Why Don’t ‘the Poor’ Make Common Cause The Importance of Subgroups

Conversely, 37 percent of those who were poor at the endhad not been poor at the beginning of this period Column 10.Because movements out of poverty were large 26 percent andmovements in

Why Don’t ‘the Poor’ Make Common Cause?

The Importance of Subgroups

Anirudh KrishnaAssociate Professor of Public Policy and Political Science

Duke UniversityBox 90245Durham, NC 27708-0245(919) 613-7337 (919) 681-8288 (fax)ak30@duke.edu

Abstract

Analyses that regard ‘the poor’ as a sociological category need to take account of recent studies quantifying the extent of flux within these ranks Frequent movements into and out of poverty regularly refresh the pool of the poor Large numbers of poor people were not born poor; they have descended into poverty, some quite recently Concurrently, many formerly poor people have escaped from poverty Distinct subgroups are defined by these divergent trajectories Members of different subgroups have diverse economic needs, political interests and mobilisation potential, making cohesive action as a political force unlikely (and certainly uncertain) among all of ‘the poor’ Policies to assist poor people will be more effective, and political analysis will yield more fruitful results, if instead of working with any generic

category of ‘the poor’ heed is taken of subgroup-specific experiences and demands

1 Introduction: Why Not a Party or a Politics of the Poor?

Where the poor constitute a majority or near-majority of thepopulation, why don’t they vote themselves to power in democracies?

In countries such as Madagascar, Mozambique, Mali, Guatemala,Honduras, Kenya and Bangladesh, where the poor constitute,respectively, 71 percent, 70 percent, 64 percent, 56 percent, 53percent, 52 percent, and 50 percent of the population, why don’tparties of the poor emerge and take power democratically? Even incountries such as India, Philippines, and Ecuador, where the poor form

a smaller but still sizeable part of the population – 29 percent, 37percent and 35 percent, respectively – why are the politics of povertynot more emphatic, potent and visible?1

Lower political participation by poorer people can provide apossible explanation Likened by Marx to sacks of potatoes, the ruralpoor have not been considered particularly active politically (Bates,1981) Empirical studies have repeatedly affirmed lower participationrates among the poor (for example, Verba, Nie and Kim, 1978;Rosenstone and Hansen, 1993; Jackman and Miller, 1995; and Lijphart,1997) A ‘culture of poverty’ is claimed, reflecting apathy andsubmission among the poor (Lewis, 1963)

Yet, these explanations are hardly sufficient to justify why largemajorities of people, more than two-thirds of the population in somecases, are unwilling or unable to act collectively Participation rates

may be lower among poorer people, but the sheer weight of numberscan handily compensate for this difference, reported to be no morethan a few percentage points Recent evidence also shows thatparticipation rates are not uniformly low among all of the poor In manycases poorer people participate as actively as others (Yadav, 1999;Bratton and Mattes, 2001; Mattes, et al., 2003; Krishna, 2006; Krishna,

forthcoming), and some sections of the poor can actually have

higher-than-average participation rates, as shown below

In contexts where they are quite numerous – which includes vastswathes of South and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, andsegments of Central and South America, or nearly one-half of allcountries in the world – the rural poor should present to politicalentrepreneurs a natural constituency for effective organisation Asinequality is rising in many countries (Wade, 2004; World Bank, 2006),and as older forms of social organisation and their associated normsand customs are eroding (Griffin, 2000; UNDP, 2000), theorganisational potential of the rural poor should be growing, renderingthem more attractive as a constituency for political organisers.Whether to restore a ‘subsistence ethic’ (Scott, 1976) or to obtainbetter deals from markets and state bureaucracies (Popkin, 1979),movements of the rural poor should therefore be on the rise

So why are efforts to organise the poor so infrequent, scattered,and localized? Divisions among the poor on account of caste,

ethnicity, and religion have been advanced as a possible explanationfor lack of organisation (for example, by Burnell, 1995; Alesina, et al.,1999; Bates, 1999; Good, 1999; Keefer and Khemani, 2003; andVarshney, 2005), but while answering one question these explanationsevade a more fundamental one: Why are caste or ethnicity so muchmore commonly the currency of political organisation – even wherepoverty is a more widely shared feature? Why do political parties indeveloping countries more frequently exploit cleavages drawn alongascriptive lines and less often assemble broad-based coalitions of thepoor?

