his paper introduces a special issue exploring persistent poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. As a set, these papers break new ground in exploring the dynamics of structural poverty, integrating qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis and adopting an asset-based approach to the study of...

This paper demonstrates that there are potentially large returns to social protection policy that stakes out a productive safety net below the vulnerable and keeps them from slipping into a poverty trap. Much of the value of the productive safety net comes from mitigating the ex ante effects of...

"Can't get ahead for falling behind." The entrapment and powerlessness this phrase evokes applies as much to development policy caught in a vicious circle of vulnerability, crisis and reactive aid as it does to the lives of the very people aid policies are designed to benefit. We consider these...

Conventional poverty analysis is ill-equipped to answer questions concerning the future persistence of observed poverty. Are those observed to be poor at a particular point in time chronically poor, or are they simply in a transitory state? While a number of analysts have struggled with this...

This paper describes a novel index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) product piloted among pastoralists in northern Kenya, where insurance markets are effectively absent and uninsured risk exposure is a main cause of poverty. We describe the methodology used to design the contract and its...