Rural Poverty Dynamics in Kenya: Structural Declines and Stochastic Escapes

Maren Radeny, Marrit van den Berg and Rob Schipper

World Development, 2012, vol. 40, issue 8, 1577-1593

Abstract: We use panel survey data and household event-histories to explore patterns of rural poverty dynamics in Kenya over the period 2000–2009. We find substantial mobility across poverty categories using economic transition matrices. Drawing on asset-based approaches, we distinguish stochastic from structural poverty transitions. Few households successfully escaped poverty through asset accumulation (up to 35% of the upwardly mobile), while a large proportion of households (up to 66%) declining into poverty experienced structural transitions. Using household event-histories, we find significant differences across structural poverty transition classes in livelihood strategies, household-level shocks, and other factors.

Keywords: poverty; livelihood assets; mixed methods; sub-Saharan Africa; Kenya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12000976
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:40:y:2012:i:8:p:1577-1593

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.04.027

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().