In this paper, I present an additional explanation, supplementingthe ones provided earlier ‘The poor’ does not constitute a validcategory for analysis or action: it is no more than an article of speech, Iwill contend

Recent studies show that significant differences in identities andmaterial interests exist across distinct subgroups of poor people Thereare those who have fallen into poverty recently, others who are on theverge of escaping from poverty, and still others who have remainedpersistently poor In Section 2, I present evidence from recent studiesthat quantify the extent of movements into and out of poverty Largenumbers, and in many contexts, the majority, of those who are poor atthe present time were not poor some years ago Conversely, largenumbers of formerly poor people have escaped from poverty, and

others, still poor but upwardly mobile, are making their ways out fromthis statistical pool

Different reasons are associated, respectively, with escapingpoverty and falling into poverty (Section 3) As a result, different needsare experienced and different demands are expressed by members ofdifferent subgroups Those who have recently fallen into poverty aremost directly encumbered by one set of reasons, and they tend todemand related public policies Others, on the verge of escaping frompoverty, are assisted by a different set of reasons They see a differentset of needs and opportunities The persistently poor constitute yetanother subgroup Neither recently fallen into poverty, norexperiencing any significant upward mobility, members of thissubgroup face a different opportunity set; they tend to make a differentset of demands upon the state

Different experiences, different identities and different materialinterests tend to make collective action uncertain among all subgroups

of the poor Evidence collected in 36 villages of Andhra Pradesh, Indiaprovides some initial support for this proposition, showing howmembers of different subgroups demand very different things from thestate

Coming together under a common umbrella of action is hardlyautomatic Looking within separate subgroups provides a betterstarting point for policy design, political analysis, and coalition building

Some consequences of this categorical advance are examined inSections 4 and 5

2 Not a Rising nor a Falling but a Rising-Falling Tide

Analysts referring to the poor implicitly assume a stable andhomogeneous category.2 However, ‘the poor’ is a very approximateand possibly a misleading category of analysis For a category to berobust and useful for analysis it must have sufficient discriminatingpower (Sartori, 1970: 1039) It must be stable, with clear boundaries,and have defining properties shared by all members (Collier andMahon, 1993: 845) ‘The poor’ fulfills none of these conditions.Considerable differences exist within the ranks of the poor, andconsiderable similarities are observed across the categorical dividingline ‘The poor’ is also an ephemeral category with highly porousboundaries Many who form part of the poor at a previous point in timeare not included among them at a later time, and many others whowere not poor at a previous time become part of the poor in the future

Considering the poor as a fixed category is therefore like using afreeze-frame snapshot to depict a vast churning tide It captures thepeaks and troughs of the moment but it is instantly reconfigured bymovement The moving picture rather than a snapshot is both moretruthful and more productive in terms of analysis, but it provides nosupport for any well-defined category of ‘the poor’

Table 1 presents results from a geographically diverse selection

of recent studies that examined poverty in dynamic context Thesestudies consider different sample sizes, ranging from a small group of

347 households in a few communities of Egypt to over 6,000households in one part of India (respectively, Haddad and Ahmed,2003; and Krishna, 2004) Statistically representative samples forentire countries are included (Deininger and Okidi, 2003; Bhide andMehta, 2004), alongside studies of particular regions or groups ofcommunities (Sen, 2003; Krishna, et al., 2004) Different periods oftime are considered, ranging from a short span of three years to longperiods of 25 years Commonly, however, all studies illustrate theextent to which there is flux within the ranks of the poor

Considering the magnitude of these movements both into andout of poverty has the effect of substantially changing our imagery ofthe poor

Table 1 about here

The first row of Table 1 shows that over the 13-year period, 1987-2000,

26 percent of a panel of 379 Bangladeshi households considered bySen (2003) escaped from poverty (Column 5) Simultaneously,however, another 18 percent of households fell into poverty (Column6) Movements out of and into poverty were both large Fifty seven

percent of all households were poor at the start of this 13-year period(Column 7), and 49 percent were poor at the end of this period(Column 8) However, not all those who were poor at the beginning ofthis period were also poor at the end In fact, 46 percent of those whowere poor at the beginning were not poor by the end of this period(Column 9) Conversely, 37 percent of those who were poor at the endhad not been poor at the beginning of this period (Column 10).Because movements out of poverty were large (26 percent) andmovements into poverty were also large (18 percent), the composition

of ‘the poor’ changed considerably

These results are hardly confined to Bangladesh All studies inthe sample reported in Table 1 present a similar account of flux amongthe poor Other studies not reported here also bear out a similarconclusion.3 New poverty is being created even as some old poverty isdestroyed Large numbers of people are entering poverty even as largenumbers escape from poverty

