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 Targeted Global Constraint: Poverty and Food Insecurity
Traps Inspired by the work of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, an increasingly rich body of work sees poverty at any point in time as the interaction between the assets that poor people have and the constraints that limit their productive use of those assets. If people are poor at any point in time because of the assets they possess, then time can serve as both an opportunity to escape poverty or a space in which to become more vulnerable to becoming caught in a poverty trap. Imperfect markets stand as one kind of hurdle that limits escape from poverty. It has become increasingly clear that there are persistently or chronically poor people. For these people caught in 'poverty traps' the passage of time offers no relief. A key challenge is to understand when and under what circumstances time and markets can be converted to allies in the fight against persistent poverty. BASIS is supporting projects designed to better understand the issue of poverty traps, how they emerge, and how policies to improve market access might alleviate one hurdle to escape poverty. Rural Markets, Natural Capital, and Dynamic Poverty Traps in East Africa is confronting the issue of how missing financial markets and the fixed costs of investment (or asset invisibility) create poverty traps. This project explores how the lack of financial markets, which would help people reach the critical minimum investment level, creates a situation where they instead become stuck in non-lucrative savings and investment strategies. Building Assets for Sustainable Recovery and Food Security focuses on the role of external shocks in creating poverty traps. The research looks at how different or missing markets and social networks have affected rural people's ability to recover after experiencing a severe external shock. The study identifies policies that improve household access to land, labor, and capital markets, thus allowing impoverished households to escape the debilitating cycles of poverty, asset depletion and food security. Deepening of Financial Services through Credit-Reporting Bureaus investigates how the introduction of credit bureaus may be one avenue that the poor may have to escape from poverty traps via improved access to credit. Reducing Poverty in Post-Reform Economies examines the impact of the liberalization of rural financial markets in Peru and Mexico on rural households. It is unclear whether the rural poor served adequately by the private market and whether or privatization has created an efficient mechanism to promote economic growth and reduce poverty. Improving Household Well-Being by Improving Access to Credit aims to understand what factors improve or constrain a household's access to credit and therfeore well-being over a long period of time. |
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