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.
These are the chronic poor: those who suffer poverty for many years, often for a lifetime, and who are likely to transfer their poverty to their children. They are the people who benefit least, or suffer most, from the current process of globalisation and policies for development and who are the most difficult to assist. They are found in poor and rich
countries, remote rural areas and inner city slums. They experience social exclusion because of their gender, age, ethnicity, disability, caste and social position, among others.
Chronic and transient poverty
Much recent research has pointed to the importance of looking at differences among the poor to understand why they are poor and to help them improve their situation. For instance, appreciating the differences between chronic and transient poverty is important for policy.
Where poverty is mainly long-term (that is, chronic) then policy should:
- target investment in the geographical, physical and human assets of poor households (such as basic infrastructure, education, land reform, non-contributory old age pensions and disability grants)
- confront barriers to social mobility (such as gender inequality, ethnic discrimination and ageism) so that poor people can improve their social and economic situation.
Where poverty is largely temporary (that is, transient) and the poor are drawn from a much larger group of vulnerable households, then the emphasis should be on:
- broader interventions that support households during hard times, such as social safety nets, insurance and credit programmes.
For those interested in chronic poverty there are four particular questions of interest:
- Why do 450 to 900 million people suffer chronic poverty today?
- Does the way in which some households fall into poverty make them vulnerable to long-term poverty?
- Can we learn anything useful for policy from the way in which households escape poverty?
- What are the prospects for dramatically reducing chronic poverty?
Need for research
The time is now right to research chronic poverty. Data is becoming more readily available for developing countries, helping us to improve our rough estimates of chronic poverty. Understanding what happens to specific households and groups, as well as what happens to average households and national populations, is essential for effective policies to reduce poverty. The articles that follow seek to deepen the understanding of chronic poverty and to identify the policy implications from current research.
Karen Moore's article discusses poverty traps relating to geographical space - locations where the majority of the population are poor and have limited prospects for escaping poverty. Tackling poverty in such areas will require significant levels of public expenditure and an understanding of the ways in which the linkages between rural and urban areas can be used to improve the position of rural people.
Caroline Harper, Rachel Marcus and Karen Moore focus on the time aspect of poverty and particularly on the transfer of poverty from generation to generation. A complex set of factors relating to household and community are associated with poverty cycles. Policies need to support the most disadvantaged families, provide affordable health and education services, assist poor families to retain and build assets and tackle social discrimination in its many and varied forms.
Binayak Sen looks at the driving forces behind poverty at household level in a study involving 21 Bangladeshi villages. Households climbing out of poverty were particularly effective at increasing their assets and diversifying out of agriculture. The research pointed to the need to consider asset redistribution as a component of public policy and to
extend microfinance and NGO programmes down to the poorest of the poor.
In South Africa around a quarter of all households are trapped in long-term poverty. Cobus de Swardt and Andries du Toit discuss the deepening problems faced by the country's poor black households. In the future, policies that both redistribute assets and make social protection schemes more effective will be needed if chronic poverty is to be tackled.
A programme in Bangladesh combining features of livelihood protection (such as food aid) with livelihood promotion (for example, skills training) has helped hundreds of thousands of poor people to improve their position. However, Imran Matin and David Hulme find that around a quarter of these households fall back into poverty once the food aid stops.
When examining the design of programmes and policies to tackle chronic poverty, it is important not to see these as purely technical issues. The choosing of poverty-reduction policies is inherently political as it involves the interaction of domestic political groups with those at the highest level of national and international policy setting. Sam Hickey examines these processes with reference to Uganda.
Disability is closely associated with chronic poverty but there is a major gap in research on this topic. Karen Moore and Rebecca Yeo argue that new research shows that talk about 'inclusiveness' in terms of disabled people has not yet reached development organisations and researchers.
The destitute are similarly invisible in development research and action. Because they are not living in 'households' they are ignored by both censuses and surveys. As Barbara Harriss-White shows, when the government gets involved with the destitute it is mainly to move them on or jail them. Developing effective policies to aid the destitute is not easy but as a start, researchers could stop
ignoring them.
Finally, David Hulme argues that far more policy-relevant analysis of data sets could be carried out if researchers did not withhold data from the public. By hanging on to data, researchers may well 'fast stream' their careers - but they are effectively stealing from the poor. Research funders need to ensure their researchers commit to releasing the data within a reasonable time frame and in a user-friendly format.
The articles in this issue show how an understanding of the forces behind poverty can inform development policy. They suggest starting points for ensuring that the chronic poor are included in research and development action. Expanding such knowledge is a policy priority. Tackling persistent poverty requires that we confront the complexities of poverty with a deeper understanding. Different forms of poverty require different types
of policy if they are to be tackled successfully.
David Hulme
Chronic Poverty Research Centre
Institute for Development Policy and Management
Crawford House
Precinct Centre
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9GH
UK
T +44 (0)161 275 2825
F +44 (0)161 273 8829
david.hulme@man.ac.uk
See also
'Conceptualising Chronic Poverty', World Development 31(3), by D. Hulme
and A. Shepherd, 2003
David Hulme is Professor of Development Studies at the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester. He directs the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, an international partnership of research institutes and advocacy NGOs. His recent work focuses on the long-term poor, the strategies that poor people pursue to cope with and overcome poverty and the effects of policies that seek to assist poor
people.
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