Poverty, Inequality and Social Exclusion
Work Package Leader:
Dr. Julie Litchfield – Poverty Research Unit at Sussex, University of Sussex
Overview
Over the last decade a significant body of work on poverty, inequality and conflict has emerged. Briefly, the state of the art can be summarised in four statements:
- The literature recognises that several “factors of conflict” may be at work in any given country: a country’s endowment and distribution of natural resources and economic, political and social environment may contribute to an escalation of conflict or may be consequences of conflict, and are often inter-related
- Conflict is more likely to occur in poor countries and conflict-affected countries generally have higher levels of poverty and lower growth rates
- There is a paucity of useful, reliable data that enables researchers to explore the relationship between conflict and poverty in a rigorous fashion that goes beyond either discussions of state agency or broad macro analysis
- Successful poverty reduction policies, including Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, need to be conflict-sensitive by recognising the specific conflict factors present in each country and attempting to redress these factors.
This Work Package will seek to advance the state of the art by examining empirically and theoretically the relationship between violent conflict and poverty, inequality and social exclusion of individuals, households and groups, recognising that conflict is both a cause and consequence of poverty, inequality and social exclusion. These notions will draw on MICROCON’s Conceptual Framework. The Work Package aims to link traditional economic theoretical approaches to poverty analysis, with political science insights on political systems of power and philosophical notions of social justice. This will help to identify how conflict impacts on absolute and relative poverty, and whether poverty and changes in inequality affect the onset of mass violence.
Publications:
RWP6: Poverty and Violent Conflict: A Micro Level Perspective on the Causes and Duration of Warfare - Patricia Justino
RWP12: The Impact of Armed Civil Conflict on Household Welfare and Policy Responses - Patricia Justino
RWP32: War and Poverty - Patricia Justino
RWP54: Violent Conflict and Human Capital
Accumulation - Patricia Justino
RWP55: Education and Conflict Recovery: The Case of
Timor Leste - Patricia Justino, Marinella Leone and Paola Salardi
Project 18: Livelihoods and land
Project leader:
Dr.
Rachel Sabates-Wheeler – Institute of Development Studies
Project researchers:
Dr.
Julie Litchfield and Dr. Elodie Douarin – Poverty Research Unit, University of Sussex
Prof. Roman Mogilevsky – Centre for Economic and Social Research
Dr. Marioara Rusu – Institute of Agricultural Economics
Publications:
RWP37: Poverty, Livelihoods and War Legacies: the Case of Post-War Rural Kosovo - Elodie Douarin, Julie Litchfield and Rachel Sabates-Wheeler
The project investigates empirically the ways in which different land allocation systems, especially gendered systems, create and/or exacerbate conflict and how this translates to productivity, social exclusion and poverty in Eastern Europe. It will use data from three or more of the following countries: Romania, Kosovo, Albania, Bosnia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The final list will be decided on the basis of comparability criteria amongst all the countries being considered.
Project 19: Ethnic violence and economic processes
Project leader:
Prof.
Christophe Müller – Université de Cergy-Pontoise
Project Researcher:
Dr. Indraneel Dasgupta – Université de Cergy-Pontoise
Publications:
RWP48: Group Violence, Ethnic Diversity, and Citizen
Participation: Evidence from Indonesia - Christophe Müller and Marc Vothknecht
This project investigates analytically the strategic use of political violence as a bargaining instrument by political entrepreneurs, with applications to civil conflicts in developing countries such as Rwanda and Moldova. An analytical model linking economics and political science aspects of conflict will be developed to explore the roles played by ethnic identity, external interventions (e.g. colonising powers, international pressure, corruption), economic dynamics (e.g. growth and living standards, inequality and attitudes with respect to social justice, health and fertility and land productivity, and consequences for poverty).
Project 20: Dynamics of poverty in conflict areas
Project leader:
Dr.
Philip Verwimp – Fund for Scientific Research - University of Antwerp
Project researcher:
Dr. Patricia Justino – Institute for Development Studies
Publications:
RWP4: Poverty Dynamics, Violent Conflict and Convergence in Rwanda - Patricia Justino and Philip Verwimp
This project will analyse the dynamics of poverty after violent conflict using a small but rich panel data set from Rwanda, which includes a panel of around 200 households interviewed before and after the Rwandan genocide. The project will also make use of large cross-sectional household surveys collected in Rwanda in the early 1990s and then again in 2001. It is hypothesised that the conflict and the accompanying shocks have destroyed economic opportunities for one or more groups of people, often geographically clustered, but has created new opportunities for other people.
Project 21: Poverty, exclusion and violence in South Africa
Project leader:
Prof. Jeremy Seekings – Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town
Project researcher:
Lauren Kahn and Adam Cooper - Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town
Publications:
RWP49: Socio-economic conditions, young men and violence in Cape Town - Jeremy Seekings and Kai Thaler
RWP50: Drivers of Male Perpetration of Family and Intimate Partner Violence in Cape Town - Kai Thaler
RWP51: Weapons, Violence and the Perpetrator-Victim Nexus in South Africa - Kai Thaler
RWP61: The Utility of Mixed Methods in the Study of Violence - Kai Thaler
This project examines the South African case study in a post-apartheid setting. Post-apartheid data from 2000-01 suggests that the distribution of income actually worsened after 1994, as unemployment continued to rise. Social exclusion is also widespread. This project aims to uncover important (potential) links between poverty, exclusion and violence in the South African context, focussing on Cape Town. Existing surveys collected in 2003 and 2005 will be supplemented by in-depth individual interviews and focus group discussions to uncover links between perceptions of distribution and distributive justice, and norms around the use of violence.
Countries studied in this Work Package
Funded by EC under FP6
