Suchergebnisse

Efforts to tackle discrimination in access to basic services have shown mixed results in different country settings. This study examines the positive and negative outcomes attributed to anti-discrimination measures adopted in different country contexts and analyses the factors contributing to these outcomes, with a specific focus on anti-discrimination measures in education. An analysis of trends in inequalities in human development is used to identify three countries that have seen positive change in reducing inequalities and three countries that have seen negative change. This is followed by a literature review exploring the factors that have contributed to the changes observed in these six cases. We find that reductions in inequalities have been achieved in those countries where targeted measures have gone alongside universal measures, where the constitution is used to generate an equity-focused political discourse, and where evidence on exclusion from education has been taken up politically.

AbstractLittle is known about psychosocial or 'internal' behaviours that can perpetuate chronic poverty and how to alleviate them in development programmes. This paper presents a conceptual and evaluation framework examining the relationship between a person's psychosocial behaviours, empowerment and economic wellbeing. The framework shows empowerment is enabled or limited by internal behaviours – including one's identity, aspiration, hope and confidence. We tested the framework on a behaviour change intervention among 1508 extremely poor smallholder farmers in Zambia. The intervention was a six‐session curriculum for promoting positive mindsets using faith‐based messages. We used concurrent mixed methods to examine changes and differences in levels of empowerment for individuals exposed to the intervention and those not. We found significant correlations between participation in the intervention and improvements in participants' internal attitudes and overall empowerment. The framework and mixed methods evaluation offer insights into how to design programmes to address internal constraints to empowerment.

The Chronic Poverty Report on Growth aims to put in front of economic policymakers in developing countries and international agencies evidence about the type of growth and the policies and interventions that will best allow the poor to escape poverty and stay out of it through growth. Growth does usually reduce poverty, certainly, but with much variation - from substantial impacts, through attenuated impacts - and there are also episodes where it does not, or where growth may be immiserising. The "big idea" embedded in this report is that most governments promote "growth from above", involving large, formal investments, while most people escape poverty through "growth from below", involving small, usually informal, investments by individuals and households, enabled or disadvantaged by their working environments. "Growth from below" is critical for most poor and vulnerable people but remains unrecorded and much harder to promote. Evidence from a growing database of country studies of poverty dynamics shows that most people sustaining their escapes from poverty do so through growth from below, even in countries where growth from above is generating jobs. This report analyses policies and programmatic approaches that directly help people out of poverty through the informal economy, women's economic empowerment and the inclusion of most marginalised groups, agriculture, the rural non-farm economy and migration.