After taking a back seat for a long time, poverty has ...



Why Don’t ‘the Poor’ Make Common Cause?

The Importance of Subgroups

Anirudh Krishna

Associate Professor of Public Policy and Political Science

Duke University

Box 90245

Durham, NC 27708-0245

(919) 613-7337

(919) 681-8288 (fax)

ak30@duke.edu

Abstract

Analyses that regard ‘the poor’ as a sociological category need to take account of recent studies quantifying the extent of flux within these ranks. Frequent movements into and out of poverty regularly refresh the pool of the poor. Large numbers of poor people were not born poor; they have descended into poverty, some quite recently. Concurrently, many formerly poor people have escaped from poverty. Distinct subgroups are defined by these divergent trajectories. Members of different subgroups have diverse economic needs, political interests and mobilisation potential, making cohesive action as a political force unlikely (and certainly uncertain) among all of ‘the poor’. Policies to assist poor people will be more effective, and political analysis will yield more fruitful results, if instead of working with any generic category of ‘the poor’ heed is taken of subgroup-specific experiences and demands.

1. Introduction: Why Not a Party or a Politics of the Poor?

Where the poor constitute a majority or near-majority of the population, why don’t they vote themselves to power in democracies? In countries such as Madagascar, Mozambique, Mali, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya and Bangladesh, where the poor constitute, respectively, 71 percent, 70 percent, 64 percent, 56 percent, 53 percent, 52 percent, and 50 percent of the population, why don’t parties of the poor emerge and take power democratically? Even in countries such as India, Philippines, and Ecuador, where the poor form a smaller but still sizeable part of the population – 29 percent, 37 percent and 35 percent, respectively – why are the politics of poverty not more emphatic, potent and visible?[i]

Lower political participation by poorer people can provide a possible explanation. Likened by Marx to sacks of potatoes, the rural poor have not been considered particularly active politically (Bates, 1981). Empirical studies have repeatedly affirmed lower participation rates among the poor (for example, Verba, Nie and Kim, 1978; Rosenstone and Hansen, 1993; Jackman and Miller, 1995; and Lijphart, 1997). A ‘culture of poverty’ is claimed, reflecting apathy and submission among the poor (Lewis, 1963).

Yet, these explanations are hardly sufficient to justify why large majorities of people, more than two-thirds of the population in some cases, are unwilling or unable to act collectively. Participation rates may be lower among poorer people, but the sheer weight of numbers can handily compensate for this difference, reported to be no more than a few percentage points. Recent evidence also shows that participation rates are not uniformly low among all of the poor. In many cases poorer people participate as actively as others (Yadav, 1999; Bratton and Mattes, 2001; Mattes, et al., 2003; Krishna, 2006; Krishna, forthcoming), and some sections of the poor can actually have higher-than-average participation rates, as shown below.

In contexts where they are quite numerous – which includes vast swathes of South and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and segments of Central and South America, or nearly one-half of all countries in the world – the rural poor should present to political entrepreneurs a natural constituency for effective organisation. As inequality is rising in many countries (Wade, 2004; World Bank, 2006), and as older forms of social organisation and their associated norms and customs are eroding (Griffin, 2000; UNDP, 2000), the organisational potential of the rural poor should be growing, rendering them more attractive as a constituency for political organisers. Whether to restore a ‘subsistence ethic’ (Scott, 1976) or to obtain better deals from markets and state bureaucracies (Popkin, 1979), movements of the rural poor should therefore be on the rise.

So why are efforts to organise the poor so infrequent, scattered, and localized? Divisions among the poor on account of caste, ethnicity, and religion have been advanced as a possible explanation for lack of organisation (for example, by Burnell, 1995; Alesina, et al., 1999; Bates, 1999; Good, 1999; Keefer and Khemani, 2003; and Varshney, 2005), but while answering one question these explanations evade a more fundamental one: Why are caste or ethnicity so much more commonly the currency of political organisation – even where poverty is a more widely shared feature? Why do political parties in developing countries more frequently exploit cleavages drawn along ascriptive lines and less often assemble broad-based coalitions of the poor?

In this paper, I present an additional explanation, supplementing the ones provided earlier. ‘The poor’ does not constitute a valid category for analysis or action: it is no more than an article of speech, I will contend.

Recent studies show that significant differences in identities and material interests exist across distinct subgroups of poor people. There are those who have fallen into poverty recently, others who are on the verge of escaping from poverty, and still others who have remained persistently poor. In Section 2, I present evidence from recent studies that quantify the extent of movements into and out of poverty. Large numbers, and in many contexts, the majority, of those who are poor at the present time were not poor some years ago. Conversely, large numbers of formerly poor people have escaped from poverty, and others, still poor but upwardly mobile, are making their ways out from this statistical pool.

