War and Poverty

The main objective of this paper is to systematically identify potential channels of transmission linking civil war and poverty that may lead to the persistence of cycles of poverty and war. A particular focus of the paper is the notion of individual (and group) agency during civil wars, as well as agency constraints faced by populations affected by violence. Although the outbreak and impact of war is known to depend on several financial and political factors, the onset, duration and magnitude of the impact of civil wars are also closely related to what happens to people during violent conflicts and to what people do in areas of violence to secure livelihoods, economic survival, physical security and their social networks. The nature and extent of these choices depends in turn on how individuals and households relate to changes in social norms and forms of institutional organisation during civil wars. The paper explores the economic channels through which war may simultaneously affect and be affected by the economic status and responses of individuals and their immediate relations in areas of violent conflict to cope with and adapt to changes to livelihoods and economic status during civil wars. This analysis focuses in particular on the important but under-researched role of social and political institutional transformation during civil war on individual and household poverty.

Social Network Capital, Economic Mobility and Poverty Traps

The paper explores the role social network capital might play in facilitating poor agents’ escape from poverty traps. We model endogenous network formation among households heterogeneously endowed with both traditional and social network capital who make investment and technology choices over time in the absence of financial markets and faced with multiple production technologies featuring different fixed costs and returns. We show that social network capital can serve as either a complement to or a substitute for productive assets in facilitating some poor households’ escape from poverty. However, the voluntary nature of costly social network formation also creates both involuntary and voluntary exclusionary mechanisms that impede some poor households’ efforts to exit poverty. The ameliorative potential of social networks therefore depends fundamentally on the underlying wealth distribution in the economy. In some settings, targeted public transfers to the poor can crowd-in private resources by inducing new social links that the poor can exploit to escape from poverty.social network capital; endogenous network formation; poverty traps; multiple equilibria; social isolation; social exclusion; crowding-in transfer

Explaining Threshold Effects of Globalization on Poverty: An Institutional Perspective

institutions, poverty, globalization, social norms

Microfinance, Poverty Relief, and Political Justice

Microfinance - the practice of providing small loans to promote entrepreneurial activity among those with few financial assets - is increasingly seen as a sustainable means of aiding the global poor. Perhaps its most influential advocate, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, has claimed that there is a human right to microfinance, given its potential for poverty alleviation. This book directs critical philosophical attention at this very widely used and praised poverty-reducing measure. In chapters that discuss microfinance schemes and models around the world, internationally renowned contributors address important questions about both the positive impact of microfinance and cases of exploitation and repayment pressure. Exploring how far microfinance can or should be situated within broader concerns about justice, this volume sheds light on ethical issues that have so far received little systematic attention, and it advances discussion on new human rights, exploitation, and global justice

Poverty and Violent Conflict: A Micro Level Perspective on the Causes and Duration of Warfare

This paper argues that endogenous mechanisms linking processes of violent conflict and household poverty provide valuable micro foundations to the ongoing debate on the causes and duration of armed conflicts. Household poverty affects the onset, sustainability and duration of violent conflict due to the direct and indirect effects of violence on the economic behaviour and decisions of households in conflict areas. These effects lead to the emergence of symbiotic relationships between armed groups and households living in areas they control that may sustain the conflict for a long time. The strength of this relationship is a function of two interdependent variables, namely household vulnerability to poverty and household vulnerability to violence.Household poverty, household welfare, causes of armed conflict, duration of conflict, micro-foundations of conflict

The Political Economy of Agrarian Change: Dinosaur or Phoenix?

In this paper I argue for the resurrection of the political economy of agrarian change (PEACH) in mainstream policy research in order to understand the deeper causes of poverty and its transformation in rural areas. I critically examine chronic poverty research and argue that in the wake of the devastating critique of PEACH theory, an unlikely combination of post-structural and methodologically individualist new development economics (NDE) theory became hegemonic in development studies throughout the 90s and shaped emergent chronic poverty methodology. As a consequence subsequent chronic poverty empirical research tended to produce results confirming post-PEACH theory - poverty caused by assets based vulnerability experience of poor people and by their exclusion from economies and societies. In order to address the possibility of poverty as a problem of inclusion into economies and societies, chronic poverty research advanced new social relational concepts in the intergenerational transmission of poverty literature (IGT) and in adverse incorporation and social exclusion research (AISE). These and other such critical oppositional thinkers endorse a dynamic, relational transformational approach, one which combines realist structural and interpretive thinking and which coheres with critical realist PEACH methodology. However, they hesitate in fully embracing PEACH concepts - such as capitalist accumulation, class relations and unfreedom - which can shed light on materialist processes of poverty. I argue that the difficulties this body of research confronts in addressing the deeper causes of poverty can be resolved by drawing on PEACH concepts together with critical realist PEACH methods, and that the pluralism that this entails enables much deeper explanations for processes of impoverishment and escape and a wider range of empowering policy responses.

Social Network Capital, Economic Mobility and Poverty Traps

The paper explores the role social network capital might play in facilitating poor agents’ escape from poverty traps. We model and simulate endogenous network formation among households heterogeneously endowed with both traditional and social network capital who make investment and technology choices over time in the absence of financial markets and faced with multiple production technologies featuring different fixed costs and returns. We show that social network capital can serve as either a complement to or a substitute for productive assets in facilitating some poor households’ escape from poverty. However, the voluntary nature of costly social network formation also creates both involuntary and voluntary exclusionary mechanisms that impede some poor households’ exit from poverty. Through numerical simulation, we show that the ameliorative potential of social networks therefore depends fundamentally on broader socioeconomic conditions, including the underlying wealth distribution in the economy, that determine the feasibility of social interactions and the net intertemporal benefits of social network formation. In some settings, targeted public transfers to the poor can crowd-in private resources by inducing new social links that the poor can exploit to escape from poverty.

The incidence of post-harvest problems among small farmers surveyed in three regions of the Limpopo Province

High yielding varieties and new production technology have vastly increased the world's agricultural production and provided rural incomes and affordable food for large parts of the population. While production research has received considerable attention, until recently, post harvest activities have not received much attention. Post harvest research has significant contribution towards the alleviation of poverty, food insecurity and the sustainable use of resources. The objective of the paper is to assess the post-harvest constraints affecting main staple grain crops in three regions of the Limpopo Province. Some of the most common post harvest constraints revealed by the study are, weevils, rodents and transport for produce from the field to home Chemical, biological and indigenous control measures are used by the smallholder farmers to alleviate some of the post harvest constraints. The results of the study seem to indicate that more research work should be done especially on the use of indigenous knowledge towards the alleviation of post harvest constraints.Crop Production/Industries,

Does poverty cause conflict? Isolating the causal origins of the conflict trap

Does poverty cause civil conflict? A considerable literature seeks to answer this question, yet concerns about reverse causality threaten the validity of extant conclusions. To estimate the impact of poverty on conflict and to determine whether the relationship between them is causal, it is necessary to identify a source of exogenous variation in poverty. We do this by introducing a robust instrument for poverty: a time-varying measure of international inequalities. We draw upon existing theories about the structural position of a country in the international economic network—specifically, the expectation that countries in the core tend to be wealthier and those on the periphery struggle to develop. This instrument is plausibly exogenous and satisfies the exclusion restriction, which suggests that it affects conflict only through its influence upon poverty. Instrumental variables probit regression is employed to demonstrate that the impact of poverty upon conflict appears to be causal

Poverty Traps

no abstract given.Poverty