Recent research by ODI using existing panel data sets to examine poverty dynamics in 14 countries revealed a disturbing trend. In countries like Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, a significant proportion of rural households that escaped poverty fell back into it during the following 8 to 10 years. A significant number of non-poor rural households also became poor during the same period. As a result, the rate of rural households descending into poverty (becoming impoverished) in these countries exceeds the rate of those sustainably escaping it. In all of the cases examined, qualitative life histories conducted by ODI’s Chronic Poverty Advisory Network point to realized risk in the form of shocks and stresses and the inability of poor and near poor households to mitigate, adapt to and recover from them as a key driver of these dynamics.

To further quantify this and further articulate the role of risk and importance of risk management in relation to poverty reduction goals, CPAN, in partnership with ACDI VOCA, have started implementing the project 'Ensuring Escapes from Poverty are Sustained ' as part of the broader project Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO). The objective of this USAID funded project is to examine the observed variance (at household level and the national level) in impoverishment rates in Uganda, Bangladesh and Ethiopia. CPAN analyses publically-available existing data-sets and research the issue of transitory escapes in these three countries. As a result, CPAN produced three country case studies and contributed to the development of a webinar.

CPAN has produced three reports (Uganda, Bangladesh and Ethiopia) and several multimedia documents and outputs. See below for more information

Project Outputs

Uganda Report: Ensuring Escapes from Poverty are Sustained in Uganda
Bangladesh Report: Ensuring Escapes from Poverty are Sustained in rural Bangladesh
Ethiopia Report: Ensuring Escapes from Poverty are Sustained in rural Ethiopia
Sustained Escapes from Poverty : Methodological note , Briefing note and Infographics
Multidimensional Poverty Report: Sustainable Poverty Escapes: Spotlight on Multidimensional Poverty
Programme implications : Briefing note

Additional Resources

An article by Greg Collins from USAID to introduce the Uganda transitory escape report.

Andrew Shepherd, Lucy Scott and Vidya Diwakar presented and discussed CPAN's work in Washington DC on the 1st September 2016 : presentation (slides and audio recording), panel discussion and interviews (videos)