Take, for example, the study by Krishna et al (2004) ofhouseholds residing in 20 Western Kenyan villages Eighteen percent ofthese households escaped from poverty in the 25-year periodexamined by this study At the same time, another 19 percent ofhouseholds fell into poverty A total of 55 percent of the poor at thebeginning of this study period were not poor any longer by the end ofthis period (Column 9) Conversely, 56 percent – the majority – of those

who were poor at the end were not part of ‘the poor’ at the beginning

of this period (Column 10)

Studies that consider a shorter time horizon also have similarresults to show A study of 1,171 households in KwaZulu-Natal, SouthAfrica, shows that over a five-year period, 1993-1998, 10 percent ofhouseholds moved upward out of poverty (Carter and May, 2001).During the same time period, however, another 25 percent ofhouseholds fell into poverty The ranks of the poor were considerablyrefreshed: 60 percent of all the poor at the end of this five-year periodconsisted of the newly impoverished Results from a nationallyrepresentative sample of 1,300 Ugandan households similarly showthat of all households who were poor in the starting year (1992), 54percent – the majority – were no longer in poverty by the ending year,

2000 (Deininger and Okidi, 2003)

In Asia, Africa and Latin America, everywhere household andindividual poverty has been examined over time, similar results haveemerged: Movement reconstitutes the profile of people in poverty Nomatter how long or short is the time period studied – or what measure

or threshold of poverty is employed4 – the results are the same:Escapes from poverty occur concurrently with descents into poverty Asluggish pace of net poverty reduction does not occur because there is

no movement out of poverty It is a resultant of two large andfrequently offsetting trends

These movements, into and out of poverty, are not marginal ortemporary events.5 Thus, people do not fall into poverty only toescape in a later period, nor indeed are these results confined toborderline households fluctuating around the poverty line

Only one-third of households that fell into poverty during the year period, 1979-1994, were able to escape from poverty over thenext 10 years in Uganda The remaining two-thirds who had becomepoor 10 years ago were still poor when investigations were conducted

15-in the summer of 2004 Meanwhile, an additional 11 percent ofhouseholds fell into poverty, further refreshing the ranks of the poor(Krishna, et al., 2006a) Many who were formerly poor have climbed aconsiderable distance out of poverty Many others who were previouslywell-to-do have fallen deeply into poverty A total of 368 of all 2,631households in these 36 Ugandan communities (14 percent) came out

of poverty over the ten-year period, 1994-2004 Among thesehouseholds, most of whom could barely afford to purchase food andclothes 10 years ago, 26 percent now possess land of their own andanother 21 percent have advanced even further, owning concretehouses and businesses in addition to farm lands Concurrently, another

325 households (12.5 percent) fell into poverty, and of these freshlyimpoverished households as many as 24 percent can no longer afford

to buy clothes and food; another 29 percent have pulled their childrenout of schools Investigations in other countries also show how

descents and escapes are mostly not temporary, marginal or fringeoccurrences.6

It makes little sense thus to speak of the poor as a stable,consistent or homogeneous category Not all who are poor today havealways remained poor Neither have all who are not poor today alwayskept safely away from poverty

Distinct subgroups are given rise by these movements into andout of poverty Different interests and identities are associated witheach separate subgroup Members of different subgroups commonlywish to get out of poverty, it is true, and to that extent there is, indeed,

a shared aspiration But the means that each subgroup regards as

most relevant – the how of combating poverty – differs notably among

members of different subgroups

3 Demands from the State by Different Subgroups

Escaping poverty and falling into poverty are not symmetric in terms ofreasons One set of reasons is associated with movements upward, out

of poverty, while another and different set of reasons is associated withmovements downward, into poverty Two different sets of publicpolicies are required, therefore: one set to address and reinforce thereasons associated with escaping poverty, and another set of policies

to block or subdue the reasons for descent Different subgroups of thepoor are differently attracted toward these different policy sets

