Young Lives working papers on poverty research
There has been growing interest in researching the dynamics of poverty, including poverty mobility. Looking at change over time and what caused this change can provide useful information for policymakers and those who seek to influence them. Young Lives is a longitudinal study of child poverty and provides ample scope to dwell on this area, making use of the three rounds of survey data and of qualitative data from sub-sample children. The focus in this paper is tribal households not conforming to the general trend of upward mobility. It locates these households, analyses their characteristics, and identifies the factors that cause the downward mobility of certain households. The specific context, the nature of negotiations the households have with the welfare institutions, and the experiential dimension of everyday struggles are discussed, keeping in mind the perspective of those in chronic poverty. We argue that the choices that poor people make can be seen as resistance to being labelled and that, by making these choices, they are also upholding the notion of agency and self-esteem. The paper concludes by drawing attention to structural aspects that shape poverty trajectories, and the policy implications of these.
This paper presents children's experiences and perceptions of poverty. It draws on survey and qualitative data from the Young Lives study of poor children in Ethiopia. Through group exercises, discussions and interviews, children and young people aged 13-17 collectively and individually provided their perceptions of the causes, indicators and consequences of poverty in their communities. They felt that they were more victims of the consequences of poverty while they rarely contributed to its causes. Their poverty experiences suggest the multidimensional, contextualised and intergenerational nature of child poverty. The children and young people have also demonstrated their agency and resilience by providing their lived accounts and suggestions for tackling poverty and by practically contributing to family incomes. They identified what they believed to be the root causes of poverty and suggested what the Government, parents and children should do to reduce it. For example, they thought that child poverty could be addressed by changing some of the societal values that contribute to its perpetuation. The paper argues that children's lived experiences of poverty place them in an optimum position to provide us with strong evidence to advance our knowledge of childhood poverty and develop apt policies to reduce it. Through this argument, this paper aims to provide both theoretical and practical contributions.
