Well-Being Dynamics and Poverty Traps

Christopher Barrett, Teevrat Garg () and Linden McBride
Additional contact information
Teevrat Garg: Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment, London School of Economics, London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom

Annual Review of Resource Economics, 2016, vol. 8, issue 1, 303-327

Abstract: A sound understanding of poverty traps—defined as poverty that is self-reinforcing due to the poor's equilibrium behaviors—and their underlying mechanisms is fundamentally important to the development of policies and interventions targeted to assist the poor. We review the theoretical and empirical evidence on single equilibrium and multiple equilibria poverty traps at the macro-, meso-, and, especially, microlevels. In addition we review the literature exploring the various mechanisms that have been posited to perpetuate poverty. We find sufficient evidence to support the poverty traps hypothesis, suggesting that policies designed to interrupt those self-perpetuating mechanisms merit serious attention.

Keywords: chronic poverty; development; market failures; multiple equilibria; safety nets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 I32 I38 O11 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-resource-100815-095235 (application/pdf)
Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.

Related works:
Working Paper: Well-being dynamics and poverty traps (2016)
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:anr:reseco:v:8:y:2016:p:303-327

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.annualreviews.org/action/ecommerce

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Annual Review of Resource Economics from Annual Reviews Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by http://www.annualreviews.org ().