Poverty Dynamics Interdisciplinary Perspectives

This collection of essays provides a state-of-the-art examination of the concepts and methods that can be used to understand poverty dynamics. It does this from an interdisciplinary perspective and includes the work of anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and political scientists. The contributions included highlight the need to conceptualise poverty from a multidimensional perspective and promote Q-Squared research approaches, or those that combine quantitative and qualitative research. The first part of the book provides a review of the research on poverty dynamics in developing countries. Part two focuses on poverty measurement and assessment, and discusses the most recent work of world-leading poverty analysts. The third part focuses on frameworks for understanding poverty analysis that avoid measurement and instead utilise approaches based on social relations and structural analysis. There is widespread consensus that poverty analysis should focus on poverty dynamics and this book shows how this idea can practically be taken forward.

Part I: Introduction. 1. Poverty Dynamics: Measurement and Understanding from an Interdisciplinary Perspective. Part II: Poverty Dynamics: Poverty Measurement and Assessment. 2. Chronic Poverty and All That: The Measurement of Poverty Over Time. 3. A Class of Chronic Poverty Measures. 4. Measuring Chronic Non-Income Poverty. 5. The Construction of an Asset Index Measuring Asset Accumulation in Ecuador. 6. Looking Forward: Theory-Based Measures of Chronic Poverty and Vulnerability. 7. Exploring Poverty Dynamics from Life History Interviews in Bangladesh. 8. Subjective Assessments, Participatory Methods and Poverty Dynamics: The Stages of Progress Method. Part III: Explanatory Frameworks for Understanding Poverty Dynamics. 9. Bringing Politics Back into Poverty Analysis: Why Understanding of Social Relations Matters More for Policy on Chronic Poverty than Measurement. 10. Poverty Measurement Blues: Beyond 'Q-Squared' Approaches to Understanding Chronic Poverty in South Africa. 11. When Endowments and Opportunities Don't Match: Understanding Chronic Poverty. 12. Investments, Bequeaths, and Public Policy: Intergenerational Asset Transfers and the Escape From Poverty. 13. Questioning the Power of Resilience: Are Children Up To the Task of Disrupting the Transmission of Poverty?. 14. The Social Distribution of Sanctioned Harm: Thinking Through Chronic Poverty, Durable Poverty and Destitution. 15. Toward an Economic Sociology of Chronic Poverty: Enhancing the Rigour and Relevance of Social Theory.

Tony Addison is Executive Director of the Brooks World Poverty Institute (BWPI) University of Manchester, Associate Director of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), and Professor of Development Studies, University of Manchester. He is currently working on chronic poverty, post-conflict reconstruction and development finance. David Hulme is Professor of Development Studies at the University of Manchester and Associate Director of the Brooks World Poverty Institute and the Chronic Poverty Research Centre. His research interests include rural development; poverty analysis and poverty reduction strategies; finance for the poor and sociology of development. At present he is a senior research fellow with the Leverhulme Trust. Ravi Kanbur is T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, and Professor of Economics at Cornell University. He has held various positions at the World Bank and has also served as Director of the World Bank's World Development Report.