Different reasons are associated, respectively, with escaping poverty and falling into poverty (Section 3). As a result, different needs are experienced and different demands are expressed by members of different subgroups. Those who have recently fallen into poverty are most directly encumbered by one set of reasons, and they tend to demand related public policies. Others, on the verge of escaping from poverty, are assisted by a different set of reasons. They see a different set of needs and opportunities. The persistently poor constitute yet another subgroup. Neither recently fallen into poverty, nor experiencing any significant upward mobility, members of this subgroup face a different opportunity set; they tend to make a different set of demands upon the state.

Different experiences, different identities and different material interests tend to make collective action uncertain among all subgroups of the poor. Evidence collected in 36 villages of Andhra Pradesh, India provides some initial support for this proposition, showing how members of different subgroups demand very different things from the state.

Coming together under a common umbrella of action is hardly automatic. Looking within separate subgroups provides a better starting point for policy design, political analysis, and coalition building. Some consequences of this categorical advance are examined in Sections 4 and 5.

2. Not a Rising nor a Falling but a Rising-Falling Tide

Analysts referring to the poor implicitly assume a stable and homogeneous category.[ii] However, ‘the poor’ is a very approximate and possibly a misleading category of analysis. For a category to be robust and useful for analysis it must have sufficient discriminating power (Sartori, 1970: 1039). It must be stable, with clear boundaries, and have defining properties shared by all members (Collier and Mahon, 1993: 845). ‘The poor’ fulfills none of these conditions. Considerable differences exist within the ranks of the poor, and considerable similarities are observed across the categorical dividing line. ‘The poor’ is also an ephemeral category with highly porous boundaries. Many who form part of the poor at a previous point in time are not included among them at a later time, and many others who were not poor at a previous time become part of the poor in the future.

Considering the poor as a fixed category is therefore like using a freeze-frame snapshot to depict a vast churning tide. It captures the peaks and troughs of the moment but it is instantly reconfigured by movement. The moving picture rather than a snapshot is both more truthful and more productive in terms of analysis, but it provides no support for any well-defined category of ‘the poor’.

Table 1 presents results from a geographically diverse selection of recent studies that examined poverty in dynamic context. These studies consider different sample sizes, ranging from a small group of 347 households in a few communities of Egypt to over 6,000 households in one part of India (respectively, Haddad and Ahmed, 2003; and Krishna, 2004). Statistically representative samples for entire countries are included (Deininger and Okidi, 2003; Bhide and Mehta, 2004), alongside studies of particular regions or groups of communities (Sen, 2003; Krishna, et al., 2004). Different periods of time are considered, ranging from a short span of three years to long periods of 25 years. Commonly, however, all studies illustrate the extent to which there is flux within the ranks of the poor.

Considering the magnitude of these movements both into and out of poverty has the effect of substantially changing our imagery of the poor.

-- Table 1 about here --

The first row of Table 1 shows that over the 13-year period, 1987-2000, 26 percent of a panel of 379 Bangladeshi households considered by Sen (2003) escaped from poverty (Column 5). Simultaneously, however, another 18 percent of households fell into poverty (Column 6). Movements out of and into poverty were both large. Fifty seven percent of all households were poor at the start of this 13-year period (Column 7), and 49 percent were poor at the end of this period (Column 8). However, not all those who were poor at the beginning of this period were also poor at the end. In fact, 46 percent of those who were poor at the beginning were not poor by the end of this period (Column 9). Conversely, 37 percent of those who were poor at the end had not been poor at the beginning of this period (Column 10). Because movements out of poverty were large (26 percent) and movements into poverty were also large (18 percent), the composition of ‘the poor’ changed considerably.

These results are hardly confined to Bangladesh. All studies in the sample reported in Table 1 present a similar account of flux among the poor. Other studies not reported here also bear out a similar conclusion.[iii] New poverty is being created even as some old poverty is destroyed. Large numbers of people are entering poverty even as large numbers escape from poverty.

Take, for example, the study by Krishna et al. (2004) of households residing in 20 Western Kenyan villages. Eighteen percent of these households escaped from poverty in the 25-year period examined by this study. At the same time, another 19 percent of households fell into poverty. A total of 55 percent of the poor at the beginning of this study period were not poor any longer by the end of this period (Column 9). Conversely, 56 percent – the majority – of those who were poor at the end were not part of ‘the poor’ at the beginning of this period (Column 10).

Studies that consider a shorter time horizon also have similar results to show. A study of 1,171 households in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, shows that over a five-year period, 1993-1998, 10 percent of households moved upward out of poverty (Carter and May, 2001). During the same time period, however, another 25 percent of households fell into poverty. The ranks of the poor were considerably refreshed: 60 percent of all the poor at the end of this five-year period consisted of the newly impoverished. Results from a nationally representative sample of 1,300 Ugandan households similarly show that of all households who were poor in the starting year (1992), 54 percent – the majority – were no longer in poverty by the ending year, 2000 (Deininger and Okidi, 2003).

