Reforming Poverty Alleviation Policies

This paper reviews new evidence on broad relationships between economic growth and poverty. It then focuses on health and finance, describes possibilities for adding to how we conceptualise and measure poverty and concludes by returning to the political incentives that constrain poverty alleviation policy.

Paper concludes: where possible, one way forward is to ease tensions and build political commitments through working with the private sector to help provide the relevant public goods. Another is to push to better understand the genesis of political constraints. New analytical tools developed under the banner of Positive Political Economy are helping researchers to understand voting patterns and bureaucratic decisions in contexts with a clear set of constituencies. When it comes to poverty alleviation, constituencies in support of aggressive policies are often weak, although the beneficiaries of the policies are often numerous. Understanding the lack of political resolve on poverty alleviation will be helped by taking a step backward from the basic positive political economy framework to better understand why poor households often mobilize along ethnic, religious, or regional lines (if at all), rather than along class lines. The inquiry may also yield an important by-product: through better understanding the genesis of political consciousness and the determination of allegiances, researchers may find a deeper appreciation of the condition of poverty itself.

[Author's abstract]