Ill health and healthcare expenses constitute commonly thesingle largest reason associated with descents into poverty Studiesshow how for as many as 73 percent of the newly impoverished inWestern Kenya, 77 percent in Uganda, 67 percent in Peru, and 88percent in Gujarat (India), ill-health and healthcare expensesconstituted a principal reason for descent Large majorities ofhouseholds that fell into poverty in other countries have also sufferedfrom ill health and high healthcare expenses Evidence from Cambodia,Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Peru, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Vietnam pointsunambiguously to the deleterious effects of healthcare costs uponhouseholds’ welfare.7 Health-related factors operate commonly acrossall regions to drive households into poverty Households in China facingone serious health situation suffer average income drops of 17 percent.When two or more health incidents are experienced back-to-back ahousehold’s slide into poverty becomes steeper and more assured(Gan, et al., 2005) More than half of all personal bankruptcies in theUnited States are attributable to medical costs (Himmelstein, et al.,2005)

‘Rises in out-of-pocket costs for public and private healthcareservices are driving many families into poverty and increasing thepoverty of those who are already poor The magnitude of this situation– known as “the medical poverty trap” – has been shown by nationalhousehold surveys and participatory poverty alleviation studies’

(Whitehead, et al., 2001: 833) Data from extensive household surveysundertaken in 59 countries of Asia, Eastern Europe, and South Americashows that catastrophic payments on healthcare – those that farexceed households’ capacity to pay – are unfortunately on the rise and

‘common in middle-income countries, countries in transition, and inseveral low income countries This negative impact of health systems

on households that can lead to impoverishment has long been ignored’(Xu, et al., 2003: 115) A very large part of debt incurred by poorfamilies in India and elsewhere arises on account of large healthcareexpenses (Dilip and Duggal, 2002) In rural Vietnam, 60 percent of poorhouseholds were found to be in debt, and more than one-third of thesehouseholds cited medical expenses as the main reason (Ensor and San,1996)

Some other reasons are also associated with descent intopoverty Numerically, these other reasons are much less importantthan health, and they vary in coverage and intensity even within acountry and region.8

To be sure, all of these reasons – most importantly, health, butalso social expenses, land exhaustion, and the like – are proximatecauses, which people recounted in interviews as basic causes for theirdownfalls More distant reasons, such as persistent budgetaryindiscipline, adverse macro-economic conditions, and declining terms-of-trade are also important for any complete explanation But hardly

anyone among thousands of people interviewed made any referencewhatsoever to any such distant cause

Descents into poverty are understood by the people who havedescended in terms principally of proximate and readily visible causes,and lack of healthcare is primary among the reasons they identify.Their demands from the state, as we will see below, derive closely fromthese locally-based analytical narratives

Falling into poverty and escaping out of poverty are rarelyinstantaneous or unforeseen events Falling into poverty is the result,more usually, of a sequence of events played out over a period of time.Escaping poverty is the result, similarly, of strategies worked out byindividuals and households over reasonably long periods Peopleprepare for these events, spending years in the process Those who arefalling in or coming out of poverty tend to know what trajectory theyare following Their interests and demands are directly related to thisknowledge.9

Escaping poverty is responsive to an entirely different set ofproximate reasons from those associated with descents into poverty.Developing a new income source is most importantly associated withsuccessful escapes Jobs in the government and private sectors areimportant for this purpose, but they are not always quantitatively themost important reason for escape Diversification within agriculturehas been more important in several regions, while new sources of

income from the urban informal sector constituted the primary reasonfor escape in some other regions.10 Nearly three-quarters of allescapes examined in the studies cited above were associated withincome diversification through informal sector occupations andagriculture

As a result, assistance in the form of education, transportationand communication links, agricultural infrastructure, irrigation, andregular information about available opportunities are regarded by thepeople involved as important for facilitating their escapes out ofpoverty The subgroup on an upward trajectory tends to make suchdemands upon the state, and these demands are quite different fromthose made by the subgroup of the newly poor, whose differentexperiences result in a different set of policy preferences

Different experiences and different needs make it difficult for allsubgroups of poor people to come together spontaneous collectiveactions Disparate identities tend to reinforce these divisions Like the

March family in Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women, many newly

impoverished people may not for several years regard themselves asbeing of the poor, having anything in common with those they haveregarded as beneath themselves.11

An Empirical Test

In order to verify this hypothesis, that is to test whether members ofdifferent subgroups do, in fact, have different demands from the state,

