Economists, anthropologists and others who study household dynamics tend to assume that people within a household will cooperate to fulfil the needs of that household. Most households are based on family groups and the predominant notion is that families help each other. However, it appears that when conditions are very difficult, this may not be the case.

Poverty and unemployment in Nicaragua are high after many years of economic crisis. Migration is common because of economic need, broad disillusion with the country’s politics, corruption and poor job creation. Research in a barrio (neighbourhood) in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua, found that household members do not help each other or share resources in times of need. The researcher, from the London School of Economics in the UK, lived in a household of 14 adults and children to observe how they earned and spent money, and shared resources and services. The group consisted of family members and three non-family paying lodgers.

Most analyses expect household members to work together to find ways out of poverty. However, in the area studied, most people felt that social cohesion and cooperation had disappeared and that people cared only for themselves. Although in the 1980s and 1990s family and social networks shared resources and helped other members in times of need, it was felt that this system had broken down in recent years.

In the household studied:

• Family members were split into three economically separate groups. Each had a primary income earner and cooked and ate separately.
• Women’s and men’s roles were divided. In two groups men were the income earners and decided how much to give to their wives. The rest they spent on themselves.
• Incomes varied widely between groups and over time. However, when one couple was in severe difficulties and could barely eat, their siblings and parent did not help or share food.
• The household varied a great deal over time, with people coming and going and incomes changing with circumstance.

Most households in the area were similarly split, with groups sharing space but not resources, although they were usually part of a family group. Conflicts often arose, especially between men and women, but at the same time they cooperated for practical purposes, for example a husband paying part of his income in return for the wife providing meals. Implications for future analysis of households are:

• The prevailing assumption that households based on family ties generally cooperate should be questioned.
• When disasters occur, they combine with economic crisis, political disillusionment and the breakdown of social values, and solidarity and mutual assistance can disappear.
• As well as external influences, relationships between individuals, which change over time, affect cooperation.
• The economic organisation of households depends on interactions of economic, material, emotional, social, cultural, political and biological dimensions. These complex dimensions need to be understood to know how broader changes will affect households, where individual and collective forces collide.

Source(s):
‘Each to Their Own’: Ethnographic Notes on the Economic Organisation of Poor Households in Urban Nicaragua’, Journal of Development Studies, 43:3, pages 391–419, by Dennis Rodgers, 2007
‘Managua’, by Dennis Rodgers, in “Fractured Cities: Urban Violence, State Failure and Social Exclusion”, Zed: London, edited by Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt, 2006

Funded by: The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, Northern Ireland Emslie Horniman Scholarship Fund, The Trinity College William Wyse Fund

id21 Research Highlight: 17 July 2007

Further Information:
Dennis Rodgers
Lecturer in Urban Development
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 79557718
Fax: +44 (0)20 79557412
Contact the contributor: d.w.rodgers@lse.ac.uk

London School of Economics and Political Science, Geography and Environment, UK

Other related links:
Chronic Poverty Research Centre

'Understanding urban chronic poverty in Ethiopia'

'Escaping poverty: Can policy reach the chronically poor?'

Eldis Resource Guide on Household Poverty