In Asia, Africa and Latin America, everywhere household and individual poverty has been examined over time, similar results have emerged: Movement reconstitutes the profile of people in poverty. No matter how long or short is the time period studied – or what measure or threshold of poverty is employed[iv] – the results are the same: Escapes from poverty occur concurrently with descents into poverty. A sluggish pace of net poverty reduction does not occur because there is no movement out of poverty. It is a resultant of two large and frequently offsetting trends.

These movements, into and out of poverty, are not marginal or temporary events.[v] Thus, people do not fall into poverty only to escape in a later period, nor indeed are these results confined to borderline households fluctuating around the poverty line.

Only one-third of households that fell into poverty during the 15-year period, 1979-1994, were able to escape from poverty over the next 10 years in Uganda. The remaining two-thirds who had become poor 10 years ago were still poor when investigations were conducted in the summer of 2004. Meanwhile, an additional 11 percent of households fell into poverty, further refreshing the ranks of the poor (Krishna, et al., 2006a). Many who were formerly poor have climbed a considerable distance out of poverty. Many others who were previously well-to-do have fallen deeply into poverty. A total of 368 of all 2,631 households in these 36 Ugandan communities (14 percent) came out of poverty over the ten-year period, 1994-2004. Among these households, most of whom could barely afford to purchase food and clothes 10 years ago, 26 percent now possess land of their own and another 21 percent have advanced even further, owning concrete houses and businesses in addition to farm lands. Concurrently, another 325 households (12.5 percent) fell into poverty, and of these freshly impoverished households as many as 24 percent can no longer afford to buy clothes and food; another 29 percent have pulled their children out of schools. Investigations in other countries also show how descents and escapes are mostly not temporary, marginal or fringe occurrences.[vi]

It makes little sense thus to speak of the poor as a stable, consistent or homogeneous category. Not all who are poor today have always remained poor. Neither have all who are not poor today always kept safely away from poverty.

Distinct subgroups are given rise by these movements into and out of poverty. Different interests and identities are associated with each separate subgroup. Members of different subgroups commonly wish to get out of poverty, it is true, and to that extent there is, indeed, a shared aspiration. But the means that each subgroup regards as most relevant – the how of combating poverty – differs notably among members of different subgroups.

3. Demands from the State by Different Subgroups

Escaping poverty and falling into poverty are not symmetric in terms of reasons. One set of reasons is associated with movements upward, out of poverty, while another and different set of reasons is associated with movements downward, into poverty. Two different sets of public policies are required, therefore: one set to address and reinforce the reasons associated with escaping poverty, and another set of policies to block or subdue the reasons for descent. Different subgroups of the poor are differently attracted toward these different policy sets.

Ill health and healthcare expenses constitute commonly the single largest reason associated with descents into poverty. Studies show how for as many as 73 percent of the newly impoverished in Western Kenya, 77 percent in Uganda, 67 percent in Peru, and 88 percent in Gujarat (India), ill-health and healthcare expenses constituted a principal reason for descent. Large majorities of households that fell into poverty in other countries have also suffered from ill health and high healthcare expenses. Evidence from Cambodia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Peru, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Vietnam points unambiguously to the deleterious effects of healthcare costs upon households’ welfare.[vii] Health-related factors operate commonly across all regions to drive households into poverty. Households in China facing one serious health situation suffer average income drops of 17 percent. When two or more health incidents are experienced back-to-back a household’s slide into poverty becomes steeper and more assured (Gan, et al., 2005). More than half of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are attributable to medical costs (Himmelstein, et al., 2005).

‘Rises in out-of-pocket costs for public and private healthcare services are driving many families into poverty and increasing the poverty of those who are already poor. The magnitude of this situation – known as “the medical poverty trap” – has been shown by national household surveys and participatory poverty alleviation studies’ (Whitehead, et al., 2001: 833). Data from extensive household surveys undertaken in 59 countries of Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America shows that catastrophic payments on healthcare – those that far exceed households’ capacity to pay – are unfortunately on the rise and ‘common in middle-income countries, countries in transition, and in several low income countries. This negative impact of health systems on households that can lead to impoverishment has long been ignored’ (Xu, et al., 2003: 115). A very large part of debt incurred by poor families in India and elsewhere arises on account of large healthcare expenses (Dilip and Duggal, 2002). In rural Vietnam, 60 percent of poor households were found to be in debt, and more than one-third of these households cited medical expenses as the main reason (Ensor and San, 1996).

Some other reasons are also associated with descent into poverty. Numerically, these other reasons are much less important than health, and they vary in coverage and intensity even within a country and region.[viii]

To be sure, all of these reasons – most importantly, health, but also social expenses, land exhaustion, and the like – are proximate causes, which people recounted in interviews as basic causes for their downfalls. More distant reasons, such as persistent budgetary indiscipline, adverse macro-economic conditions, and declining terms-of-trade are also important for any complete explanation. But hardly anyone among thousands of people interviewed made any reference whatsoever to any such distant cause.

