Several households falling into poverty as a result of HIV/AIDS desperately need support systems. African communities have modified existing safety net mechanisms and pioneered new responses such as home based care programmes, support groups and orphans and vulnerable children initiatives. Safety nets protect people from the worst effects of poverty. They prevent poor households from making hasty decisions to sell productive assets and increase their chances of escaping destitution. But how long can self-resourced initiatives continue to function?
Poverty and health
Community and faith-based groups lend a hand
id21 Insights 64, November 2006
Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development
World Bank, 2006
Two developments have led to this report. The first is the growing international awareness that many MDGs will not be reached unless malnutrition is tackled, and that this continued failure of the development community to tackle malnutrition may derail other international efforts in health and in poverty reduction. The second development is the now unequivocal evidence that there are workable solutions to the malnutrition problem and that they are excellent economic investments. The May 2004 Copenhagen Consensus of eminent economists (including several Nobel laureates) concluded that the returns of investing in micronutrient programs are second only to the returns of fighting HIV/AIDS among a lengthy list of ways to meet the world’s development challenges.
Mental Health and Poverty in Africa
European Foundation Centre, 20 November 2006
World Health Organisation (WHO) together with other key partners have joined forces to develop a new Project "Mental Health and Poverty Project: Improving Mental Health, Reducing Poverty (MHaPP)". The project will undertake an analysis of existing mental health policies in poor countries, provide interventions to assist in the development and implementation of mental health policies in those countries, and evaluate the policy implementation in order to provide new knowledge regarding comprehensive multi-sectoral approaches to breaking the negative cycle of poverty and mental ill-health. The project will be conducted in four African countries: Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia.
The Millennium Villages Project: A new approach to ending rural poverty in Africa?
Cabral L, Farrington J, Ludi L: Overseas Development Institute
The Millennium Villages Project (MVP), an initiative of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is an attempt at an integrated and bottom-up approach to getting African villages out of the poverty trap. It involves massive injections of capital targeted at, presently, a handful of villages, combining agricultural support with health, infrastructure and education interventions. Taking a critical stance, this paper finds that although these aims are admirable, significant questions remain with regard to scalability and long-term sustainability of the MVP.
Why understanding of social relations matters more for policy on chronic poverty than measurement
Harriss J: Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), 2006
The political foundations of poverty are all too often ignored by poverty analysts. This paper presents, from a political-economy perspective, a critique of mainstream poverty analysis. The author argues that the way mainstream research considers poverty separates it from the social processes of the accumulation and distribution of wealth. This serves to depoliticise poverty, as it becomes a kind of a social abnormality, rather than the reality of modern state and market society functions.
Applying Q2 methods to understand poverty dynamics: A focus on ill health and HIV/AIDS in Uganda
Lawson D, Hulme D: World Institute for Development Research (WIDER), 2006
This research we combine the strengths of quantitative analysis (representativeness, confidence levels, understanding of correlates and characteristics) and life history analysis (the elaboration of processes that underpin correlations, the understandings that poor people have of their poverty and the critical events that have caused deprivation), to make a genuine attempt at providing thorough insights in to poverty dynamics. Given the relative infancy of applying ‘Q2’ to poverty research, in this way, the paper adopts a joint methodological/themed approach i.e. we explain through the use of examples how the methods were combined to further our knowledge of poverty dynamics before then providing explicit examples of key findings.
Culture fights poverty
Kateta M: Southern Africa Social Forum, 15 October 2006
Imbawula Trust, a Johannesburg based cultural association says culture has a great role to play in the fight of Africa’s poverty. They said the African continent had great potential to develop if citizens were inspired by their cultural and social customs which are 'vital in the development of peoples mental and social stability'.
Evolution and determinants of non-monetary indicators of poverty in Kenya: Children's nutritional status 1998-2003
Kabubo-Mariara J, Ndenge GK, Mwabu DK: World Institute for Development Economic Research (WIDER)
This paper uses Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data to analyse the evolution and determinants of children’s nutritional status in Kenya using descriptive and econometric methods. Our findings suggest that if Kenya is to reduce the current high rates of malnutrition as stipulated in the strategic health objectives and the millennium development goals, policies and strategies for poverty alleviation, promotion of post secondary education for women and provision of basic preventive health care are critical issues which need to be pursued because they have a big impact on children’s nutritional status. Decomposition results indicate that there are significant unexplained differentials in chronic malnutrition between the two years.
Lifelong consequences of early childhood undernutrition: Illustrations of impact on human capital formation in Zimbabwe
Alderman H, Hoddinott J, Kinsey B: World Institute for Development Research (WIDER), 2006
This paper examines the impact of undernutrition among preschool children on subsequent human capital formation in rural Zimbabwe. We use a maternal fixed effects – instrumental variables (MFE-IV) estimator with a long-term panel data set. Representations of civil war and drought 'shocks' are used to identify differences in preschool nutritional status across siblings. Improvements in height-for-age in preschoolers are associated with increased height as young adults and the number of grades of schooling completed. Had the median pre-school child in this sample had the stature of a median child in a developed country, by adolescence, s/he would be 3.4 centimeters taller, had completed an additional 0.85 grades of schooling and would have commenced school six months earlier.
Building public services for poverty reduction
Emmett B, Green D, Laws M, et al: Oxfam , 2006
This report highlights how building strong public services is key to transforming the lives of people living in poverty. The authors show that developing countries will only achieve healthy and educated populations if their governments take responsibility for providing essential services.