Chronic Poverty Report 5 - Pandemic Poverty

Abstract

The Chronic Poverty Report 2023: Pandemic Poverty sets out to investigate the highly negative effects of the Covid-19 restrictions, and most importantly, the success or otherwise of the measures pursued to mitigate those effects on people in and near poverty. The leading message is that if restrictions were necessary, they should be minimised, and complemented by measures to mitigate their negative effects. During the pandemic, such measures were in most countries completely inadequate to prevent impoverishment and downward socio-economic mobility. The report makes suggestions on what needs to be done in a similar future crisis to avoid the economic and social reversals we have seen since 2020, and some steps on the road to recovery.

Social Protection Experiences of and Attitudes Towards New Urban Poor After Covid-19 in Bangladesh

“…The results from low-income urban settlements in Bangladesh also reflect this, pointing to a pressing need for more shock-responsive social protection, as well as a host of other measures to prevent downward mobility. These other mitigation measures may include household debt management measures, integrating pandemic management into disaster risk management, and longer duration of social protection measures (Shepherd et al 2023). In the development of such efforts, the issue of gender requires careful attention.…”

Presidential Address: Demand‐Side Constraints in Development. The Role of Market Size, Trade, and (In)Equality

“…First, our focus on sustained poverty reduction is relevant to a literature on poverty dynamics, which have been studied in individual countries (Ferreira, Leite, and Ravallion (2010)) and among households (Carter and Barrett (2006), Baulch and Hoddinott (2000)). A key message of this literature is that households frequently move in and out of poverty, and it is much rarer to escape permanently than to escape for a few years (Shepherd and Diwakar (2019)). Looking across countries, more than half of the time, countries have sustained poverty reduction at the aggregate level.…”