[afro-nets] The Chronic Poverty Report 2004-05

[Claudio Schuftan <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

The Chronic Poverty Report 2004-05
----------------------------------

The Chronic Poverty Research Centre - Institute for Development
Policy & Management
University of Manchester, UK - 2004

Website:
http://www.chronicpoverty.org/chronic_poverty_report_2004.htm

Download chapter by chapter as Adobe PDF files (ca. 140 pp.) at:
http://www.devinit.org/cprcblank.htm

Between 300 and 420 million people are trapped in chronic pov-
erty. They experience deprivation over many years, often over
their entire lives, and commonly pass poverty on to their chil-
dren. Many chronically poor people die prematurely from health
problems that are easily preventable. For them poverty is not
simply about having a low income: it is about multidimensional
deprivation - hunger, undernutrition, dirty drinking water, il-
literacy, having no access to health services, social isolation
and exploitation.

Such deprivation and suffering exists in a world that has the
knowledge and resources to eradicate it.

This Report's concern about chronic poverty leads to a focus on
poverty dynamics - the changes in well-being or ill-being that
individuals and households experience over time (Chapter 1). Un-
derstanding such dynamics provides a sounder basis for formulat-
ing poverty eradication policies than the conventional analysis
of national poverty trends.

The chronically poor are not a distinct group. Many different
people suffer such deprivation (see Chapter 2); people who are
discriminated against, stigmatised or 'invisible': socially-
marginalised ethnic, religious, indigenous, nomadic and caste
groups; migrants and bonded labourers; refugees and internal
displacees; disabled people or those with ill-health (especially
HIV/AIDS). In many contexts poor women and girls, children and
older people (especially widows) are likely to be trapped in
poverty.

While chronically poor people are found in all parts of the
world (see Chapter 3 for an overview and Chapters 6 to 10 for
specific regions) the largest numbers live in South Asia (135 to
190 million). The highest incidence is in sub-Saharan Africa,
where 30-40% of all present day 'US$ 1/day' poor people are
trapped in poverty - an estimated 90 to 120 million people. East
Asia has significant numbers of chronically poor people, between
55 to 85 million, living mainly in China.

Within countries there are often distinct geographies of chronic
poverty, with concentrations in remote and low-potential rural
areas, politically-marginalised regions and areas that are not
well connected to markets, ports or urban centres. There are
also concentrations of chronically poor people in particular
slum areas in towns and cities as well as the millions of home-
less people sleeping in streets, stations, parks and burial
grounds.

The causes of chronic poverty are complex and usually involve
sets of overlaying factors. Sometimes they are the same as the
causes of poverty, only more intense, widespread and lasting. In
other cases, there is a qualitative difference between the
causes of transitory and chronic poverty. Rarely is there a sin-
gle, clear cause. Most chronic poverty is a result of multiple
interacting factors operating at levels from the intra-household
to the global.

Some of these factors are maintainers of chronic poverty: they
operate so as to keep poor people poor. Others are drivers of
chronic poverty: they push vulnerable non-poor and transitory
poor people into poverty that they cannot find a way out of.