ABSTRACT
The various contributions in this book will show that although poverty has decreased in some countries and regions, notably in Latin America and East Asia, poverty has not been reduced everywhere and for everyone. In particular in sub-Saharan Africa poverty is still widespread and remains high in South Asia. Despite economic growth and increases in average income in some countries including China and India, income inequality has increased within these countries. This raises questions about the dynamics of poverty and well-being. The purpose of this chapter is twofold. Firstly, I will report a selection of findings from the World Bank study on Moving out of Poverty. Second, while doing so, I will reflect back on the previous chapters to identify where this study finds most resonance. The Moving out of Poverty study provides a micro perspective on why growth has not reduced poverty for everyone. Specifically, it looks into the reasons why certain households were able to move out of poverty, whereas others stayed behind or have fallen back over the past decade. The study is undertaken in fifteen countries 1 from a bottom-up per-spective. As such, the study builds further on Narayan et al.'s (2000) Voices of the Poor, in which a bottom-up and participatory approach to poverty assessment was taken. Putting assumptions about poverty aside, people's diversified trajectories out of poverty are explored under the varying conditions of ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ economic growth, depth of local democracy and freedoms and the role that social identity and networks plays in support of people's upward mobility. Moreover, the question how people who were once poor have moved and stayed out of poverty will be explored within different social, political and environmental contexts. In this chapter, I will zoom in on the Indian country study to substantiate the argument that climbing up the ‘ladder of life’ is not a linear or stable process The theoretical perspective applied recognizes poverty in its multiple dimensions and the research methodology is one of retrospective recall. A multidimensional approach highlights the variegated deprivations faced at household level by people in poverty (e.g., see Baud et al. 2008,2009; 2 Alkire and Santos 2010 3 ). Retrospective recall is used to include the dynamics of poverty and well-being. As pointed out by Krishna (2004), different factors explain who and why people climb out of poverty or fall into poverty. As such, the study moves beyond welfare economics in an attempt to reveal the underlying social and political processes that affect people's chances of moving out of poverty. The chapter is outlined as follows.
