Why Poverty Persists

Reviews / Votes

'. . . this volume's great merits - namely, contributing to the policy dialogue with evidence from a collection of country studies and guiding all those interested in analyzing poverty dynamics on the method for doing so. It is not surprising that no previous book has ever achieved this contribution, because only recently, longitudinal micro-level panel data has become available for exploring poverty dynamics. All efforts expended to collect such data and provide an appropriate analysis based on it should be respected, and it is hoped that further efforts to do so will produce a sequel to this fascinating and readable volume.' -- Yuya Kudo, The Developing Economies 'Ten years ago Bob Baulch and John Hoddinott drew our attention to the phenomenon of 'poverty dynamics' - an insight into the unpredictability of poor people's livelihoods that had profound implications for poverty thinking and policy, forcing a rethink of static conceptualisations and measurement and raising challenges for targeting anti-poverty programmes. In this new volume, Baulch and colleagues enrich this understanding with rigorous analysis of panel datasets from six countries in Africa and Asia. Most impressively, this illuminating collection by technical microeconometricians is equally accessible to non-technical readers, which effectively communicates its important messages to development policy-makers and practitioners.' -- Stephen Devereux, University of Sussex, UK 'Why Poverty Persists significantly advances our understanding of the temporal dimensions of poverty. Its judicious mix of new evidence and improved methods offers new insights into why some people remain mired in poverty and the forces that keep them there. All those interested in combating poverty - academics, donors and those working in the non-governmental organizations - will learn from the carefully constructed African and Asian case studies presented.' -- John Hoddinott, International Food Policy Research Institute