By the year 2000 more than half of the world's poor will be living in cities. Yet poverty alleviation efforts continue to zero in on rural poverty, while little is done to improve conditions for people suffering the ill effects of urban life. Urban poverty is especially complex, often involving fear (as well as actual experience) of violence, displacement and lack of income. Understanding that poverty is not just about low income levels, can be crucial to tackling it effectively. The most effective policy responses may be those which draw on different assessments of how people become poor and how they cope with vulnerability, as shown by case studies from several cities in Pakistan recently reported by a researcher at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Income or consumption measures cannot always capture the experience of poverty on the ground, so policy responses based only on such limited yardsticks of poverty may be inadequate to tackle the problem. Studies of city communities in Pakistan indicate that processes of poverty are location-specific and need to be understood in their context before appropriate policy responses can be made.

A better understanding of the many facets of poverty will involve recognising the complicated strategies involved in building urban livelihoods, including how ethnicity and gender influence these processes.From this perspective it becomes possible to integrate anti-poverty strategies with the improvement of urban services, for example by recognising that improvements in solid waste management may improve health and well-being on the one hand, but on the other may actually displace waste pickers and other waste workers who rely on removing or recycling rubbish for their living.

Urban poverty is experienced in numerous ways, many related to exclusion from wider society as a result of ethnic difference. These experiences included:

• feelings of insecurity because of uncertain legal rights to the land on which settlements are built
• overcrowding in areas where ethnic minorities are excluded from wider society
• harassment, exploitation and the destruction of settlements of Bengali minorities.

The LSE studies identify five types of appropriate policy responses to the specific conditions of urban poverty, viz:

• tackling poverty at the metropolitan level, by dealing with infrastructural problems in ways which promote local economies, such as waste pickers
• conventional means of dealing with income and consumption poverty, such as employment creation and targeted welfare and relief programmes
• dealing with problems of the living environment, such as safe and secure tenure, access to water, transport, and other facilities
• tackling increasing levels of urban violence and insecurity
• recognising relations of power and processes of exclusion and supporting the livelihood strategies of the excluded.

Source(s):
1. Assessing and Responding to Urban Poverty: Lessons from Pakistan. IDS > Bulletin 28 (2), 58-67, J. Beall (1997) >
2. Thoughts on Poverty from a South Asian Rubbish Dump: Gender, Inequality > and Household Waste. IDS Bulletin 28 (3), 73-91, J. Beall (1997) >

Funded by: ESCOR/DFID (Department for International Development), UK (1993 - 1995)

id21 Research Highlight: 1998-Apr-19

Further Information:
J. Beall
Department of Social Policy
LSE
Houghton St
London
WC2A 2AE
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 171 955 7563
Fax: +44 (0) 171 977 7415
Contact the contributor: j.beall@lse.ac.uk

Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics (LSE), UK

Other related links:
Tactics and Trade-Offs: Revisiting the Links between Gender and Poverty, IDS Bulletin 28 (2) 1997 >