Pro-Poorest Economic Growth
Since 2000, economic growth is increasingly taking place in developing countries, in some at high rates. However, economic growth risks to bring a great risk: not to be able to reach the poorest or to reach them so variably that it does not ensure their economic growth. As a result, it risks to wide inequalities, rather than reducing them.
CPAN argues that pro-poorest growth occurs when the income (or consumption) of the bottom 20% of the population grows faster than the average – implying a decline in inequality. In other words, this definition carries a concern for both poverty and inequality. CPAN’s strongly believes that it should do so as much as it is politically, economically and socially possible to implement measures able to reach and impact the poorest people. As such, CPAN has extensively focused its work on providing the knowledge needed to develop and implement measures that will ensure that the poorest people are included in economic growth. At the same time, CPAN works on stimulating national and international debates about including the poorest in growth.
Projects
This research projects aims at identifying the policies and programmes which have improved the livelihoods of chronically poor women and girls and at analysing the trends in donors’ strategies to reduce extreme or chronic poverty among women and girls, as well as their actions. This study is funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC), Government of Canada.
This study is designed to provide an in-depth review of the evidence on extreme poverty and associated inequalities, and on what reduces them, in order to inform the EU’s reflections on implementing the post 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Photo: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam
Since 2000, economic growth is increasingly taking place in developing countries. However, growth benefits the poorest people very variably. CPAN’s concern is that it should do so as much as is politically, economically and socially possible. The overarching objective of this project is to provide national policy makers in the 30 developing countries, which account for the great majority of the extremely poor, with the knowledge they need to develop and implement measures that will ensure that the poorest people are included in economic growth.
Photo Credit: Bertakefe, Timor-Leste. UN Photo/Martine Perret.
Publications
This paper explores the differences between the qualitative life history interview approach and the quantitative expenditures approach to analysing poverty incidence and poverty dynamics in Rwanda.
Blog
This blog sheds light on the impact of upward and downward income mobility on the structural poverty dynamics in South Africa.
Interviews at the margin of the technical workshop for the 4th Chronic Poverty Report on Growth, 19th June 2017, Overseas Development Institute, London, UK
Photocredit: CPAN.
Some people can get poorer amid growth, even rapid growth, others can be impoverished (become poor) or be downwardly mobile, or have other dramatically negative experiences – malnutrition, unhappiness, or a loss of community. Andrew Shepherd participated in the workshop 'Immiserizing growth' organised by the University of Toronto to discuss the topic.
Picture Credits: Panos Pictures
The Chronic Poverty Advisory Network is pleased to announce the event ‘Eradicating poverty: using poverty dynamics to enhance development efforts’ that will take place in Nairobi, Kenya, on the 3 and 4 May 2017. In the last years CPAN has produced an extensive set of publications on anti-discrimination and disability, social protection, growth and poverty dynamics. The event aims to present this comprehensive set of publications to policy makers in this dissemination workshop that will also be a preparatory exercise for the 4th Chronic Poverty Report.
Photo Credit: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam - At the Mentao Nord camp in Burkina Faso. Photo available here.
With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015, the international community has committed to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030 and to Leave No One Behind in this process. Economic growth will be critical to achieve these commitments, but not any type of growth will do the job.
Photo Credit: CPAN
A key finding of CPAN’s 2014-5 Chronic Poverty Report was that pro-poorest economic growth is necessary to achieve the first Sustainable Development Goal and more generally to improve all poverty dynamics. An investigation of what policy interventions are required to achieve pro-poorest growth, whether these differ from previous policy prescriptions and whether they differ for countries at different stages of transformation and engaged in different patterns of economic growth is needed. For this reason CPAN has embarked in a research project seeking to answer these questions.
Photo credit: Panos Picture
With the post-2015 era approaching, debates surrounding poverty have seriously started to consider what makes for quality growth in order to eliminate extreme poverty, rather than just reduce it. Zero poverty cannot be realised without tackling chronic poverty. However, due to lack of data and evidence, poverty-reduction policies hardly consider the particular situations and characteristics of the chronically poor. In order to fill such research gaps, this paper examines the trends and characteristics of chronic poverty in rural Cambodia between 2004 and 2010.
Photograph: Ippei Tsuruga
In a recent speech at the Bond conference, a meeting of UK organizations working in international development, the UK secretary of state, Justine Greening, seems to suggest that we need not be concerned with pro-poor growth. In her view, poverty will fall as a rather automatic consequence of economic development. Throwing some numbers in to support the argument she says “We know wherever long-term per capita growth is higher than 3%, poverty falls significantly”. Is that really the case?
As part of the 'Resilience and Poverty Escapes' project, CPAN is currently working on the 4th edition of the Chronic Poverty Report series, which will analyse the relation between poverty and pro-poor growth.
Photo credit: Harvesting. India. Photo: © World Bank / Curt Carnemark