rapid industrialization and mass migration) may have some resemblances, the differences (racial segregation, housing policies, etc.) are far too important to be ignored. The causes and experiences of destitution in the developed North and the (always) developing South are, indeed, quite varied. And yet, years of field research at the urban margins armed with theoretical tools developed with diverse realities in mind have convinced me that sustained and serious engagement between researchers of urban poverty and/or marginality throughout the Americas can lead to better understandings and explanations of the diverse ways in which neoliberal states and economies bolster social and economic vulnerabilities. What can urban sociologists in the United States take away from reading about current dynamics in the sprawling informal settlements in Latin America? Conversely, what can urban sociologists in Latin America learn from reading about the living conditions in enclaves of urban poverty in the United States and the predicament of their residents? In this brief essay, I highlight a few themes found in both bodies of urban poverty research, which have rarely converged in a fruitful exchange; themes present in one literature that can benefit the other; and one theme that, surprisingly enough, has received little (if no) attention in either the United States or Latin America. In doing so, rather than focus on the substantive similarities in the forms and meanings of dispossession, I draw attention to the ways in which social scientific studies of urban poverty in some places

REAVALIANDO CULTURA E POBREZA

Resumo: Nosso objetivo é fazer um balanço da literatura emergente sobre a relação cultura-pobreza; é identificar questões que permanecem sem resposta; e defender a posição de que o estudo judicioso da cultura, com fundamento teórico e base empírica, pode e deve ser uma componente permanente da agenda da pesquisa sobre a pobreza. Começamos identificando as razões científicas e políticas pelas quais os estudiosos da pobreza deveriam preocupar-se profundamente com a cultura. Então, abordamos uma pergunta difícil - o que é "cultura"? - e argumentamos que sociólogos e antropólogos culturais, com a finalidade de entenderem o processo de criação de significado, desenvolveram pelo menos sete instrumentos analíticos distintos, mesmo que parcialmente coincidentes, que poderiam ajudar a responder perguntas sobre casamento, educação, vizinhanças, participação em comunidades e outros tópicos centrais ao estudo da pobreza.

Measuring Poverty: The Official U.S. Measure and Material Hardship

AbstractMaterial hardship is a concept that is crucial to our understanding of inequality. I define it as: an inadequate consumption of goods or services that the public deems minimally necessary for decent human functioning. While quantitative poverty research purports to address this concept, it in fact does so only in part. Most discussions of poverty using the official poverty line say nothing about the material situation of the poor. This study rectifies this failing by making material hardship the centerpiece of the analysis. Data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) are used to compare hardship figures with official poverty statistics. Comparisons of the income poor with the hardship poor find that hardship is more prevalent than official poverty figures suggest. The groups who are the worst off according to income‐poverty figures also do pretty poorly under hardship measures. But we also find that groups we generally think of as economically advantaged do suffer hardship at rates more similar to the traditionally disadvantaged groups. Non‐senior adults, married‐couple households, and workers all experience more hardship than official income rates lead us to believe. One important deviation involves seniors, who look much better off under hardship measures. Thus, the poor population that emerges under the hardship measures (younger, married, and working) looks closer to the U.S. mainstream than the official measure has led us to believe.

Spatial variation in poverty-generating processes: Child poverty in the United States

This study builds on research demonstrating that sub-regions within the United States have different processes that abet poverty and that child poverty is spatially differentiated. We focus on the social attributes of the local area to assess what the geographic place represents in terms of social characteristics, namely racial/ethnic composition and economic structure, and to resolve apparent inconsistencies in poverty research. Using spatial regime and spatial error regression techniques to analyze county census data, we examine spatial differentiation in the relationships that generate child poverty. Our approach addresses the conceptual and technical aspects of spatial inequality. Results show that local-area processes are at play with implications for more nuanced theoretical models and anti-poverty policies that consider systematic differences in factors contributing to child poverty according to the racial/ethnic and economic contexts.

Social Exclusion and Adverse Incorporation in Rural Bangladesh: Evidence from a Mixed - Methods Study of Poverty Dynamics

Using findings from a mixed - methods study of poverty dynamics in rural Bangladesh, including from 293 life history interviews, the paper explores how the alternative stance of viewing poverty dynamics from a social exclusion/adverse incorporation perspective can complement more conventional ways of exploring poverty dynamics. While there are obvious problems with labeling the one third of the population of Bangladesh who live below the poverty line as socially excluded, the insights from social exclusion/ adverse incorporation debates are nevertheless useful for a process-oriented examination of the causes of chronic poverty. The paper focuses on two areas of life: marriage and dowry, and health and medical care. It explores these using insights from social exclusion/ adverse incorporation debates to discuss how multiple, relational and categorical processes cause disadvantage for some people. In both of these spheres of life, gender appears as a key axis of social exclusion/adverse incorporation, and gender, socio-economic status, and access to other power-resources are intertwined. The more multidimensional, relational and dynamic view of poverty, as opposed to a conventional focus on individual or household economic status measured at one point in time, helps to draw attention to social mechanisms that support or hinder social mobility. Thus the perspective provides a complementary way of thinking about causation in poverty research, particularly drawing attention to those causes associated with, what Charles Tilly referred to as, categorical inequality (Tilly, 1999).

