Unplanned Development by Jonathan Rigg

Author:Jonathan Rigg [Rigg, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Developing & Emerging Countries
ISBN: 9781848139916
Google: Fh5jDgAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 15794040
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2012-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

Figures 5.2a and 5.2b The margins of poverty in South-East Asia (1990 and 2005)

The near-poor are much less able to respond creatively to the sorts of shocks that are characteristic of slides into poverty – vehicle accidents, serious illness, dowry demands and wedding and funeral expenses, for example. Such shocks can lead, in turn, to the selling of assets and the withdrawal of children from school, thus transforming a time-specific shock into an inter-generational sequence of effects, as noted above. The non-poor are in a much better position to smooth consumption, to cut discretionary spending, protect assets (including future assets in the form of children’s schooling) and trade off different aspects of well-being than the poor and near-poor. For those with assets, even when they descend into poverty, this is far more likely to be short-term than for those who are asset-deficient, particularly if they are in a position to protect their core asset base.15 It is for this reason that Carter and Barrett (2006; and see Barrett and McPeak 2003) propose that if we are to distinguish between structural and stochastic (non-deterministic) poverty transitions we need to develop asset-based poverty lines that can reveal the structural foundations of poverty, and therefore the longer-term prospects of those who happen to be poor at a particular point in time. For those who are poor but have protected their asset base, time is on their side and their condition of poverty is likely to be short lived; for those who are poor and without assets are caught in a poverty trap with the likely outcome of chronic poverty (Barrett and McPeak 2003: 3). (This important distinction was discussed in connection with the PSID data –). It is also the case that descents into poverty (see Box 5.1) are often not limited to single events but sequences of events, or ‘event histories’, as Krishna terms them (2011: 25). These may be connected or unconnected.

While the poor may be less resilient and more vulnerable than the non-poor, it is important to emphasize that even the ‘rich’ are susceptible to shocks that can make them vulnerable and then drive them into poverty. As Bird and Shinyekwa write in the case of their study in rural Uganda:

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