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HABITAT INTL. Vol. 19, No. 4, pp.

407426,1995
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Poverty Lines or Household


Strategies?
A Review of Conceptual Issues in the Study of Urban Poverty

CAROLE RAKODI
University of Wales, Cardiff, UK

ABSTRACT

Analyses of the extent of urban poverty have focused on the definition of


Poverty Lines and quantification of the proportion of people below them.
Such analyses are necessary but, although some of the methodological problems
can be overcome, they pose problems arising from both their over-simplified
conceptualisation of poverty and their limited contribution to explaining its
continuation, reduction or deepening. Recent work on rural poverty, which
distinguishes between underlying causes and immediate triggers in explaining
the process of impoverishment, is found to be relevant to urban areas. This more
sophisticated understanding of poverty and deprivation, as a set of relationships
and a process rather than a state, implies that the poor are not passive. Attempts
to analyse their responses have typically been based on the concept of household
strategies. Although care must be taken with definitions, such analyses are
revealing. The implications of improved understanding of the changing extent
and nature of urban poverty are that a number of policy approaches are needed:
safety nets for the most vulnerable; opportunities for households to increase
their assets; assistance to enable people to take advantage of income earning
opportunities; provision of basic utilities and services; and the creation of a
policy framework, as well as legal and physical context which is favourable to
the activities of the urban poor.

INTRODUCTION

It is now widely acknowledged that Structural Adjustment (SA) policies have had
a particularly adverse effect on many urban people.1 This recognition has led to
an increase in studies of urban poverty, to document these effects and to inform
the policy programmes. This renewed attention has revealed a lag in conceptual
understanding and quantification, with the result that policy formulation tends
to occur in the absence of any rigorous assessment of past programmes and
with limited understanding of the process of impoverishment. This overview
deals with some of the conceptual, methodological and empirical issues raised
by attempts to document the changing extent of urban poverty, explain its
causes, and analyse its characteristics at both city and household levels. Finally,
it provides some feedback on the effectiveness of current attempts to alleviate
poverty.2
408 Carole Rakodi

Research on urban poverty has mostly focused on the definition of a poverty


line (PL), which is typically used to assess the extent of poverty. It may also
be used, in conjunction with other quantitative indicators, to examine the
symptoms of poverty and to seek its determinants. A variety of methodological
problems occur with this type of analysis and will be reviewed below. A process
of impoverishment may be triggered by changes in household or external
circumstances. Learning from recent advances in the study of rural poverty,
which focus on the strategies that households adopt to achieve sustainable
livelihoods, recent conceptual and empirical work on urban household strategies
will be reviewed. Finally, some lessons from recent urban poverty alleviation
programmes will be drawn, to provide guidance on the form which appropriate
policy might take.

POVERTY LINE ANALYSES: NECESSARY BUT NOT SUFFICIENT?

Poverty assessments over time have relied, necessarily, on quantitative measurement


and so have conceived of deprivation in terms of indicators, usually based on
income or consumption.3 These implicitly assume the universal existence of
wage labour. Even if the fact that considerable numbers of urban residents are
dependent on informal-sector earnings is acknowledged, poverty is still defined in
terms of a cash income sufficient to enable a household to purchase a nutritionally
adequate diet and other necessities.
Numerous methodological problems arise, including variations in the size
and composition of households, the difficulty of estimating income levels in
economies which are only partly monetised and in which households consume
their own production, how to deal with the fact that consumption generally
exceeds income, and the selection of appropriate deflators.4 Often the composition
of consumption differs between income groups and the real costs of different
goods change at different rates. 5 Also, calorie requirements vary between
different groups of people; even minimum subsistence requirements, including
food preferences, are culturally influenced as well as biologically determined;
and people may be able to adapt to food shortages.6 Such complexities can be
accommodated by increased methodological sophistication, but the analysis will
only be as reliable as the assumptions and data on which it is based: There exists
an unavoidable and inherent element of arbitrariness in the specification of the
poverty norm. 7
Attempts to analyse urban poverty in India illustrate this approach and some
of the difficulties encountered in its use. Two papers in a recent collection,
for example, use a PL based on the minimum necessary per capita monthly
expenditure, as calculated by the National Planning Commission in 1973-4.
The first attempts to explain the differing incidence of poverty by state, by
correlating PL data with general economic indicators8 and the second to improve
trend analysis of urban poverty by updating the PL by retail price indices
which are differentiated between states and between rural and urban areas.9
The difference made by adopting alternative assumptions is also illustrated by
Indias attempts to improve the accuracy of PL estimates. According to both
official estimates using India-wide prices and alternatives using state-specific
prices, the incidence of urban poverty has decreased, but according to the
former from 41% to 20% of the urban population and to the latter from
49% to 40% .ic Even though Indian data, based on regular national household
income and expenditure surveys, is relatively good, and improving the accuracy
of poverty trend analyses is significant for improved allocation of development
funds and tax revenue sharing, neither analysis increases understanding of the
Poverty Lines or Household Strategies? 409