The Trappings of Poverty: The Role of Assets and Liabilities in Socio-Economic Mobility in Rural Bangladesh

This paper examines the role of assets and liabilities in socio-economic mobility patterns using findings from 293 life-history interviews, conducted by the author and a small team of researchers in rural Bangladesh in 2007. The analysis shows that individuals on trajectories of long-term improvement in well-being are more likely to have had access to, or to have invested in, a range of productive, investment, or protective assets. Tangible assets such as shops, land, livestock, vehicles and agricultural machinery had direct effects on poverty status and on improvements in life trajectories over the long term; less tangible assets such as investments made in education, networks of relationships, or social status, were less easily assessed but also had positive effects. Characteristics of the most important types of assets are discussed, and the mechanisms by which they contribute to well-being are explored. The paper argues that liabilities should be included in ‘asset-based’ approaches to poverty dynamics. Liabilities counter the positive effects of assets and hold poor people in poverty, and cause others to decline over the long term. These include monetary debt, but also non-tangible liabilities such as illness, dowry, disability, social stigma, physical insecurity, subjection to domination, and other forms of disadvantage or incapacity. These downward pressures are better portrayed as the presence of a liability, rather than the absence of an asset. The paper argues that ‘asset-based’ approaches to poverty research need to become asset and liability-based. The analysis of life histories illustrates that a lack of accounting for liabilities can allow the causes of decline or stagnation in people’s lives to be misjudged, allowing for the possibility of biased policy recommendations.

Overview of migration, poverty and health dynamics in Nairobi City's slum settlements.

The Urbanization, Poverty, and Health Dynamics research program was designed to generate and provide the evidence base that would help governments, development partners, and other stakeholders understand how the urban slum context affects health outcomes in order to stimulate policy and action for uplifting the wellbeing of slum residents. The program was nested into the Nairobi Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance System, a uniquely rich longitudinal research platform, set up in Korogocho and Viwandani slum settlements in Nairobi city, Kenya. Findings provide rich insights on the context in which slum dwellers live and how poverty and migration status interacts with health issues over the life course. Contrary to popular opinions and beliefs that see slums as homogenous residential entities, the findings paint a picture of a highly dynamic and heterogeneous setting. While slum populations are highly mobile, about half of the population comprises relatively well doing long-term dwellers who have lived in slum settlements for over 10 years. The poor health outcomes that slum residents exhibit at all stages of the life course are rooted in three key characteristics of slum settlements: poor environmental conditions and infrastructure; limited access to services due to lack of income to pay for treatment and preventive services; and reliance on poor quality and mostly informal and unregulated health services that are not well suited to meeting the unique realities and health needs of slum dwellers. Consequently, policies and programs aimed at improving the wellbeing of slum dwellers should address comprehensively the underlying structural, economic, behavioral, and service-oriented barriers to good health and productive lives among slum residents.

Agricultural Growth, Poverty Dynamics and Markets

Agricultural growth is a particularly important pathway for addressing the needs of the chronically poor who, as a group, are particularly reliant on agriculture. In summarising key findings on agricultural growth and poverty reduction from country studies commissioned by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), this paper suggests that agricultural growth has been a surprisingly important component of poverty exits, and also finds evidence that agricultural growth helps prevent entries into poverty.

Chronic Poverty and PRSPs: A Desk Study

As the main focus of poverty reduction activity in poor countries, the PRSP approach has the potential to make a major difference to chronic poverty. This paper examines the ways in which PRSPs treat chronic poverty and their potential to make significant impacts on it.Many recent reviews have sought to assess how well PRSPs tackle certain themes, such as, HIV/AIDS, gender, child wellbeing, rural development and forestry. This paper does notattempt to do the same for chronic poverty - firstly, chronic poverty is too broad - almost all aspects of a PRS affect it. Secondly, a desk study cannot illuminate the all-important questions of implementation; only locally-informed analysis can do so. Instead this paper has two purposes: to summarise what can be gleaned from a desk study with regard to the treatment of chronic poverty in PRSPs, focusing in particular on poverty analysis and monitoring; and key areas of policy and action likely to impact on chronic poverty; and to contribute to defining the agenda for the Chronic Poverty Research Centre’s forthcoming primary research on how far PRSPs are contributing to reducing chronic poverty. This will focus largely on questions related to implementation and how it can more effectively reduce chronic poverty.Our focus in this paper was to obtain a good overview of how chronic poverty is treated in a range of PRSPs, rather than undertake in-depth analyses of particular contexts; this will be done in the primary research.