Descents into poverty are understood by the people who have descended in terms principally of proximate and readily visible causes, and lack of healthcare is primary among the reasons they identify. Their demands from the state, as we will see below, derive closely from these locally-based analytical narratives.

Falling into poverty and escaping out of poverty are rarely instantaneous or unforeseen events. Falling into poverty is the result, more usually, of a sequence of events played out over a period of time. Escaping poverty is the result, similarly, of strategies worked out by individuals and households over reasonably long periods. People prepare for these events, spending years in the process. Those who are falling in or coming out of poverty tend to know what trajectory they are following. Their interests and demands are directly related to this knowledge.[ix]

Escaping poverty is responsive to an entirely different set of proximate reasons from those associated with descents into poverty. Developing a new income source is most importantly associated with successful escapes. Jobs in the government and private sectors are important for this purpose, but they are not always quantitatively the most important reason for escape. Diversification within agriculture has been more important in several regions, while new sources of income from the urban informal sector constituted the primary reason for escape in some other regions.[x] Nearly three-quarters of all escapes examined in the studies cited above were associated with income diversification through informal sector occupations and agriculture.

As a result, assistance in the form of education, transportation and communication links, agricultural infrastructure, irrigation, and regular information about available opportunities are regarded by the people involved as important for facilitating their escapes out of poverty. The subgroup on an upward trajectory tends to make such demands upon the state, and these demands are quite different from those made by the subgroup of the newly poor, whose different experiences result in a different set of policy preferences.

Different experiences and different needs make it difficult for all subgroups of poor people to come together spontaneous collective actions. Disparate identities tend to reinforce these divisions. Like the March family in Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women, many newly impoverished people may not for several years regard themselves as being of the poor, having anything in common with those they have regarded as beneath themselves.[xi]

An Empirical Test

In order to verify this hypothesis, that is to test whether members of different subgroups do, in fact, have different demands from the state, I conducted a study in January and February 2004 in 36 villages of Andhra Pradesh, India. A community-based methodology was utilized that relies on a locally relevant definition of poverty.[xii] All 36 communities verified the same asset-based scale for assessing poverty, and each household’s poverty status was assessed using this common community measure. Through community interviews, followed by interviews with individual households, the poverty status of each household was verified for the present time (2004) and also for seven years ago (1997).

Based on these assessments, all households in these villages were classified within four mutually exclusive subgroups: those who were poor seven years ago and also poor in 2004 (Persistent Poor); those who were poor seven years ago but have since escaped from poverty (Former Poor); those who were not poor seven years ago but have since fallen into poverty (Newly Poor); and those who were not poor at both times (Not Poor).[xiii] Apart from the fourth subgroup, Not Poor, members of the other three subgroups could be included – at one time or another – within an omnibus category of ‘the poor’. However, squashing these subgroups together would have been quite unproductive both for policy design and for studying political behavior.

A total of 1, 302 adult residents were selected through random sampling in the larger group of 36 villages, and they were interviewed using a pre-tested questionnaire.[xiv] A list of ten major demands was constructed and pilot tested initially in four villages. Respondents in 36 villages were asked to rank these ten demands in order of priority. The related survey question was phrased as follows: ‘Different people have different needs from the government. I will read out a list of needs. Please tell me which of these needs is most important for you. Please rank this list from 1 to 10 in order of importance to you’.

People belonging to the three different subgroups of currently and formerly poor people are not very different in terms of gender, age, caste, religion, or education.[xv] However, demands from the state vary considerably across these subgroups. Table 2 shows results for the top five demands made by different subgroups.[xvi]

-- Table 2 about here --

Notice the difference in priorities between the Persistent Poor and the Newly Poor. Wage labour is the most important demand of the Persistent Poor. As many as 46 percent of respondents in this subgroup rated this demand among their top three priorities, but only 8 percent of the Newly Poor and only 5 percent of the Former Poor considered this demand among their top three priorities.[xvii]

Better healthcare services constituted the top demand of respondents from the Newly Poor subgroup, as could be expected, given that ill health was the most important reason associated with their impoverishment. The largest group of Newly Poor respondents, 34 percent, regarded healthcare services as a critical demand from the state. However, only 8 percent of Persistent Poor respondents and only 7 percent of Former Poor respondents considered healthcare as their key demand from the state. Housing support was another key demand by Newly Poor respondents, but relatively few respondents from the other two subgroups, less than 10 percent in all, considered housing support among their top three demands from the state.

The subgroup of Persistent Poor has one set of demands from the state. The subgroup of Newly Poor has another and different sets of demands. Members of the third subgroup, the Former Poor, have different demands yet. Irrigation, high schools, and jobs are their most important demands. These are the means that have helped take members of this subgroup out of poverty in the past, and these are the key demands at the present time of others escaping from poverty. In contrast, less than 10 percent of either the Persistent Poor or the Newly Poor ranked any of these demands within their top three priorities.

