TY - JOUR
T1 - Welfare dynamics in rural Kenya and Madagascar
AU - Barrett, Christopher B.
AU - Marenya, Paswel Phiri
AU - Mcpeak, John
AU - Minten, Bart
AU - Murithi, Festus
AU - Oluoch-Kosura, Willis
AU - Place, Frank
AU - Randrianarisoa, Jean Claude
AU - Rasambainarivo, Jhon
AU - Wangila, Justine
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Erin Lentz, Andrew Mude and Amare Yirbecho for valuable data assistance, Michael Carter, Angelique Haugerud, Ravi Kanbur, Peter Little, an anonymous referee and seminar participants at Cornell University and the BASIS CRSP Washington policy conference on Combating Persistent Poverty in Africa for helpful comments, and our field assistants and survey respondents for their invaluable assistance in data collection and in helping us to understand the nature and dynamics of poverty in their villages. This work has been made possible, in part, by support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), through grant LAG-A-00-96-90016-00 to the BASIS CRSP, grants DAN-1328-G-00-0046-00 and PCE-G-98-00036-00 to the Pastoral Risk Management (PARIMA) project of the Global Livestock CRSP, and the Strategies and Analyses for Growth and Access (SAGA) cooperative agreement, number HFM-A-00-01-00132-00. The views expressed here and any remaining errors are the authors’ and do not represent any official agency. ª Copyright 2005 by the authors. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies.
PY - 2006/2
Y1 - 2006/2
N2 - This paper presents comparative qualitative and quantitative evidence from rural Kenya and Madagascar in an attempt to untangle the causality behind persistent poverty. We find striking differences in welfare dynamics depending on whether one uses total income, including stochastic terms and inevitable measurement error, or the predictable, structural component of income based on a household's asset holdings. Our results suggest the existence of multiple dynamic asset and structural income equilibria, consistent with the poverty traps hypothesis. Furthermore, we find supporting evidence of locally increasing returns to assets and of risk management behaviour consistent with poor households' defence of a critical asset threshold through asset smoothing.
AB - This paper presents comparative qualitative and quantitative evidence from rural Kenya and Madagascar in an attempt to untangle the causality behind persistent poverty. We find striking differences in welfare dynamics depending on whether one uses total income, including stochastic terms and inevitable measurement error, or the predictable, structural component of income based on a household's asset holdings. Our results suggest the existence of multiple dynamic asset and structural income equilibria, consistent with the poverty traps hypothesis. Furthermore, we find supporting evidence of locally increasing returns to assets and of risk management behaviour consistent with poor households' defence of a critical asset threshold through asset smoothing.
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U2 - 10.1080/00220380500405394
DO - 10.1080/00220380500405394
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:30344476043
SN - 0022-0388
VL - 42
SP - 248
EP - 277
JO - Journal of Development Studies
JF - Journal of Development Studies
IS - 2
ER -