Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: A Sourcebook

By D. Narayan. 2002

819 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Poverty will not be reduced on a large scale, without tapping into the energy, skills, and motivation of the millions of poor people around the world. This book offers a framework for empowerment, that focuses on increasing poor people's freedom of choice, and action to shape their own lives. This approach requires three societal changes: a change in the mindset, from viewing poor people as the problem to viewing them as essential partners in reducing poverty; a change in the relationship between poor people, and formal systems, enabling them to participate in decisions that affect their lives; and, a change in formal, and informal institutions to make them more responsive to the needs, and realities of poor people. Based on analysis of experiences from around the world, the book identifies four key elements to support empowerment of poor people: information, inclusions/participation, accountability, and local organizational capacity. This framework is applied to five areas of action to improve development effectiveness. These are: provision of basic services, improved local governance, improved national governance, pro-poor market development, and access to justice, and legal aid. The book also offers tools and practices, focusing on a wide range of topics, to support poor people's empowerment. These range from poor people's enterprises, information and communications technology, and, community driven development, to diagnostic tools such as corruption surveys, and citizen report cards.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Finance

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9e74bd90d3010482ef9a8761c422f1dc038a2c1a

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Citations in the corpus

Understanding poverty and promoting poverty alleviation through transformative consumer research (2013, background): “…the poor with power, which has been adopted by the World Bank as its primary poverty reduction strategy, expands “the assets and capabilities of poor people to participate in, negotiate with, influence, control, and hold accountable, institutions that affect their lives” (Narayan, 2002, p. 11).”
Empowering Women through Microfinance: Evidence from Tanzania (2013, background): “…life of dignity in accordance with one’s values, capacity to fight for one’s rights, independence, own decision making, being free, awakening, self-strength, capability participation, control, own choice, self-confidence and mobilization (Ibrahim & Allen, 2007; Narayan, 2002, Narayan, 2005a).”
Microfinance, rural livelihoods, and women's empowerment in Uganda (2007, background): “…of poor people to participate in, negotiate with, influence, control, and hold accountable institutions [government] that affect their lives’ (Narayan 2002).21 In UNDP, it is about participation in decision-making processes as the 1995 Human Development Report puts it: ‘empowerment is the…”
Agency and Empowerment: A Proposal for Internationally Comparable Indicators (2007, neutral): “…legal and social—that work against particular groups and building the assets of poor people to enable them to engage effectively in markets”.27 Narayan (2002) defines empowerment as “the expansion of assets and capabilities of poor people to participate in, negotiate with, influence,…”
Social accountability: an introduction to the concept and emerging practice (2004, methodology): “6 The paper does not provide a detailed description of social accountability 1 See Empowerment and Poverty Reduction, A Sourcebook, World Bank, 2002.”
Sustainable development goals and inclusive development (2016, background): “This calls for the downward accountability of institutions (Narayan 2002).”
Measuring Women's Empowerment as a Variable in International Development (2002, background): “Third, it can be argued that while empowerment in general requires institutional transformation, women’s empowerment requires systemic transformation in not just any institutions, but fundamentally in those supporting patriarchal structures.”
Can information and communications technology applications contribute to poverty reduction? Lessons from rural India (2003, background): “Handheld computers, or Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), are allowing auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs) participating in the India Healthcare Delivery project to reduce redundant paperwork and data entry, freeing up time for healthcare delivery to the poor.”
Comparing Food and Cash Transfers to the Ultra Poor in Bangladesh (2010, background): “Empowerment is now often viewed as important for both its intrinsic value (as an end in itself) and for its instrumental value (as a means of achieving other development objectives) (Kabeer 2001; Narayan 2002; Stern, Dehier, and Rogers 2005).”
Economic and Social Impacts of Self-help Groups in India (2009, background): “Transferring resources to local communities is expected to empower them to take control of their own affairs, improve governance and inclusiveness, build capacity, and increase the efficiency with which resources are used to benefit the target groups (Narayan 2002).”
On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries (2013, background): “Probably the term most associated with gender equality is empowerment, the expansion of freedom of choice and action as a result of a process of gaining power (Narayan 2002; Narayan and Petesch 2005).”