PHA-Exchange> The Chronic Poverty Report 2004-05

[claudio at 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

"...............Between 300 and 420 million people are trapped in
chronic poverty. They experience deprivation over many years, often over
their entire lives, and commonly pass poverty on to their children. 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, illiteracy, 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). Understanding such dynamics
provides a sounder basis for formulating 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 homeless 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 single, 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...."



------------------------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through Netnam-HCMC ISP: http://www.hcmc.netnam.vn/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20040607/d0c4b399/attachment-0001.html>