nature of urban poverty. Furthermore, the arbitrary nature and the composition
of the poverty lines and the way these are politically manipulated is clearly seen
in the Indian context.
Recent studies of the incidence of urban poverty in Malaysia and of the
impact of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPS) in African countries use
similar approaches (see Box 1). As in the Indian papers, the Malaysian analyses
adopt the government-defined PL without explanation or assessment of how it
is calculated.11 The World Bank even devised a formula by which to arrive at
a PL for countries which did not have adequate data.12 The result was used
in affordability estimates for housing programmes in Zimbabwe, despite the
crude nature of such a calculation in the face of varying household needs and
composition and differing abilities to devote resources to housing and related
services, as revealed by the World Banks own research.13

Half the total urban population in Mopti, Mali was estimated to be poor in 1991
and over half the population in low income urban residential areas in Lilongwe and
Blantyre in Malawi in 1989. 14 In Manila between 31% and 75% of households in 1975
and between 19% and 50% in 1983 were considered to be below a Poverty Line (or
threshold), depending on the assumptions used.15

Box 1. The extent of poverty.

In addition to the difficulties with PL analysis mentioned above, merely


measuring the proportion of population below a PL does not give any indication
of the intensity of poverty. Methodologically this can be allowed for by
supplementing figures showing the incidence of poverty by calculation of an
average poverty gap or analysing the distribution of households below the PL.
Lipton, analysing rural poverty, concluded that there is a significant threshold
below the PL at which subsistence is endangered. In distinguishing between the
poor and the ultra-poor, he is concerned to explain both causes and responses.
The latter will be taken up again below. The rural poor, he suggests, are
characterised by their lack of assets. However, when they are driven to seek
wage employment, their position in the labour market is disadvantaged: their
ability to command steady employment and reasonable wages is reduced by
lack of skills and frequent illness, as well as geographical or seasonal excess
of labour supply over demand. They survive by high participation rates and
by increasing the proportion of income spent on food as income decreases.
The ultra-poor, however, are characterised by decreased female labour force
participation, associated with high dependency ratios caused in part by the need
to replace children who die; an inability to spend a higher proportion of their
incomes on food than a ceiling of N-85%, leading to more malnutrition and
physical weakness; and higher unemployment amongst those seeking work, in
part because of their inability to afford job search costs and also because of the
even higher incidence of illness amongst this group.16
Liptons analysis of the characteristics and causes of rural poverty is said to
be heavily influenced by his knowledge of . . . the clientelistic small cultivator
agrarian structurei* of South and Southeast Asia, although he also quotes
findings from studies elsewhere. In the communal tenure systems more typical
of Africa, although lack of access to land is a problem in some places, because
of high densities or the expropriation of land for large-scale cash cropping19
and for women household heads because in many societies women only have
410 Carole Rakodi

access to land via men, a more widespread reason for rural poverty is lack of
labour within the household ?a Despite the need for explanations of poverty to
take account of local circumstances, the importance attached to the intensity of
poverty is echoed by analyses of Mozambique and Mopti in Mali. The former
distinguishes between the poor and the destitute (see Schuberts paper in this
issue), and the latter between the very poor and the marginally poor.21
A further problem with analysis of poverty based on household income/
consumption which treats the household as a black box is that it ignores
distribution of food, status, influence in decision making and access to services
within the household. The latter may vary with gender, age and position in
the household, although these variations take different forms in different
situations.22

In Costa Rica a distinction was drawn between the destitute, with incomes less than
the cost of one basic food basket, and the poor, with incomes sufficient for between
one and two basic food baskets. In 1971 13% of households were poor and a further
4% destitute, adjusting for household size and counting two children as the equivalent
to one adult. By 1982 the proportions had increased to 20% and 4%.17

Box 2. The intensity of poverty.

