Why Assist People Living in Poverty? The ethics of poverty reduction

Armando Barrientos, Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai, Daisy Demirag, Richard de Groot, Luigi Peter Ragno and Office of Research - Innocenti Unicef

Innocenti Working Papers

Abstract: The paper provides an examination of the relevance of ethics to poverty reduction. It argues that linking the shared values that define the social arrangements and institutions, which we refer to as ‘ethical perspectives’, to the emerging welfare institutions addressing poverty in developing countries provides a window into these processes of justification at a more fundamental level. By ethics of poverty the authors refer to the most basic arguments and processes used to justify how and why we assist people living in poverty. Given the extent to which poverty reflects injustice, they argue it is appropriate to consider poverty in the context of ethics. Drawing on the recent expansion of social assistance in Brazil, South Africa and Ghana, the paper shows that ethical perspectives are relevant to our understanding of the evolution of anti-poverty policy.

Keywords: cash transfers; ethics; poverty reduction; social welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-pbe
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucf:inwopa:inwopa871

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