This empirical demonstration from a few rural communities in one Indian state is hardly definitive proof for the proposition that different subgroups of the poor will always have different demands from the state.[xviii] More research in other regions and countries will help establish (or refute) this proposition with greater conviction. It stands to reason, however, that because they face different opportunities and have experienced different threats, members of different subgroups will see things somewhat differently from each other. Collective action will hardly automatically arise.

Political parties can certainly help consolidate these divergent demands, bringing them within a common manifesto of action. They need to recognize, first, that not all poor people are alike, that different subgroups exist which can have quite distinct demands. They also need to aggregate, adopt, and articulate these different demands. None of this will occur routinely; persistent purposive action is required on the part of party organizers. Such actions may not be readily forthcoming, especially in situations where other cleavages – such as those based in ethnic or regional divides – may present a more attractive benefit-cost calculus to vote assemblers. There are relatively few developing country examples of parties representing large swathes of poor people (including in Kerala and West Bengal, India). Specific historical paths help explain why more parties of this kind have not arisen elsewhere; understanding that basic divisions exist within the ranks of ‘the poor’ also helps recognize why a choice regarding assembling such coalitions is not automatic. I will return to this aspect later.

4. Poor People’s Participation in Politics

In this section and the next one I will look at some other implications for policy and research that follow from disaggregating the poor and considering subgroups. For instance, received wisdom strongly suggests that political participation rates are lower among ‘the poor’ compared to others. This belief has given rise to the notion of a distinct ‘culture of poverty’. The poor ‘are a different kind of people’, claimed Harrington (1962: 146), ‘they think and feel differently’ from other people. Poverty ‘is a way of life’, declared Lewis (1963, xxiv), which is ‘remarkably stable and persistent, passed down from generation to generation along family lines. The culture of poverty has its own modalities and distinctive social and psychological consequences for its members… [it] affects participation in the larger national culture, and becomes a subculture of its own’.

The composition of the poor is far from constant, however, and stability and persistence are hardly everywhere in evidence. Consider, for examples, rates of political participation in these Andhra Pradesh villages. Participation scores were measured using a 100-point scale.[xix] Higher scores indicate a greater extent of participation. These scores were compared across four mutually exclusive and exhaustive subgroups of villagers: the Former Poor, the Persistent Poor, the Newly Poor, and the Not Poor. Table 3 provides these results.

-- Table 3 about here --

There are differences, to be sure, among the four separate subgroups. The Persistent Poor are less participative on average. The mean participation score for the Persistent Poor is lower than the mean score for the other three subgroups. However, the Persistent Poor are not qualitatively different from other subgroups. The middle range of scores (between the lower and upper quartile) overlaps considerably across the four subgroups, indicating that it is hard to mark off any one subgroup as having a specific modality or ‘culture’ of poverty. Twenty-five percent of the Persistent Poor have participation scores of no more than four points out of one hundred. This would seem to make these people part of a non-participative culture. However, 23 percent of the Former Poor, 15 percent of the Newly Poor, and 16 percent of the Not Poor also have participation scores that are four points or lower. If there is any particularly non-participative culture, it is spread across all four subgroups of villagers, including those who are not poor.

It is possible that this result is India-specific. Studies have shown that poor people in India tend to participate in electoral politics as often or more than non-poor people (for example, Yadav, 1999). However, studies conducted recently in parts of Africa, the other continent where large numbers of poor people reside, have also shown a similar result, namely, that poor people’s participation rates are not lower than those of other people (Bratton and Mattes, 2001; Krishna, forthcoming).

Considering different subgroups has the effect of widening one’s perspective on not just the extent of but also the motivations behind political participation. In this context, one other result reported in Table 3 is of interest. The Newly Poor have an average participation score which is not lower, and is actually somewhat higher, than the mean participation score of all other subgroups, including the Not Poor. This result may seem surprising; it goes against the received wisdom. It stands to reason, however, that those who have faced adversity more recently would seek to lash out against perceived injustices; their motivation to participate and make their voices heard should be quite compelling. ‘Memories of hard times, and the influence of such memories on politics, may linger long after the crisis is past… [People who are] vulnerable to sliding into poverty…may continue to worry about vulnerability even when objective risks diminish’ (Nelson, 2003: 124). Such nagging memories might account for the high participation rates observed among members of the Newly Poor subgroup in these Andhra Pradesh villages.

Conclusions expressed earlier about uniformly low rates of political participation among the poor may deserve to be revisited, considering separate subgroups of poor people. In particular, it will help to examine whether the Newly Poor subgroup is actually more participative and also more likely to vote against the party in power. This micro-level hypothesis is consistent with the macro-level finding that adverse economic performance tends to destabilize democratically elected governments (Przeworski and Limongi, 1997). It will be interesting to test it more widely at the micro level in different countries by comparing participation rates and support for different parties among different subgroups of poor people. In other ways as well, as discussed below, policy design and political analysis can potentially be enriched, becoming better targeted in the first instance and more productive in the second, by considering subgroup-specific experiences and needs.