I conducted a study in January and February 2004 in 36 villages ofAndhra Pradesh, India A community-based methodology was utilizedthat relies on a locally relevant definition of poverty.12 All 36communities verified the same asset-based scale for assessingpoverty, and each household’s poverty status was assessed using thiscommon community measure Through community interviews,followed by interviews with individual households, the poverty status ofeach household was verified for the present time (2004) and also forseven years ago (1997)

Based on these assessments, all households in these villageswere classified within four mutually exclusive subgroups: those whowere poor seven years ago and also poor in 2004 (Persistent Poor);those who were poor seven years ago but have since escaped frompoverty (Former Poor); those who were not poor seven years ago buthave since fallen into poverty (Newly Poor); and those who were notpoor at both times (Not Poor).13 Apart from the fourth subgroup, NotPoor, members of the other three subgroups could be included – at onetime or another – within an omnibus category of ‘the poor’ However,squashing these subgroups together would have been quiteunproductive both for policy design and for studying political behavior

A total of 1, 302 adult residents were selected through randomsampling in the larger group of 36 villages, and they were interviewedusing a pre-tested questionnaire.14 A list of ten major demands was

constructed and pilot tested initially in four villages Respondents in 36villages were asked to rank these ten demands in order of priority Therelated survey question was phrased as follows: ‘Different people havedifferent needs from the government I will read out a list of needs.Please tell me which of these needs is most important for you Pleaserank this list from 1 to 10 in order of importance to you’.

People belonging to the three different subgroups of currentlyand formerly poor people are not very different in terms of gender,age, caste, religion, or education.15 However, demands from the statevary considerably across these subgroups Table 2 shows results for thetop five demands made by different subgroups.16

Table 2 about here

Notice the difference in priorities between the Persistent Poorand the Newly Poor Wage labour is the most important demand of thePersistent Poor As many as 46 percent of respondents in this subgrouprated this demand among their top three priorities, but only 8 percent

of the Newly Poor and only 5 percent of the Former Poor consideredthis demand among their top three priorities.17

Better healthcare services constituted the top demand ofrespondents from the Newly Poor subgroup, as could be expected,given that ill health was the most important reason associated with

their impoverishment The largest group of Newly Poor respondents, 34percent, regarded healthcare services as a critical demand from thestate However, only 8 percent of Persistent Poor respondents and only

7 percent of Former Poor respondents considered healthcare as theirkey demand from the state Housing support was another key demand

by Newly Poor respondents, but relatively few respondents from theother two subgroups, less than 10 percent in all, considered housingsupport among their top three demands from the state

The subgroup of Persistent Poor has one set of demands from thestate The subgroup of Newly Poor has another and different sets ofdemands Members of the third subgroup, the Former Poor, havedifferent demands yet Irrigation, high schools, and jobs are their mostimportant demands These are the means that have helped takemembers of this subgroup out of poverty in the past, and these are thekey demands at the present time of others escaping from poverty Incontrast, less than 10 percent of either the Persistent Poor or the NewlyPoor ranked any of these demands within their top three priorities

This empirical demonstration from a few rural communities inone Indian state is hardly definitive proof for the proposition that

different subgroups of the poor will always have different demands

from the state.18 More research in other regions and countries will helpestablish (or refute) this proposition with greater conviction It stands

to reason, however, that because they face different opportunities and

have experienced different threats, members of different subgroupswill see things somewhat differently from each other Collective actionwill hardly automatically arise

Political parties can certainly help consolidate these divergentdemands, bringing them within a common manifesto of action Theyneed to recognize, first, that not all poor people are alike, that differentsubgroups exist which can have quite distinct demands They alsoneed to aggregate, adopt, and articulate these different demands.None of this will occur routinely; persistent purposive action is required

on the part of party organizers Such actions may not be readilyforthcoming, especially in situations where other cleavages – such asthose based in ethnic or regional divides – may present a moreattractive benefit-cost calculus to vote assemblers There are relativelyfew developing country examples of parties representing large swathes

of poor people (including in Kerala and West Bengal, India) Specifichistorical paths help explain why more parties of this kind have notarisen elsewhere; understanding that basic divisions exist within theranks of ‘the poor’ also helps recognize why a choice regardingassembling such coalitions is not automatic I will return to this aspectlater

