Poverty blogs

People power: the urban poor are now a force to be reckoned with

Speakers at the "View from the streets" event in London showed how the urban poor can group together to bring about change

No easy, quick solutions to improving life in the "slums"

BBC journalist Paul Mason’s “Our World,” shown on the 26th August 2011, relies once more on professionalized solutions to offer hope to those living in Manila, the capital of the Philippines – and the most densely populated city on earth. But they’re not a viable solution for the 900 million people living in informal settlements and other forms of inadequate accommodation such as crowded inner city dwellings.

Fast track out of poverty: farm labour or smallholder?

When IIED and Hivos launched their ‘provocation’ seminars late

Poor Economics and ‘Just Giving Money to the Poor’

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo's book, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, is making waves in development circles. Beyond the strong focus on randomised control trials, the book distinguishes itself by wading into issues on which the development community has often ignored or made uninformed guesses. These include the rationale behind the decisions made by the poor, whether they make the "best" decisions available, and how policymakers should respond.

How far should social protection go?

The Centre for Social Protection´s conference ‘Social Protection for Social Justice’,  came, in the words of the Institute for Development Studies’ Stephen Devereux, a full 11 and ¾ years after the term ‘social protection’ was first coined. Since then, social protection has risen steadily up the development agenda, and emerging economies such as Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa have rolled out extensive schemes which transfer cash directly to the poor. This conference challenged delegates to think more critically about the role and limits of such schemes in promoting social justice and challenging structural inequalities.

How ‘just giving money to the poor’ helps them adapt to climate change

Programmes which transfer money directly to the poor help them adapt to climate change. That´s what I´m suggesting in a new briefing paper to be presented at the upcoming conference on ‘Social Protection for Social Justice’, will be held at the Centre for Social Protection in Brighton between the 13th and 15th of April. 

'Just give money' or 'just give work' to the poor?

A previous blogpost on Due South discussed the potential for cash transfers to contribute to climate change adaptation. But 'just giving money to the poor' is not the only social policy programmes being implemented in the developing world. In India, a different approach is being tried: rather than guarantee the poor an income, the government guarantees them paid work, via the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which came into being in 2005.

To Legalize or not to Legalize?

Did the drugs trade keep the global financial system afloat at the height of the economic crisis?

Collateral damage - and no farewell to arms

When arms sales jump by more than a fifth during a global economic downturn, you have to wonder who’s buying, who’s selling and what the implications are for poorer countries.

Richard Norton-Taylor, reporting in the UK Guardian, reports that the average volume of sales of arms — including weapons such as guns, ammunition, missiles, military aircraft, military vehicles, ships and electronic systems — has increased by 22 per cent over five years compared to the previous five. Demand from South America and Southeast Asia has been particularly high.

The myth of ‘de-coupling’ as poor catch the recession cold

When did it start to sink in that poor countries are highly vulnerable to the impacts of the global recession?