Chronic Poverty and Migration

This paper provides an overview of conceptual understandings of, and methodological research issues on, the relationship between chronic, or long-term, poverty and processes of migration. The paper presents a framework to enable an analysis of social relations and processes of exclusion, and the ways in which these are structured around poverty-related capitals. While livelihood strategies are diverse and multiple, for many poor people, migration represents a central component of these. This paper explores how research can be carried out to examine the characteristics of those who move and those who stay, the processes by which they are compelled or excluded from adopting migration as a livelihood strategy and the circumstances under which migration sustains chronic poverty or presents an opportunity to move out of poverty. Subsequently the paper addresses some of the implications of current migration-related policies for chronic poverty. Taking chronic poverty to mean the intergenerational transfer of poverty and recognising that those amongst the chronically poor are the least likely to benefit from current national and international development efforts (Hulme et al 2001), this paper identifies possible future research priorities for the Chronic Poverty Research Centre into the relationship between moving, staying put and chronic poverty.

Thinking About Chronic Urban Poverty

This short paper examines the issue of chronic urban poverty for the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) . The reports aim is twofold: firstly to review the relevant literature and secondly to suggest research topics and ideas for the first two years of what is envisaged as a five year project. As will become apparent the literature on chronic urban poverty is almost non existent; thus a lot of what follows is an attempt to reconsider more general urban poverty literature through a chronic poverty lens. Finally it is intended as a first attempt to develop some 'working hypothesises' to guide further ongoing research in what is anticipated as a five year research project.

Frameworks for Understanding the Inter-Generational Transmission of Poverty and Well-Being in Developing Countries

Initial work done by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) suggests that the tightest possible definition of chronic poverty would be intergenerationally transmitted (IGT) poverty. However, while this concept has been widely used in a 'developed' country (particularly American) context, focusing particularly on issues of state-benefit dependence, it has rarely been applied to the 'developing' world in a holistic manner. In this paper, a framework for understanding IGT poverty in developing country contexts is developed, focusing on bringing together literature on the intergenerational transfer, extraction, and absence of transfer of different forms of capital: human, social-cultural, social-political, financial/material and environmental/natural. It is important to note that while the concept of IGT poverty is primarily used to signify the 'private' transmission of poverty from older generations of individuals and families to younger generations (especially, but not solely, from parents to children) - and therefore has special relevance to issues of childhood poverty - poverty-related capital can also be transmitted from younger generations to older generations, and within and between the 'public' spheres of community, state and market. It is suggested that of the range of structures, processes, and livelihood strategies that can affect IGT poverty, a few are particularly important in developing countries: HIV/AIDS, migration patterns, socio-legal entitlement norms, labour market structures, and the presence or absence of social safety nets and social services. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of IGT poverty. It is hypothesised that policy interventions will differ depending on the type of capital transmitted, as well as on the general approach to poverty reduction - whether an approach targeted at particular individuals or groups within one generation, or a strategic and instrumental approach focusing on intergenerational structures and relationships.

Bringing Politics Back into Poverty Analysis: Why Understanding Social Relations Matters More for Policy on Chronic Poverty than Measurement