5. Conclusion: Politics and “The Poor”

How poverty is alleviated or reduced has been studied extensively in the past. How poverty gets created is becoming better understood as a result of recent studies that track households and individuals over time and analyze reasons for movement into and out of poverty.[xx] The majority of the poor in many cases were not born poor nor have they always been poor. Many others, who were poor in the past, have risen out of this state in recent times. Different consequences for policy and politics emerge from understanding this fundamentally dynamic nature of poverty.

In terms of policy design, disaggregating the poor into constituent subgroups serves a number of important functions. First, it allows us to better understand the sources of poverty, in particular allowing us to consider how some part of poverty is freshly created, and more important, how this new creation can be controlled more effectively. It may prove less expensive to increase protective measures that prevent the creation of poverty rather than to invest in poverty relief only after people have fallen into poverty. How much, for instance, does a government spend on housing and other welfare assistance than could have been saved earlier in the process through better medical coverage?

Taking such a disaggregated view can aid in the design of more cost-effective policies. Pro-poor policies cannot be generic. Specifically, two different sets of policies are required within each context, one set to help prevent descents into poverty, and another set of policies that facilitate more escapes. Each set of policies has to be targeted toward reasons for escape and descent that operate within specific contexts. While some reasons for descent – such as ill health and high health care costs – are common across contexts, other reasons for escape and descent tend to vary across and also within countries. Conducting local-level inquiries and ascertaining subgroup-specific reasons is an essential first step. Instead of searching for the one ‘killer’ application or program that will supposedly end poverty for all times, policy makers and others would do better by putting in place mechanisms that help keep track of contextually-relevant, subgroup-specific reasons for descent and escape.

In terms of political analysis, a disaggregated view takes us beyond working with a fundamentally un-maintainable category termed ‘the poor’. The very different experiences and needs of the persistent poor and newly poor indicate how putatively similar political interests can diverge. Directions of movement – where an individual has been and where she is currently headed – seem more useful than current status for identifying interests and analyzing demands.

A better understanding of these different subgroups not only serves the normative purpose of refocusing a state’s attention on its most vulnerable citizens, but it can also facilitate the building of stable political coalitions, necessary for fragile political democracies to function.[xxi] Coalition building among different subgroups of poor people may not, however, be perceived as advantageous by party organizers.

Different types of cleavages are available at any given time that can be exploited for amassing votes and assembling majorities (Schattschneider, 1960). Exploiting the division between poor and non-poor people may not always provide the most cost-effective means. Sharing at any given moment a common location among the poor of a country is hardly sufficient to give rise to a common identity or similar interests, as seen above. Nevertheless, social democratic and other left-leaning parties have arisen at different times and in different places, constructing platforms that have brought together the diverse demands – education, health care, housing, opportunities for upward mobility – variously preferred by different subgroups of poor people. As Sandbrook et al. (2007) explain, however, after considering social democratic results and possibilities in different parts of the developing world, some special circumstances and particular historical conjunctures have enabled such coalitions to come into being. At the present time, partly because of the ascendancy of the neo-liberal agenda and partly because the same helpful conditions and conjunctures are not operative elsewhere, such coalitions, even if they are forged, are likely to be ‘more complicated and fragile in the global periphery’ (pp. 21). Politicians in Andhra Pradesh and other Indian states that I have studied make election promises framed in terms of tangible things, such as roads, schools, clinics, irrigation canals, and the like, hardly ever referring to deeper and underlying issues, such as redistribution, which can commonly serve the demands of different subgroups of poor people, thereby helping assemble broader-based and more abiding coalitions. Such ‘de-politicization’ is furthered by a dominant discourse of development couched largely in terms of discrete projects and programs and given impetus by the activities of international agencies and national governments (Ferguson, 1990). It is worth researching, though beyond the scope of this article to examine, when and where the proximate demands of different poor people become articulated with reference to higher systemic levels.[xxii]

For example, a development state can help respond to and construct alliances among different subgroups, and it would be useful to examine the origins and nature of such a poverty-reducing development state. Unfortunately, studies of the development state have tended to focus so far almost exclusively on growth, particularly industrial growth (for example, Johnson, 1982; Chibber, 2003; and Sinha, 2005), and poverty reduction has not been analyzed equally extensively. Different policy sets are involved in promoting escape and reducing descent, as we saw in Section 2. While growth-promoting policies have been extensively examined, what is not so clear is the nature of the state that will also support effective descent-reducing policies. The kind of state that can promote growth while also putting in place effective social insurance and healthcare services might likely differ from the ‘cohesive-capitalist’ state identified by Kohli (2004). It is interesting to observe, however, that in the archetypical development state, Japan, policies have been simultaneously pursued since the early 1950s concerned both with promoting growth and preventing descents into poverty. Research by Milly (1999: 222) shows how quite early in their postwar growth process Japanese government officials came to regard ‘illness as a major cause of impoverishment; stressed the urgency of fully implementing universal health insurance; and placed health insurance first’ among measures to respond to high poverty in the 1950s. The true contours of a development state might, therefore, be more complex than hitherto supposed.

