Productivity to Reduce Poverty: Study of a Micro-Level Institution in Peru

A Peruvian community-based organization, a comedor popular (communal kitchen), is studied in this article to show how, as a micro-level institution, it fosters productivity in order to reduce poverty. The concepts of institutions, productivity and poverty are reviewed to establish a framework of analysis, where institutions are linked to productivity and poverty. This framework is applied to a comedor the author visited in 2001 and 2003. Through the diversity and intensity of the comedor’s activities and the practices it instills in women working there, productivity leads to key poverty reductions. The analysis illustrates how material well-being, psychological well-being, access to infrastructure and capacity to manage assets (the four dimensions of poverty) benefit from the various productivity improvements. The findings of this paper call for a better mix of poverty reduction strategies, where macro and micro institutions are used to fight the multidimensional problem of poverty.