4 Poor People’s Participation in Politics

In this section and the next one I will look at some other implicationsfor policy and research that follow from disaggregating the poor andconsidering subgroups For instance, received wisdom stronglysuggests that political participation rates are lower among ‘the poor’compared to others This belief has given rise to the notion of a distinct

‘culture of poverty’ The poor ‘are a different kind of people’, claimedHarrington (1962: 146), ‘they think and feel differently’ from otherpeople Poverty ‘is a way of life’, declared Lewis (1963, xxiv), which is

‘remarkably stable and persistent, passed down from generation togeneration along family lines The culture of poverty has its ownmodalities and distinctive social and psychological consequences for itsmembers… [it] affects participation in the larger national culture, andbecomes a subculture of its own’

The composition of the poor is far from constant, however, andstability and persistence are hardly everywhere in evidence Consider,for examples, rates of political participation in these Andhra Pradeshvillages Participation scores were measured using a 100-point scale.19Higher scores indicate a greater extent of participation These scoreswere compared across four mutually exclusive and exhaustivesubgroups of villagers: the Former Poor, the Persistent Poor, the NewlyPoor, and the Not Poor Table 3 provides these results

Table 3 about here

There are differences, to be sure, among the four separatesubgroups The Persistent Poor are less participative on average Themean participation score for the Persistent Poor is lower than the meanscore for the other three subgroups However, the Persistent Poor arenot qualitatively different from other subgroups The middle range ofscores (between the lower and upper quartile) overlaps considerablyacross the four subgroups, indicating that it is hard to mark off any onesubgroup as having a specific modality or ‘culture’ of poverty Twenty-five percent of the Persistent Poor have participation scores of no morethan four points out of one hundred This would seem to make thesepeople part of a non-participative culture However, 23 percent of theFormer Poor, 15 percent of the Newly Poor, and 16 percent of the NotPoor also have participation scores that are four points or lower Ifthere is any particularly non-participative culture, it is spread across allfour subgroups of villagers, including those who are not poor

It is possible that this result is India-specific Studies have shownthat poor people in India tend to participate in electoral politics asoften or more than non-poor people (for example, Yadav, 1999).However, studies conducted recently in parts of Africa, the othercontinent where large numbers of poor people reside, have also shown

a similar result, namely, that poor people’s participation rates are not

lower than those of other people (Bratton and Mattes, 2001; Krishna,

forthcoming)

Considering different subgroups has the effect of widening one’sperspective on not just the extent of but also the motivations behindpolitical participation In this context, one other result reported inTable 3 is of interest The Newly Poor have an average participationscore which is not lower, and is actually somewhat higher, than themean participation score of all other subgroups, including the Not Poor.This result may seem surprising; it goes against the received wisdom

It stands to reason, however, that those who have faced adversitymore recently would seek to lash out against perceived injustices; theirmotivation to participate and make their voices heard should be quitecompelling ‘Memories of hard times, and the influence of suchmemories on politics, may linger long after the crisis is past… [Peoplewho are] vulnerable to sliding into poverty…may continue to worryabout vulnerability even when objective risks diminish’ (Nelson, 2003:124) Such nagging memories might account for the high participationrates observed among members of the Newly Poor subgroup in theseAndhra Pradesh villages

Conclusions expressed earlier about uniformly low rates ofpolitical participation among the poor may deserve to be revisited,considering separate subgroups of poor people In particular, it willhelp to examine whether the Newly Poor subgroup is actually more

participative and also more likely to vote against the party in power.This micro-level hypothesis is consistent with the macro-level findingthat adverse economic performance tends to destabilizedemocratically elected governments (Przeworski and Limongi, 1997) Itwill be interesting to test it more widely at the micro level in differentcountries by comparing participation rates and support for differentparties among different subgroups of poor people In other ways aswell, as discussed below, policy design and political analysis canpotentially be enriched, becoming better targeted in the first instanceand more productive in the second, by considering subgroup-specificexperiences and needs.

5 Conclusion: Politics and “The Poor”

How poverty is alleviated or reduced has been studied extensively inthe past How poverty gets created is becoming better understood as aresult of recent studies that track households and individuals over timeand analyze reasons for movement into and out of poverty.20 Themajority of the poor in many cases were not born poor nor have theyalways been poor Many others, who were poor in the past, have risenout of this state in recent times Different consequences for policy andpolitics emerge from understanding this fundamentally dynamic nature

of poverty