The discussion so far has been concerned with absolute poverty, or the lack
of sufficient income to satisfy basic needs. Parallel with this, however, runs
a concern with relative poverty and inequality. An earlier study of urban
poverty in 10 Andean cities, for example, defined relative poverty as the
bottom two quintiles of households, much as the World Bank was doing in
the 197Os, and attempted to ascertain the determinants of poverty. Musgrove
attempted to separate the effects of household size, family composition and
the employment status of household members on relative poverty. He found
that poverty was associated much more strongly with large household size, low
overall employment rates and high dependency ratios, than with low wages and
unemployment .zs For some families, high dependency occurs only at one stage in
the life cycle, while for others it is a permanent state of affairs. Others have used
definitions of absolute poverty in similar investigations of income differentials.
The main determinants of poverty emerge as labour market differentiation,
human capital inadequacies and dependency ratios within households. The
importance of the labour market for the incidence of urban poverty is very
clear in the literature review in Amis paper in this issue.
In theory, analysis of the incidence of poverty in urban areas should be
easier than in rural areas because of the more widespread receipt of wages and
cash earnings from wage and self employment, respectively. However, many
wage earners are casual or home workers with variable incomes. In addition,
the wages earned by many urban employees are insufficient to support their
families and are supplemented by self employment in the informal sector. In
many places, especially in African cities, the number of wage jobs has declined
and the proportion of household income contributed by wages decreased (see
Box 3).
As the relative importance of income from self employment has increased,
the difficulties of estimating income generated by small-scale enterprises (SSEs)
have become more significant, although not always recognised.26 Few micro-
entrepreneurs keep accounts, purchases of goods and raw materials as well as
sales are irregular, and household and business accounts are not kept separate,
Poverty Lines or Household Strategies? 411

A survey in 1990 in Kampala found that although 72% of households had at least one
wage income, it accounted on average for only 17% of total income, and had been
overtaken by business incomes (47% of all income, earned by 75% of all households) and
allowances (54% of households, 27% of income). The latter included both traditional
allowances for housing, medical expenses and transport, which strictly form part of
wage income, and new allowances (responsibility, night and food allowances) which
had been introduced as partial compensation for declining real wages. The study also
found that business incomes made up a much larger proportion of total household
incomes, especially for lower income households, than in 1969 and a relatively larger
proportion of the incomes of higher income households, who could get better access
to capital (in part from their wages) and other inputs for their enterprises.25

Box 3. Changing sources of household income.

especially in occupations such as vegetable selling, where unsold goods may be


consumed by the household. The difficulty of estimating incomes from informal-
sector activities is exacerbated by the invisibility of many of the business activities
of women and children, which are considered too insignificant to report by men
in the household. The fluid nature of many urban households and uncertainty
as to what proportion of incomes earned by household members is available
for household expenditures makes the calculation of total household income
arbitrary and of per capita expenditure needs problematic, while income from
illegal activities is not reported and reporting of expenditure on items such as
alcohol is notoriously unreliable.
In addition to these difficulties, a cash income based definition of poverty
neglects access to environmental resources, such as basic utilities, peoples own
definitions of poverty, which are likely to incorporate consumption and asset
accumulation priorities,27 and the variety of strategies other than income-earning
that households utilise in pursuit of an adequate livelihood, even in urban areas
in which most employment is male formal-sector wage employment. The latter
will be discussed in a later section.
Poverty-line analysis gives an indication of the overall incidence of poverty and
trends in this over time may be useful in monitoring the impact of policy changes.
However, the extent to which it illuminates the nature of poverty for particular
communities or households, or explains its continuation, reduction or deepening
is limited. Symptoms of poverty include, for example, low life expectancy,
high levels of infant and child mortality, high morbidity and under-nutrition.
Explanations are typically based in rural areas on a lack of assets, particularly
land, but also labour, and in urban areas on access to economic opportunities
and assets, including labour and human capital. Although PL analyses have a
role to play, apart from data problems, their basic deficiency is that they are
reductionist - poverty comes to mean what is measured.28
The analysis needs to be extended in a number of ways. Firstly, a distinction
between transient and persistent poverty is needed. Secondly, both the nature
of deprivation and the process of impoverishment need to be understood. These
will be discussed in the next section. Thirdly, it is necessary to respond to the
deficiencies in PL analysis. It must also be recognised that the poor are not
merely passive victims. This has implications for the definition of poverty used
- in PL analysis it is typically defined by outsiders. The definition used affects
not only who is defined as poor but how their deprivation is understood and
thus the methodologies used to quantify and understand it29 and the nature of
the interventions designed to alleviate it. One response has adopted the concept
412 Carole Rakodi

