Exploring poverty traps and social exclusion in South Africa using qualitative and quantitative data

By M. Adato, Michael R. Carter, Julian May. 2006

495 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Recent theoretical work hypothesises that a polarised society like South Africa will suffer a legacy of ineffective social capital and blocked pathways of upward mobility that leaves large numbers of people trapped in poverty. To explore these ideas, this paper employs a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. Novel econometric analysis of asset dynamics over the 1993–98 period identifies a dynamic asset poverty threshold that signals that large numbers of South Africans are indeed trapped without a pathway out of poverty. Qualitative analysis of this period and the period 1998–2001 more deeply examines patterns of mobility, and confirms the continuation of this pattern of limited upward mobility and a low-level poverty trap. In addition, the qualitative data permit a closer look at the specific role played by social relationships. While finding ample evidence of active social capital and networks, these are more helpful for non-poor households. For the poor, social capital at best helps stabilise livelihoods at low levels and does little to promote upward mobility. While there is thus some economic sense to sociability in South Africa, elimination of the polarised economic legacy of apartheid will ultimately require more proactive efforts to assure that households have access to a minimum bundle of assets and to the markets needed to effectively build on those assets over time.

Subfields: Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0f15f504c1c1164ad229fcaf69f111e57955b1e9

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Citations in the corpus

Consumption versus asset smoothing: testing the implications of poverty trap theory in Burkina Faso (2012, background): “, Adato et al., 2006, Barrett, et al. 2006, Carter, et al. 2007, Lybbert, et al. 2004). The search for a repelling threshold may seem like an empirical long shot since one might think that the area around the threshold would necessarily be sparsely populated. Yet, a sufficiently stochastic system wi”
Well-Being Dynamics and Poverty Traps (2016, background): “Adato et al (2006) find, qualitatively, that social networks in postapartheid South Africa are helpful in so far as assisting households to cope with shocks or to look for work, but that they are not “connections that provide pathways out of poverty” (p. 244) due to pervasive poverty among the poor…”
Innovations in Climate Risk Management: Protecting and Building Rural Livelihoods in a Variable and Changing Climate (2007, background): “It highlights three populations impacted in different ways by climate risk, assuming the sort of multiple dynamic equilibria demonstrated in Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana and South Africa (Adato et al., 2006; Barrett et al., 2006; Lybbert et al., 2004; Santos and Barrett, 2006; VanderpuyeOrgle, 2007).”
Research, part of a Special Feature on Resilience Through Multi-scalar Collaboration Surmountable Chasms: Networks and Social Innovation for Resilient Systems (2011, background): “While a significant amount of research has focused on the financial and social capital that may be related to poverty traps (e.g., Adato et al. 2006, Barrett and Swallow 2006), a poverty of other resources and investments critical to innovation may also exist.”
Gender Inequality in Asset Ownership in Latin America: Female Owners vs Household Heads (2012, background): “Carter and Barrett (2006), Adato, Carter, and May (2006), and others contend that developing asset-based measurements should improve our understanding of poverty traps and mobility, since assets give a better idea about structural poverty.”
The world's most deprived: Characteristics and causes of extreme poverty and hunger (2007, unknown): “The pattern of poverty reduction found in Sub-Saharan Africa is consistent with the presence of poverty traps in this region, as found in micro-level studies on Kenya, Madagascar, South Africa, and Côte d’Ivoire.”
Poverty Traps and Climate Risk: Limitations and Opportunities of Index-Based Risk Financing (2007, background): “…conditional on current wealth.5 That curve provides a heuristic representation of highly nonlinear wealth (or welfare) dynamics of the sort recently uncovered econometrically in Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa (Adato et al. 2006, Barrett et al. 2006, Lybbert et al. 2004, Santos and Barrett 2006a).”
Assets, Shocks, and Poverty Traps in Rural Mozambique (2012, methodology): “The livelihood-based asset index, as proposed by Adato et al. (2006), allows us to combine assets that are measured in very different units—such as hectares, heads of animals, and years of education—into one single measure.”
Intergenerational Networks, Unemployment, and Persistent Inequality in South Africa (2010, background): “Africa has been associated with poverty traps ( Adato et al 2006 ) and increasing inequality”
The Construction of an Asset Index Measuring Asset Accumulation in Ecuador (2007, unknown): “The analysis of assets and their accumulation is intended to complement such measures, by extending our understanding of the multi-dimensional character of poverty and the complexity of the processes underlying poverty reduction ( Adato, Carter and May 2006 ).”