From correlates and characteristics to causes: thinking about poverty from a chronic poverty perspective

Poverty and poverty reduction are currently the central concerns of development discourse and policy. Despite recent theoretical advances, poverty analysis continues to be dominated by an income/consumption conception of poverty. We argue for understandings of poverty that go beyond measurement-led conceptualizations to more adequately expose the causes of poverty. Chronic Poverty is one such concept. Its focus on poverty duration and dynamics highlights the forms of social relations that produce poverty, and which are often embedded within political institutions and economic structures. Poverty reduction does not simply require “good” policy: it requires creating the capacity of poorer people to influence, and hold accountable, those who make policies.