Broadening the definition of a povery trap

Goal 1 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals states, “End poverty in all forms everywhere.”

This is no small feat.

As poverty is known to be triggered by interacting social and environmental elements, working towards Goal 1 without further degradation to our planet, is a demanding challenge to say the least.

To understand how persistent poverty and environmental factors interact, the concept of poverty traps is often used across many disciplines and in the development sphere.

As commonly defined, poverty traps are self-reinforcing mechanisms that keep individuals or groups below an economic threshold. The concept has encouraged a “Big Push” style of development aid funding, in order to overcome a given economic threshold, but the concept misses the fact that poverty also stems from additional barriers.

Too many factors ignored

In a review paper published in World Development, centre researchers expand on this idea and argue that the current conceptualization of poverty traps is too narrow. Researchers Jamila Haider, Wijnand Boonstra, Garry Peterson, and Maja Schlüter’s review focuses on traps literature, with respect to sustainable development. The authors also take a focused look at poverty in rural settings, specifically the characteristics and mechanisms in these contexts.

Boonstra elaborates, “Poverty is itself and experienced as multi-dimensional, which means that along with lack of income, poverty can include other factors, such as exposure to violence or poor health. Furthermore, cross-scale interactions between multiple local factors, or between social and ecological factors, are generally not considered in poverty traps studies.”

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Traps across the disciplines

In their review, the authors found that there has been a four-fold increase in papers published on poverty traps between 2000 and 2015. Different themes within poverty traps emerged from the different disciplines they reviewed related to sustainable development. For instance, developmental economics, rural development, and social-ecological research focuses on poverty in general, whereas the other fields often define traps more generally as persistent undesirable states. Namely, environmental science focuses on technical lock-ins, psychology tends to examine social traps, and sociology analyzes path-dependent processes.

With respect to the rural context, the authors found that “chronic poverty” is often cited. It is defined as the persistence of poverty over time and generations, which highlights the multidimensionality of poverty. As Peterson adds, “From this viewpoint, escaping a trap requires creating new feedbacks, strengthening desirable feedbacks, and breaking undesirable ones,” which also comes through in the social-ecological literature on poverty traps.

The social-ecological literature also highlights two types of traps: rigidity and gilded. Rigidity traps are inflexible and overly connected in a way that makes their social-ecological system more vulnerable to shocks. Gilded traps are when activity is maximized at the expense of diversity, which also contributes to the social-ecological system’s heightened vulnerability.

Characteristics and mechanisms of traps in rural areas

The results of the in-depth review show that traps are generally defined as a “persistent, undesirable state with reinforcing internal dynamics inhibiting an individual, household, or system to surpass a given asset threshold.” The authors found that development economics literature tends to address traps at the household level. Whereas, environmental conservation literature looks at social-ecological interactions, and frequently considers the regional scale.

In trying to determine the patterns, the authors highlight three reoccurring mechanisms of poverty traps in a rural context: self-reinforcing feedbacks, lack of natural capital, and lack of alternative livelihoods. While many studies have a narrative that “the poor stay poor,” there is little consensus on effective strategies for breaking this cycle.

What to do with a diversity of definitions

In summarizing the review, Schlüter says, “Conceptualizations and understandings of traps are more diverse than the common understanding of poverty traps. The limited overlap between the different conceptualizations, and lack of more integrative concepts suggests that knowledge of traps is fragmented and remains confined by disciplinary boundaries.”

One key message that comes from this review is that social and ecological, and their characteristics, interactions, and mechanisms, need to be better integrated. As Haider argues, “Accounting for the different types of conceptualizations and understandings of trap dynamics provided by a broader, multi-disciplinary literature on traps offers opportunities for synergy and creates space for interdisciplinary inquiry.”

For a better understanding of poverty traps from a social-ecological perspective , the authors suggest four dimensions to broaden its definition:

1. Scale mismatches – a mismatch of behaviour with the time or space of its effect. For example, the time lag between burning gasoline and seeing real impacts from climate change.

2. Trap dynamics can be path dependent – once on the path dependent road of poverty, it is difficult to exit

3. External factors can reinforce traps – these factors, for example having few assets or colonialism, can contribute to poverty traps

4. Lack of social-ecological diversity – few social-ecological interactions in a social-ecological system can contribute to a poverty trap. For example, a lack of diverse seeds during a drought, can impoverish a farmer.

By using these insights from different disciplines, the authors argue that it can help to better our understanding of poverty traps, and address persistent poverty with respect to sustainability.