Five ideas constitute the central message of this study. First, urban rickshaw pullers come from a very poor economic background consistent with the characteristics of chronic poverty. Second, rickshaw pulling provides a route of modest upward mobility for those among the rural chronically poor...

The aim of this paper is to document and explain the changing nature of urban poverty in East Africa since 1970, in particular in the two cities of Kampala and Nairobi. It will argue that the concept of proleterianization is helpful in understanding the changes in urban poverty and politics

This paper summarises the recent quantitative and qualitative evidence on urban poverty in Ethiopia. The analysis of poverty dynamics is difficult and has been neglected, hence most of the studies reviewed here focus on urban poverty at a particular point in time. The paper also attempts to...

This paper develops a series of arguments regarding the contribution of social movements to the reduction of chronic poverty in both urban and rural social contexts, building on the more specific arguments developed in CPRC Working Papers Nos. 63 and 64). This short, more analytically oriented...

Attempts to understand the causes of chronic poverty have largely centred on the concept of the poverty trap. In this perspective, the main focus is on the paucity of initial wealth or endowments, which under certain plausible conditions can create a trap from which a poor person will find it...

Based on Amartya Sen's groundbreaking work on capabilities and functionings, static poverty measures have long used non-income indicators. In contrast, measures of poverty dynamics, including chronic poverty, have in general conceptualized poverty only in an income dimension. Hence, this paper...

Development trustees have increasingly sought to challenge chronic poverty by promoting citizenship amongst poor people, a move that frames citizenship formation as central to overcoming the exclusions and inequalities associated with uneven development. For sceptics, this move within inclusive...

Childhood, adolescence and early adulthood remain for many girls and young women a period of deprivation, danger and vulnerability, resulting in lack of agency and critical development deficits. What happens at this crucial time in girls' and young women's lives can also reinforce their poverty...