Using Change Rankings to Understand Poverty Dynamics: Examining the Impact of CFPR/TUP from Community Perspective

Studies of poverty dynamics relying solely on household income-expenditure surveys can yield noisy results, overestimating transient poverty and underestimating persistence of poverty, especially for the poorest. In this study, we make use of an approach that relies on community based change ranking to explore various directions and levels of change experienced by almost 6,000 households living in over 100 communities. We find that changes are initial condition dependent and that improvement, even small ones are far less likely to happen over time for the poorest. Traps do seem to exist and matter for the poorest. This suggests that intervention design for the poorest will have to be far more comprehensive including promotional, protective and transformative strategies to make a real dent on extreme poverty.[CFPR-TUP Working Paper Series No. 14, September 2006]