Procesos de aprendizaje en relación con las metas

In the 1980s, Lipton was one of the first to pay specific attention to extreme poor people, who he referred to as the ultra-poor (Lipton, 1983). His empirical research on the characteristics of poor and extreme poor people was given special urgency when a report by the World Bank stated that, while its lending activities benefited poor people, the poorest 20% did not benefit (Lipton, 1983). Lipton found sharp differences between the category of ‘poor’ and ‘extreme poor’, particularly concerning nutritional and labour characteristics.21 _{Hence, Lipton concluded that extreme poor people were}

not to be regarded as a subgroup of the poor (Lipton, 1988). Rather, Lipton defined extreme poor people as those who spent at least 80% of their income on food, but fail to meet 80% of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)/ World Health Organization (WHO) weight-adjusted energy requirements (WHO, 1973; Lipton, 1983). He defined the poor as those who spent 70% or more of their income on food and were able to meet 80-100% of the FAO/ WHO weight-adjusted energy requirements. Lipton explained that the poor would often be hungry and illiterate, for example; however, they would only rarely be confronted with nutritional risk to their health and performance (Lipton, 1983). For Lipton, nutrition was thus vital in defining who belonged to the category of ‘extreme poor’ and who did not, and he used the 80%/80% poverty line, as explained above, to measure this.

21 Lipton linked the fragility of nutrition among extreme poor people with their problems concerning labour participation (Lipton, 1988). Firstly, the resistance of extreme poor people to illnesses is weakened (thus affecting their ability to work). Secondly, extreme poor people do not have many calories spare to search for work. Lipton mentioned “discouraged worker effects”, especially amongst men, meaning that the search for employers, especially in slack seasons took so long that it led to deterred participation (Lipton, 1988). Thirdly, the higher frequency of child deaths and replacement births raised the dependency-ratios and workforce withdrawal of women. Moreover, because of lower incidence of extended kin-groups helping with child- care, women’s participation rates are constrained (Lipton, 1988, p. 17). Hence, due to their bad physical condition, extreme poor people cannot respond to their poverty by working harder (Lipton, 1988). And as extreme poor people are so dependent on income from labour, these limits to their capacity to “work their way out of poverty” are severe (Lipton, 1988, p. 17).

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Entitlements

Although Sen also looked at (the lack of) nutrition (starvation and famines) in his definition of extreme poor people, or destitute as he called them, he connected the poverty problem to a lack of entitlements. He defined entitlements as “the set of alternative commodity bundles that a person can command in a society using the totality of rights connotations” (Sen, 1984, p. 497). According to Sen, people become extreme poor when their full set of entitlements fail to provide sufficient food for their subsistence (Sen, 1981). Hence, these people become dependent on public or private transfer-based entitlements for a large part of their livelihoods (Sen, 1981; Devereux, 2003, p. 10). He identified four categories of legal sources concerning the ability to command food: “production-based entitlement”, “trade-based entitlement”, “own-labour entitlement” and “inheritance and transfer entitlement” (Sen, 1981, p. 2). In other words, growing food, buying food, working for food and being given food by others (Devereux, 2001).

Unequal distribution of resources

Dasgupta combined Lipton’s perspective on the importance of nutrition and labour with Sen’s ideas on lack of entitlements and unequal distribution of resources. He stressed that people require food and care in order to be able to produce food and care (Dasgupta, 1993, p. 11). According to Dasgupta, extreme poverty (destitution) can be defined as an “extreme condition of ill-being” (p. 8) or as “extreme commodity deprivation” (p. 9) leading to an inability to meet “basic minimum” living standards” (p. 4) or “basic physiological needs” (p. 11) (Dasgupta, 1993, pp. 4, 8-11). Dasgupta identified such needs as “fundamental (commodity) needs”, e.g. food, water, shelter, health care, sanitation (Ibid., pp. 9, 11, 38).

According to him, destitutes or outcasts22 _{are those “[…] living on common-}

property resources (or alternatively as beggars). They gradually waste away; their life expectancy is low even by the standards prevailing in poor countries. Such people exist in large numbers; they are the outsiders.” (Ibid., p. 475). Furthermore, Dasgupta stressed that the deprivation that destitute people suffer is of a chronic nature (Dasgupta, 1993).