Mainstream poverty research - even after experts had generally accepted the need for a multidimensional view of poverty that goes beyond income/consumption measures to take account of holdings of assets and hence of longer run security (see Chambers 1988, 1992) - has generally failed to address the dynamic, structural and relational factors that give rise to poverty. There is a great deal of technically sophisticated research, much of it based on household surveys, that has provided ever more detailed profiles of poverty in different countries and regions. This research has also produced a number of studies of 'poverty dynamics' that show the implications, for example, of the distribution of assets in a society or of access to human capital. One such study is by the World Bank entitled 'Why some people escape from poverty and others don't' (Grootaert et al 1995). In general this research tends to converge around much the same conclusions: household characteristics, especially dependency ratios, matter; ownership of assets is highly significant; access to insurance such as that provided by holding a regular, secure job, or through being able to claim such a resource as a ration card, matters; and education counts for a lot. Lately these studies have been extended to take account into social relationships through the concept of social capital. But it is perhaps still the case - as exemplified by Guatemala (Ibanez et al. 2002) - that it is the better educated, relatively wealthy, middle-aged men who enjoy most of the social capital. Being very poor, on the other hand, seriously constrains people's abilities to invest in social capital, even within the family (Cleaver 2005). So it is far from being clear that this factor cuts through the self-reinforcing circle of factors that are associated with movements out of poverty (see also Adato, Carter and May 2006; Kumar and Corbridge 2002). Little, if any, of the earlier research aims to address the questions of how and why. Why it is that the factors under consideration are distributed through a society in the manner that they are? These questions refer to the political economy of contemporary capitalism, and to cultural politics. The fact that they are largely ignored shows that poverty research plays a role in depoliticizing what are in essence political problems. It is a part of what James Ferguson (1990) memorably describes as the 'anti-politics machine'. Poverty research in international development shares in 'the idea that scientific knowledge holds the key to solving social problems' which, according to O'Connor, 'has long been an article of faith in American liberalism' (2001: 3). If only - the implicit reasoning runs - 'we' can build a good scientific understanding of poverty, then 'we' will be able to solve the problem. But the reality is that poverty knowledge is profoundly political, as the contemporary debates over poverty trends in India in the 1990s so clearly show (Deaton and Kozel 2004). The problem is that even in the most sophisticated poverty measurements, long chains of assumptions are necessarily made so that these are always open to question. And the assumptions specialists most readily accept depend on value judgements. As O'Connor argues, poverty research, dominated in the case of international development by people educated in a small number of mainly American universities, is an exercise in power. This has been recognized in recent years at the centre of poverty knowledge, the World Bank, in its celebrated study, Voices of the Poor. But that study, which argues for a different model of knowledge as the basis for poverty action, has been ignored. Poverty research seems to indicate that the social sciences should not try to emulate the natural sciences (Flyvberg 2001). They are more effective in generating the kind of knowledge that develops from familiarity with practice in particular contexts, helping people to question relationships of knowledge and power, such as those giving rise to poverty, and subsequently to work to produce change. Such a view has quite profound implications for the design of poverty research.

Chronic Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia: A Select Annotated Bibliography with Special Reference to Remote Rural Areas

The Annotated Bibliography is divided into five main parts.First, the Introduction provides a detailed guide to the content and structure of the document.Second, as the internet is now an established resource for poverty research, a concise selection of useful websites is included: Poverty Research Online. It includes a specific section on spatial aspects of poverty.Third, the Chronic Poverty Toolbox (Section 1) contains specific literature on chronic poverty, divided into four sub-sections: material that refer directly to chronic poverty and its alleviation; remote rural areas and the spatial dimensions of poverty; conceptual approaches to poverty (including social exclusion); and measuring poverty (including longitudinal and spatial approaches, with reference to some datasets).Fourth, Rural Poverty (Section 2) includes a small selection of general overviews of rural poverty, and a larger number of documents relating to key strands within current poverty research – such as conflict, risk, politics and globalisation. Three subsections focus on rural poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia generally, and India in particular.Fifth, Vulnerable Groups (Section 3) reviews the literature on a selection of groups likely to be particularly vulnerable to chronic poverty: women, people with disabilities, older people and pastoralists.This Annotated Bibliography represents an early attempt to compile and review publications and websites relevant to the study of chronic poverty, and should be used in connection with the more extensive and up-to-date set of references available via the Chronic Poverty Bibliographic Database, into which the majority of the references have been incorporated. The present bibliography has a specific focus on chronic poverty in remote rural areas, one of several cross-cutting research themes pursued by the CPRC.

Thinking About Youth Poverty Through the Lenses of Chronic Poverty, Life-Course Poverty and Intergenerational Poverty

Youth poverty is a serious global problem, not least because of the large numbers of youth and children living in absolute poverty in developing countries. In many contexts, youth are relatively likely to experience poverty because of age-based discrimination and the uncertainties and dynamism surrounding the transition from childhood to adulthood. But it is not always the case that youth are disproportionately poor. The relative extent of youth poverty in a given context depends on the interaction of many different factors. This paper draws upon work by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre to argue that the related concepts of chronic poverty, life-course poverty and intergenerational poverty are useful for understanding youth poverty. First, analysis of the causes of chronic poverty can help locate the relative position of different groups of the poor and facilitate policy prioritisation. Second, life-course events (e.g. leaving school, starting work, having children) play a significant role in shaping vulnerability to poverty. These 'life events' are more likely to occur during particular 'life stages', but stage is only partly related to age. Third, it is important to take an intergenerational perspective because poverty experienced in youth is often linked to parental poverty and childhood deprivation, and - like poverty in childhood or old age - can have implications across the life-course of a young person and that of her/his household. At the same time that youth may not always be among the poorest or the most vulnerable, adolescence and young adulthood may be the period, after early childhood, in which anti-poverty interventions have the most potential for long-term positive change. Constructing and analysing developing country panel datasets (quantitative and qualitative) can foster the development of suitable interventions, appropriately timed.