of household strategies as a means of understanding the nature of poverty and


the way in which households cope with it (see below).

THE PROCESS OF IMPOVERISHMENT: STRUCTURAL CAUSES AND


CONJUNCTURAL TRIGGER9

Whether a household is temporarily or permanently poor may be related to


its resource endowments, its organisational capacity to manage and deploy
its resources, its labour force position, the coping mechanisms available to it
and external or family contingencies which affect it. Recession and SA has
commonly resulted in declining real wages, increased unemployment and cuts
in government spending on infrastructure and social services (see Box 4). This
is clearly indicated in Hollands paper on Jamaica. It is true that the share
of government expenditure devoted to social sectors did not fall universally,
and where their share did decrease, that the remaining expenditure did not
necessarily favour the non-poor. As a result, although often social indicators
have deterioriated, they have not done so in all cases.31

In Manila, the recession of the early 198Os, which was brought about by external
shocks and internal economic factors, compounded by political turmoil, led to a
dramatic increase in the incidence of poverty. Between mid-1983 and the end of
1984, the proportion of households with incomes insufficient to buy basic food needs
increased from 19% to 45% and those below the poverty line from 39% to 62%. Wage
employment stagnated, unemployment increased and a shift of workers to the informal
sector occurred. Real wages and informal sector earnings fell dramatically:
The contractionary Structural Adjustment policies imposed by the multilateral lending
agencies, while enabling the country to pay part of its foreign debt, were seen by many
as having aggravated the economic crisis, with the heavier burden placed on the poor
(p. 1%).36

Box 4. The impact of Structural Adjustment.

The results of SA, of course, do not only affect the poor. Gilbert is correct
to point out that the incomes of middle-class households have often fallen faster
and the costs of access to services increased more dramatically as cost recovery
measures are instituted or private-sector services substituted for those formerly
provided by the public sector .32 However, the effects of impoverishment in
terms of reduced nutrition, more ill-health, reduced access to education and
health care, etc, are greater for those previously below or near the poverty line.
The World Banks categorisation of the urban poor into the newly poor, the
borderline poor pushed into poverty and the chronic poor, represents a partial,
if oversimplified, recognition of the dynamic nature of poverty.33
It is, however, an unsophisticated formulation compared with that which has
been developed over the years in the study of rural poverty. Deprivation,
Chambers suggests, is a product not just of material poverty, but of a set of
interlocking factors, including physical weakness, isolation, vulnerability and
powerlessness .34 Material poverty arises from a lack of assets, inadequate and
unreliable stocks and flows of food and cash, and low returns to labour despite
high participation rates. A household may be physically weak not just because
of lack of food, but also because of a lack of able-bodied adults, which occurs
because of illness, disability, death, migration or the stage of the household life
Poverty Lines or Household Strategies? 413