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Dependency

Devereux also used the term destitution and, inspired by Sen and Dasgupta, described it as “the inability to meet subsistence needs, ‘assetlessness’ and dependence on transfers” (Devereux, 2003, pp. 11-12). Destitution is understood as a state of poverty that affects people so severely that they are dependent on the goodwill of others in order to survive, such as charity from people or welfare support from governmental and non-governmental organisations (Devereux, 2003). People classifying as destitute are beggars, the disabled without family assistance and victims of natural disasters. These are people with a minimum of material assets, but also no social assets (Ibid.). Devereux described destitution as an intrinsically multidimensional concept with the emphasis on the severity of poverty, rather than the duration of poverty (Ibid.). However, he stressed that the identification of destitute people is complicated, because it is difficult to come up with a minimum basket of productive assets,23 _{in this case for Ethiopia. The resources that}

are necessary for a viable livelihood may vary across geographical space.24

Moreover, livelihood diversification makes the analysis more complicated, as rural households, who lack agricultural inputs (e.g. land, oxen), still manage to survive through off-farm income-generating activities and may even be better off than households meeting the criteria of a minimum basket of productive assets. Devereux (2003) presented the example of a widowed woman lacking productive assets, but having a more stable and higher level of food consumption (due to support from a child working in a town and remitting money or food) than her farming neighbours.

Social invisibility

The lack of social assets, mentioned by Devereux features prominently in Drèze’s definition of extreme poor people. He found that, in India, destitute households “keep a low profile and are often socially invisible”, and they will go unnoticed by casual visitors (Drèze, 200225_{). The destitute struggle quietly}

to earn a meal or even starve patiently in their dark mud huts (Ibid.). Drèze (2002) described the extreme poor (destitute) as those households lacking an able-bodied adult member, earning no regular source of income, and surviving by engaging in informal activities, e.g. selling minor forest produce,

23 E.g. 0.5 hectares of land + access to a pair of draught oxen + two adult labour equivalents for a highland farming household (Devereux, 2003, p. 11).

24 E.g. highland and lowland in the case of Wollo, Ethiopia.

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gathering food for village commons and making baskets. This resonates with the findings of Harris-White. She referred to extreme poor people (destitute) as “non-people” and as “having and being nothing” (Harris-White, 2002, p. 7). It also resonates with the observations by Narayan, Chambers, Shah & Petesch (2000, p. 264), who stated that extreme poor people (bottom poor) “[...] in all their diversity, are excluded, impotent, ignored and neglected.”

Duration of poverty

In contrast to Devereux, the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, put emphasis on and studied extreme poverty specifically through the lens of chronic poverty (duration), which means focusing on those whose emergence from poverty seems to be most difficult (Hulme et al., 2001). Through the chronic poverty approach, the durational aspect of the intensity of poverty and the dynamics of intergenerational transmission of poverty can be examined (Hulme et al., 2001, p. 5). Moreover, the interaction between the duration and different aspects of the intensity of poverty, such as multidimensionality and severity, can be studied (Hulme et al., 2001). Poverty that is severe and multidimensional, but which lasts less than a period of five years, is not considered chronic (Ibid.). However, those experiencing chronic poverty are likely to experience multidimensional and severe poverty as well (Ibid.). The chronic poor are not a homogenous group and require attention at the individual, inter and intra-household, and social group level (Ibid.). The chronic poor are those who, for example, are socially discriminated against, experience health problems, live in remote areas, urban ghettos, conflict areas or those deprived due to their stage in the life cycle (Ibid.). Generally, the chronic poor suffer from multiple disadvantages, e.g. gender, ethnicity, age (Ibid.).

Based on research conducted by Jalan and Ravallion (2000), the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), identified a five-tier category system (Hulme et al., 2001, p. 12), including the:

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- Always poor: expenditure or incomes or consumption levels in each period below a poverty line.26

- Usually poor: mean expenditures over all periods less than the poverty line, but not poor in every period.

- Churning poor: mean expenditures over all periods close to the poverty line, but sometimes poor and sometimes non-poor in different periods. - Occasionally poor: mean expenditures over all periods above the poverty line, but at least one period below the poverty line.

- Never poor: mean expenditure in all periods above the poverty line. The first two categories, i.e. ‘always poor’ and ‘usually poor’, are considered to be ‘chronic’. However, the definitions of these categories do not take into account the severity of poverty. Hulme et al. (2001) therefore suggested including the severity of poverty by, for example, showing how far below or above the poverty line a household is (be it mean expenditure, income or consumption). They further stressed that the severity of poverty should not only be captured through a single index (poverty gap index), but through several dimensions in which people experience deprivations and thus take into account the poverty gaps existing within each dimension. The severity of poverty furthermore entails the trade-offs and time preferences that people are able and willing to make (Ibid.). Therefore, it may be useful to develop multidimensional indicators of depth and severity, partly in consultation with the poor, and complementary to quantitative measures of income, expenditures and consumption (Ibid., p. 19). Thus, chronic poverty, as defined by the CPRC, is characterised by long duration, multidimensionality and severity (Hulme et al., 2001).