Key messages on tackling chronic poverty

Economic growth that includes chronically poor people on good terms, and assists with mobility out of poverty.

• CPRC findings reveal that economic growth has reduced severe and chronic poverty less than poverty as a whole, and the consumption or expenditure of the chronically poor has grown less than the average across the population. For growth to address chronic poverty, policy should focus on removing the barriers to upward mobility for the chronically poor as well as rapidly getting the headcount ratio down.
  Read Chapter 4 (Sec 2) on Economic growth

• Job quality is as important as the quantity of employment generated by economic growth. Governments should support the development of labour standards especially in agriculture, construction, and manufacturing. Improving the quality of jobs also addresses the adverse incorporation and social exclusion that chronically poor people face.
  Read Chapter 3 (Sec 5.1) on The worst forms of adverse incorporation 

• Chronically poor people’s main asset is their labour. If growth is to benefit them, an enabling institutional and policy environment that fosters pro-poor trends in the labour market is needed. Achieving synergies between asset accumulation, market functioning and protection must be a policy focus for 2010-2015.
  Read Chapter 3 (Sec 4.3) on Assets-markets-protection synergies
  Read Chapter 4 (Sec 2.1) on Growth, labour markets and labour relations 

• Inclusive growth policymakers need to focus interventions on the youth and young adults, as this is when chronically poor people can include themselves most beneficially in growth. Improving the links between education and the labour market, and the terms of employment for young adults, can further help interrupt inter-generational poverty.
  Read Chapter 4 (Sec 2.4) on Focus on young adults 

• CPRC research on growth has focuses on landlocked countries; we find that in such areas, growth can happen but is sometimes held back by high transport costs, and exacerbated by a succession of administrative requirements, checks, and roadblocks, and sometimes domestic taxes.
  Read Chapter 3 (Sec 6.1) on Landlocked countries 

• The CPRC imparts that infrastructure is necessary for the poorest regions, but anti-discrimination measures are also required to undo deep-seated discrimination. Without these, stereotypes about a region’s citizens may affect investment into the region. Read Chapter 4 (Sec 2.3) on Integration of chronically deprived countries and regions