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Chronic Poverty Amid Growth: Insights from Long-Term Poverty Trajectories: Young Lives Working Paper 84

There has been growing interest in researching the dynamics of poverty, including poverty mobility. Looking at change over time and what caused this change can provide useful information for policymakers and those who seek to influence them. Young Lives makes use of the three rounds of survey data and of qualitative data from sub-sample children. The focus in this paper is tribal households not conforming to the general trend of upward mobility. It locates these households, analyses their characteristics, and identifies the factors that cause the downward mobility of certain households. 

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The specific context, the nature of negotiations the households have with the welfare institutions, and the experiential dimension of everyday struggles are discussed, keeping in mind the perspective of those in chronic poverty. We argue that the choices that poor people make can be seen as resistance to being labelled and that, by making these choices, they are also upholding the notion of agency and self-esteem. The paper concludes by drawing attention to structural aspects that shape poverty trajectories, and the policy implications of these.

 

About Young Lives

Young Lives is an international study of childhood poverty, following the lives of 12,000 children in 4 countries (Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam) over 15 years. www.younglives.org.uk

Young Lives is core-funded from 2001 to 2017 by UK aid from the Department for International Development (DFID), and co-funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2010 to 2014.

Tags: ["Child research", "child poverty", "inequality", "child care", "Young Lives Study", "development"] By Janki Andharia, Uma Vennam
Published Nov. 20, 2012 12:18 PM - Last modified Apr. 17, 2013 3:24 PM