Five decades of research on urban poverty: Main research communities, core knowledge producers, and emerging thematic areas

Abstract

Urban poverty represents one of the greatest and most urgent challenges that modern society is facing. The criticality of this global issue is represented by a rapidly growing body of academic literature which aims to explain the dynamics of urban poverty and promote effective and enduring solutions. However, despite many years of research, no studies have been conducted yet which reveal and analyze the overall intellectual structure of the urban poverty research field. In light of this gap, a bibliometric study was undertaken of 52 years of scientific literature on urban poverty (1965-2017). The bibliometric study combines author citation analysis and text-mining techniques to map the main research communities and core knowledge producers which are shaping the urban poverty research field and to identify the thematic areas that these communities are focusing attention on. The results of this investigation reveal a significant growth in the volume of academic literature produced post-1990, which is mainly driven by the collaborative efforts of five research communities, each of whom are seen to focus attention on a specific thematic area: (A) Policy-oriented research; (B) Urban poverty concentration; (C) The rise of poverty in Chinese cities; (D) Youth-behavioral and mental-health aspects of urban poverty; and (E) Urban poverty and health in the Sub-Saharan and Asian slum areas. The practical relevance and scientific contribution of this study is evidenced in its capacity to assist those actors working to alleviate urban poverty, in particular research communities, governmental and intergovernmental institutions, and funding bodies. In addition to help them grasp the overall intellectual structure of the urban poverty research field, the insight offered by this study is instrumental in supporting the articulation of a global, action-oriented agenda for future interdisciplinary research on urban poverty.

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