Questions related to what needs to be done by the state and by political parties for poverty reduction become more complicated and nuanced when it is recognized that poverty is simultaneously both growing and ebbing. Answers to other hoary old questions can also change, becoming more complex or more tractable.

Thus, democracy, instead of being uniquely either good or bad for ‘the poor’, as the question is sometimes posed, can be concurrently both good and bad – for different subgroups. For instance, Ross’s (2005) conclusion that democracy (or lack of it) has no palpable effect upon the poor can be squared more easily with the opposite conclusion provided, for instance, by Sen (1999), who holds that democracy helps improve the life chances of poor people. Ross compares healthcare parameters, particularly infant mortality rates, and his conclusions are more relevant to the subgroup of Newly Poor people. Sen’s claim, on the other hand – that democracies are superior at generating information and equalizing opportunities – speaks more directly to the subgroup who are on the verge of escaping poverty. The two sets of conclusions are not really contradictory: one relates to one subgroup of poor people, while the other refers to a different subgroup.

It would be useful thus to begin examining poverty not as it is often construed to be – a somewhat homogeneous mass of ‘the poor’ – but as it really is: an inconstant, internally differentiated, and fluid collection of individuals, who are moving in different directions at the same point of time. What you want from the state may depend not so much on where you are on the income scale at any given moment but on where you have been and which way you are going. Two people with the same level of income or wealth cannot be assumed to have similar interests; if one has fallen into poverty while the other is persistently poor, their interests will more likely diverge than be similar. It seems worthwhile, therefore, both for designing public policies and for political analysis to consider specific subgroups instead of a sterile and inappropriate category termed ‘the poor’.

References

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Table 1: Poverty: A Rising-Falling Tide

|(1) |(2) |(3) |

|Country/ Region |Study |Period |

| | |Health Services|Housing Support|High School |Irrigation |Jobs |Wage Labour |

|Former Poor |184 |7 |3 |25 |28 |22 |5 |

|Newly |159 |34 |24 |6 |9 |4 |8 |

|Poor | | | | | | | |

|Persistent Poor |669 |8 |9 |5 |9 |2 |46 |

Note 1: A chi-square test shows that the three subgroups are clearly independent in terms of these results.

Note 2: “Housing support” relates to programmatic support provided by the government in the form of a subsidy for constructing a new house or expanding/improving an existing shelter. “Wage labour” and “Jobs” are different because while the former is provided to casual, unskilled, day labourers, the latter relates to permanent (or at least more assured) positions.

Table 3: Political Participation Scores by Subgroups

|Category |n= |Political Participation Scores |

| | |Mean |Standard Deviation|Upper Quartile |Lower Quartile |Range |

| | | | |(Q3) |(Q1) | |

|Former Poor |184 |26 |27 |33 |5 |0-100 |

|Newly Poor |159 |35 |28 |44 |8 |0-100 |

|Persistent Poor |669 |22 |23 |29 |4 |0-100 |

|Not Poor |290 |34 |30 |47 |9 |0-100 |

Notes

-----------------------

[i] These figures are obtained from the World Bank’s World Development Report, 2005, and are based on national poverty lines, which are more realistic than dollar-per-day comparisons (Wade, 2004). While not always exemplars of democracy in practice, all of these countries also have POLITY scores of 6 or higher, indicating high general openness of political institutions (cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/index.htm).

[ii] For example, scholars have examined whether democracy improves the material well-being of ‘the poor’, if democracy empowers the poor; whether the poor participate less than others in politics; if economic growth is good for the poor; whether the poor have shorter time horizons; if the poor are less capable of organizing collectively; and so on. See, as illustrations, Ross (2005); Siegle et al. (2004); Diamond (2005); Rosenstone and Hansen (1993); Dollar and Kraay (2000); Varshney (2000); and Thorp, Stewart and Heyer (2005).

[iii] See, for example, the collection of studies included within Baulch and Hoddinott (2000); and results from different regions reported in CPRC (2004).

[iv] Different studies, including those reported in Table 1, adopt different definitions and utilise different measures of poverty. While most studies use a consumption or income cutoff (such as dollar-a-day or some amount of income sufficient to provide basic food consumption, commonly calculated at the rate of 2,400 food calories a day), other studies (including the ones by Krishna) work with an asset-based understanding of poverty, employing a more fluid, contextually-relevant measure. The relative merits of these different approaches have been discussed elsewhere (see, for example, Sherraden, 2001; and Carter and Barrett, 2006). In general, there is no single best approach: ‘Finding a poverty line that is representative and comparable across countries and regions is an impossible task’ (Srinivasan, 2004: 4). Different measures and definitions are variously useful for different purposes.

