CPRC Research themes

The CPRC’s Poverty dynamics and economic mobility theme sought to address three broad questions though a range of quantitative and qualitative methods:

• What enables individuals and households to escape chronic poverty?
• What prevents individuals and households from escaping chronic poverty?
• What leads individuals and households to fall into chronic poverty?

Our analysis has brought a deeper understanding of the economic, social and political processes that shape patterns of deprivation and well-being, and their implications for anti-poverty policy.

Research

Poverty dynamics has comprised some of the CPRC's flagship research, through in-depth analysis of panel data and innovative integrated and sequenced qualitative and quantitative (Q²) research.

An edited volume Why Poverty Persists: Poverty Dynamics in Asia and Africa brings together much of CPRC's analysis of poverty dynamics from a panel data perspective. 

The CPRC has successfully completed two big Q² projects in Bangladesh and Tanzania - which have contributed to national poverty analyses and shown much potential to impact policymaking. Q² approaches have also been used in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and Uganda.

Many resources including a comprehensive annotated list of household panel data sets in developing countries, the public release of the panel data and an annotated life histories from the Bangladesh project and two Toolkit Notes with computer routines to facilitate the analysis of panel data, have been produced.

Key resources

Understanding poverty dynamics

• Why Poverty Persists: Poverty Dynamics in Asia and Africa
  ^Book
• Addressing Chronic Poverty - Chapter on Understanding poverty dynamics and economic mobility
  ^{Book COMING SOON}
• Poverty Dynamics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
  ^Book
• Poverty dynamics: measurement and understanding from an interdisciplinary perspective
  ^{Research summary 2}

Methods to measuring poverty dynamics

• The value of panel data in chronic poverty analysis
  ^{CPRC Policy brief 23}
• Understanding urban chronic poverty: Crossing the qualitative and quantitative divide
  ^{CPRC Working paper 53}
• Testing and adjusting for attrition in household panel data
  ^{CPRC Toolkit note}

Poverty dyamics country studies

• Parallel realities: exploring poverty dynamics using mixed methods in rural Bangladesh
  ^{CPRC Working paper 142}
• The long-term impact of anti-poverty interventions in Bangladesh
  ^{Journal article}
• Agricultural growth and poverty reduction in Tanzania 2000-2010: where has agriculture worked for the poor and what can we learn from this?
  ^{CPRC Working paper 208}
• Poverty dynamics in rural Sindh, Pakistan
  ^{CPRC Working paper*}
• The determinants and consequences of chronic and transitory poverty in Nepal
  ^{CPRC Working paper 66*}
• Poverty traps and structural poverty in South Africa: reassessing the evidence from Kwazulu-Natal
  ^{CPRC Working paper 82*}
• Poverty dynamics in rural Vietnam, 2002-2006
  ^{Background paper for the 2008-2010 Vietnam Poverty Assessment*}

*Revised versions of these papers are included in the book Why Poverty Persists: Poverty Dynamics in Asia and Africa

Selected annotated life histories from CPRC-IFPRI-DATA longitudinal study of poverty dynamics in rural Bangladesh.

See more resurces on Poverty dynamics, life histories and Q² studies.