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Peter Davis (2011), Chronic Poverty Research Centre, Working Paper, No. 196, May.

Based on 293 life-history interviews, this paper explores the nature of vulnerability and its relationship to chronic poverty in rural Bangladesh. It shows that poverty traps are intricately linked to vulnerability such that denudation of key assets and capabilities, liabilities and disabilities, increased exposure to the most damaging forms of downward pressures, and destructive coping strategies adopted by the vulnerable people all combine in creating poverty traps.

It is now well acknowledged that poverty is a dynamic condition such that various factors/events can make individuals and/or households fall in or out of poverty. More importantly, vulnerability and the methods adopted by the poor to cope with crisis can make people become trapped in chronic poverty. In the literature on poverty, much of the recent research had focused on understanding the relationship between vulnerability and poverty dynamics. However, most of the research in this area mainly focuses on assets and asset thresholds and uses quantitative data from household surveys for understanding the relationship between poverty trap and vulnerability.

In this paper, Peter Davis, analyses the relationship between vulnerability and poverty traps in rural Bangladesh using qualitative method, namely, life-history interviews. The aim, as the author puts it, is to explore “the causes and processes of improvement or decline in people’s lives using … fairly detailed personal life-history narratives”. The life-history narratives used in the study are based on 293 life-history interviews conducted in eight districts in Bangladesh between April and October 2007. The eight districts/sites and the two villages from each site that were selected, represent a range of geographic and agricultural conditions typical of rural Bangladesh.

Following a detailed description of the methods used to conduct the life-history interviews, the author explains in detail the conceptual approach taken to analyse the life-histories. The basic concept is that, at any point in time, a person’s set of resources and capabilities determine their current socio-economic well-being as well as their future ability to cope with downward pressures/exploit poverty-exiting or upward opportunities. Further, the author points out that, although resources can help buffer a downward pressure, pre-existing liabilities or disabilities tend to exacerbate the negative effects of a downward pressure.

Using this conceptual method, the study maps the various patterns and causes of life improvement and decline noticed in the sample households in Bangladesh. The life-histories are categorised into those registering long-term improvement (79 cases), those registering decline in their life conditions (71 cases) and those which showed no clear trend (143 cases).

The results bring out several interesting points. One, although the set of factors cited as causes of improvement are common across the whole set of life histories, there are some differences in the number of opportunities experienced and in the ranking of the sources cited by the two groups. In both cases, business activities, is the most frequently cited source of opportunity. For those on improving trajectories, the other important sources of poverty-exiting opportunities are: the accumulation of land, agriculture, livestock and loans, inheritance and help from relatives, and salaried work. However, for those on declining trajectories, asset-based sources of opportunity (such as land, livestock, and loans) and key capabilities such as salaried work figure as less important in the ranking of the upward opportunities they experience. Instead, benefits from official programmes, working sons or daughters, are much more frequently cited as sources of upward opportunities. This, the author argues, shows that even though those on declining trajectories, “benefit from some assets and capabilities, ..they are less effective in exploiting the key areas of opportunity overall”.

Two, the sources of downward pressures too differ between the two groups. The frequently cited sources of downward pressures are illness and injuries, dowry and marriage of children (especially girls) across both set of groups. But here again, the more debilitating sources of common downward pressures are more frequently experienced by those on declining trajectories. Thus, the sale or mortgage of land, or illness and injury, for example, are more often cited by the declining group.

Three, comparison of the coping patterns between improving and declining trajectories, shows that the latter groups invariably adopt more destructive coping strategies. The coping strategies adopted by this group are mainly “the sale or mortgage of land, the sale of livestock, women’s extra labour and going without food”. The differences in coping strategy confirm the view that it is the asset-poor people who are forced to adopt coping strategies that lead to depletion of the assets they hold. Whereas, asset-rich people are able to weather downward shocks “with relatively less impact on their long-term because asset holdings can usually buffer or mitigate crises”. In all, the coping strategies adopted by the chronic poor create future constraints and make them more vulnerable when another crisis hits. As a result, their long-term resilience diminishes further and a new episode of downward shock can push them into poverty trap.

In order to further explore the causal processes leading to improvement or decline, the author discusses four individual cases: the impact of disability of an earning member on the family’s well-being, death of an earning member at an early age leading to intergenerational transmission of poverty, differences in coping strategies adopted because of differential asset holdings increasing vulnerability of asset-poor household further and the likely impact of marriage-related expenditure for a woman headed, asset-poor household.

The author argues that the life-history trajectories show that decline in poor people’s long-term wellbeing occurs “as the combination of: a lack of opportunities, or impeded ability to exploit opportunities; exposure to acute ‘shocks’ and chronic downward pressures; and the long-term diminution of coping resources”. Thus it is clear that poverty traps are linked to vulnerability. And the linkage works through not just diminution of asset-holdings and capabilities of vulnerable people, but also because of liabilities and disabilities. The author concludes on the note that for reducing poverty and inequality in Bangladesh, it is necessary that the vulnerable are brought within the ambit of social protection programmes. This requires more coordinated and effective social protection that is wide ranging in scope. Social protection should focus on creating real opportunities and strengthening people’s capacity to convert these opportunities into wellbeing improvement. In addition, it should aim for “strengthening protection from shocks and downward pressures and more effectively mitigating the hindering effects of liabilities and disabilities”.