March 2003 Insights Issue
#46
Escaping poverty
Can policy reach the chronically poor?
The past few years have seen remarkable consensus on and commitment to poverty reduction from governments around the world. This has resulted in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which seek to reduce global absolute poverty by 50 per cent by 2015 and to reduce other forms of human deprivation. However, even if the MDGs are achieved - and the prospect of this happening is not good - some 900 million people will have an income of less than US$1 a day in 2015. Hundreds of millions of people will have suffered losses that severely reduce their capabilities and scores of millions will have died easily preventable deaths.
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Other articles in this issue:
People living in certain areas are often vulnerable to similar risks, increasing their chance of becoming chronically poor. At the same time, in some poor areas not everyone is poor, and not everyone who is poor will remain so for long. Where do 'pockets of poverty' exist and why? Under what conditions can they become 'poverty traps'?
Why do some poor children grow up to be poor adults, while others escape poverty as they grow up? What are the main ways in which poverty is passed from generation to generation? What policies and actions have the greatest impact in breaking this kind of poverty cycle?
Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the South African Government has achieved political stability, improved social services and brought about steady national economic growth. At the same time, poverty and economic inequality along racial lines have increased. Why is it that today, more than a quarter of all households remain trapped in long-term poverty?
As they do not own small income-generating businesses, the chronically poor are excluded from most microfinance programmes. However, services that do target the chronically poor, such as food subsidies, do not offer them any long-term opportunities to improve their household incomes and welfare. Is there another way?
How do political actors, processes, debates and institutions affect efforts to reduce chronic poverty in Uganda? Debates on policy and interventions that might challenge chronic poverty currently lack 'political capital', with little institutional or ideological support. Politics in a broader sense than policy-making offers opportunities and threatens attempts to reduce poverty.
The proportion of disabled people is high among the very poor. Yet disabled people and disability issues are largely excluded from international development organisations and research. How can development researchers and policy-makers take inclusion seriously?
The poorest of the poor are sometimes referred to as destitute. How
are we to understand destitution and how does it relate to political
economy? Destitution has distinct economic, social and political aspects.
Destitute people have lost control over any assets they may have had
and have lost access to income from their own labour. As a process, destitution
has been viewed as a series of events that brings about the loss of important
assets, in turn causing other losses, after which things can never return
to what they were before.
There is growing evidence that researchers and their agencies 'capture' poverty data sets for years on end, without making them publicly available. While hanging on to data sets may enhance their reputations and help 'fast-stream' their careers, what long-term effect does this have on research into chronic poverty and ultimately, the poor themselves?
Further web resources.
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