[v] Nor is it not only because of crisis situations, such as financial meltdowns or earthquakes, floods and famines, that people get driven into poverty. Although crises can have lasting effects, adding large numbers to the pool in poverty (Ravallion and Lokshin, 2005), descents into poverty are as often occasioned by more everyday events, as I will discuss in the next section.

[vi] A study in 40 communities of Peru showed that more than half of those who fell into poverty in a previous period remained poor ten years later (Krishna, et al., 2006b). In Rajasthan, India, land records were tracked back over 25 years for a group of 50 households that fell into poverty during this period. Two-thirds of these households have lost more than 50 percent of the land that they previously owned, and the remaining one-third have lost their entire landholding. They have remained persistently in poverty.

[vii] Respectively, Asfaw and von Braun (2004); Barrett, et al. (2001); Deolalikar (2002); Fabricant, et al. (1999); Farmer (1999); Krishna (2004); Krishna, et al. (2005, 2006a, 2006b); and Strauss and Thomas (1998).

[viii] For example, social and customary expenses – on marriages and death feasts – are associated with large numbers of descents, as seen in different studies undertaken in India, Kenya, Peru and Uganda. Elabourate death feasts, involving the slaughter of many heads of cattle, are practiced in Kenya and Madagascar, while expensive wedding ceremonies are widespread, even among poorer folk, in India, Uganda and parts of Peru. Crop disease and land exhaustion were found important in Uganda, more particularly, the Western Region, but not so much in its Central Region or in neighboring parts of Kenya.

[ix] In addition to actually experiencing mobility, even expectations or ‘prospects’ of mobility can significantly shape people’s interests vis-à-vis politics (Benabou and Ok, 2001).

[x] See, for example, Ravallion and Datt (1996); Timmer (1997); Barrett, et al. (2001); Aliber (2003); Sen (2003); and Krishna, et al. (2004, 2005, 2006a).

[xi] I thank Aditi Krishna for suggesting this literary reference.

[xii] For more details on the Stages of Progress methodology see pubpol.duke/krishna.

[xiii] Households’ poverty status corresponded closely with asset ownership and type of housing. Some people, less than 2 percent in all, had moved in and out of poverty more than once during this period. However, the vast majority of movements were in only one direction, up or down.

[xiv] Individuals to interview were selected through random sampling on the most recently compiled voters list in each village. Regular revisions and frequent competitive elections have helped make these lists complete in their coverage, and I did not meet any adult villager whose name is not on the voters list. Very few selected villagers, 15 in all, refused to be interviewed.

[xv] Between 50 and 52 percent of respondents are male in each of these subgroups, average age varies between 40 and 43 years, and between 88 and 92 percent of respondents are Hindu by religion. Average years of school education vary from 1.64 (Persistent Poor) to 2.24 (Former Poor). Scheduled Castes (former untouchables) and Scheduled Tribes (indigenous people) form a somewhat higher proportion of the Persistent Poor subgroup (49 percent) compared to the Former Poor (45 percent) and Newly Poor subgroups (43 percent). A Chi-square test revealed that the three subgroups are not significantly distinguishable on account of any of these factors.

[xvi] The other five demands, not shown in Table 2, are drinking water, road, electricity, crèches and telephone service. Numerically, many fewer villagers of any subgroup ranked any of these demands among their top three priorities.

[xvii] Strictly speaking, the Former Poor do not form part of the poor at the current time, although they did in the past. They are examined here as a surrogate for the subgroup that is on the cusp of escaping from poverty.

[xviii] It bears noting, however, that the nature of demands did not differ significantly when respondents were categorized in terms of caste or religious groupings instead of the subgroups considered in Table 3.

[xix] Participation scores were measured considering individuals’ responses to seven separate survey questions related to campaigning, canvassing, contacting and protesting. Individuals’ responses to these seven separate questions were closely correlated with one another, and factor analysis showed that responses to all seven questions loaded highly on a single common factor. Because they all point commonly in the same direction, these responses were combined to constitute a 100-point Index of Political Participation.

[xx] Results from these studies have become available only within the past five to eight years, thus this body of knowledge is comparatively (but not entirely) new. Some earlier studies that looked at poverty in dynamic context include Attwood (1979); Van Schendel (1981); and Jodha (1988). An early statement that these movements might have important implications for politics and policy was made by Nelson (1979: 398): ‘The boundaries between poor and not so poor…are blurred; many individuals and households move back and forth across these boundaries’.

[xxi] Rueda (2005) provides a similarly disaggregated analysis of labour in OECD countries, which underscores the political differences that exist between different subgroups of labour. Disaggregating rather than lumping together these different subgroups of labour is similarly more productive for political analysis.

[xxii] I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this important research need.

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