For Reducing Poverty Faster: Target Reasons Before People

Poverty is inherently dynamic: large numbers of people are escaping from poverty at any given time, but large numbers are also falling into poverty simultaneously. Achieving faster poverty reduction requires speeding up the pace of escapes while concurrently slowing down the rate of descents into poverty. Studies undertaken over the past five years in India, Kenya, Peru, and Uganda, considering 223 villages and over 25 000 households, show that escapes and descents are not symmetric in terms of reasons. While one set of reasons is related to escaping poverty, another set of reasons is associated with falling into poverty. Targeting both sets of reasons is required for reducing poverty faster; targeting people alone will not help. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Duke Scholars

Author Anirudh Krishna Sanford School of Public Policy