cycle. Isolation, caused by, for example, physical location or illiteracy, limits
travel, contacts and access to information; it is exacerbated by poverty and
sustains it. Vulnerability and powerlessness are, he suggests, the most neglected
aspects of the deprivation trap. It is the vulnerability of poor households which
prevents them from taking the risks associated with innovation and which is
crucial in the process of impoverishment, while powerlessness weakens their
bargaining position with respect to political rights, access to services and the
law, and the sale of products, assets or labour. Sens conception of poverty as
a lack of entitlements is not dissimilar.
The process of impoverishment (or alternatively of improved well-being),
Chambers sees as a ratchet effect: a range of possible contingencies, especially
if more than one occurs at a time, may force a rural household to sell or mortgage
its main assets, especially land and livestock. The contingencies Chambers
identified in 1983 included social conventions (e.g. bride-wealth, weddings,
funerals), disasters (man-made or natural), physical incapacity (e.g. sickness,
childbearing), unproductive expenditure (e.g. alcohol, expenditure which does
not pay off for reasons of bad luck or bad judgement), or exploitation. By 1989,
he is drawing a critical distinction between risks, shocks and stress.35
Pryer in Khulna, Bangladesh, Harriss and Holland (in this issue) also stress
the crucial role of sickness as a shock in precipitating impoverishment, because
it has both direct costs (of treatment) and indirect costs (of income foregone).37
Yields from the sale of assets by rural households are often below their real
value, because purchasers know that they are distress sales. Decline in assets
is greatest and recovery slowest among those with least assets.
The reverse of poverty is, therefore, Chambers suggests, not necessarily
wealth, but security: command over adequate assets to be a guard against
contingencies and freedom from debt, both of which are linked to independence
(rather than dependence on a landlord or patron) and self respect (freedom from
subservience and exploitation) .ss He is referring essentially to economic security,
but physical security is also important; Moser emphasises personal safety from
domestic and other violence and notes that these may increase as deprivation
increases tension during periods of economic hardship.39 Beall, in this issue,
stresses the social and economic insecurity which poor households themselves
identify as the defining characteristic of their lives.
Conceptualisation of poverty and deprivation as a set of relationships and
processes, rather than a state, implies recognition that it is both complex and
dynamic and that the poor are not passive. This more sophisticated understanding
has raised methodological issues: not all aspects of these relationships and
processes are quantifiable; people poor by one set of indicators (e.g. income) are
not necessarily poor by another (e.g. welfare indicators such as mortality); while
vulnerability and lack of power and autonomy are hard to measure. Awareness
of the deficiencies in earlier analyses of deprivation and of the importance of
resident participation in decision making to ensure appropriate interventions
which are owned by their intended beneficiaries have both been driven by
and given rise to methodological innovations.40 Recognition that, while the
poor are often deprived of various kinds of entitlements, they are not merely
passive victims of impoverishment has also led to attempts to understand their
responses. Usually, the latter have been conceptualised in terms of household
strategies. Recent conceptual and empirical work on such strategies will be
reviewed in the next section.

HOUSEHOLD STRATEGIES

For some time now, the work of Chambers and others on rural poverty has
revolved around the belief that households aim at sustainable livelihoods.41
414 Carole Rakodi

These comprise, firstly, a portfolio of assets, both tangible (stores of cash and
food, and resources such as physical investments or skills) and intangible (claims
on others and on the government, and access rights, for example, to services).
Households make decisions about how the portfolio is used: for earning, by
disposal, to fulfil kinship obligations and responsibilities, to develop mutual
support networks, by changes to diet, etc. The strategy open to a household
depends both on the portfolio held and on the households capability to find
and make use of livelihood opportunities. The latter, in turn, depends in part
on the households composition. Chambers does not discuss the problems of
defining a household, although other analysts are aware of the complexities.
In addition, it is not clear whether household members available for work and
their skills can best be regarded as assets or capabilities.
The strategies adopted, Chambers suggests, aim to cope with and recover from
stress and shocks, by stinting, hoarding, protecting, depleting or diversifying the
portfolio; to maintain or enhance capability and assets; and to provide sustainable
livelihoods opportunities for the next generation. Faced with shock, stress or
risk, households devise coping strategies to protect their social reproduction
and enable recovery. These may be ineffective if, in the long term, consumption
declines and/or assets are lost permanently, or if successive calls on particular
strategies deplete the natural, social or financial resources on which households
or communities call. Poverty is thus characterised not only by a lack of assets
and inability to accumulate a portfolio of assets, but also by lack of choice with
respect to alternative coping strategies. The poorest, as well as households or
communities caught in a deteriorating situation, may not be able to devise a
coping strategy and will instead seek a survival strategy which will enable them
simply to protect their biological reproduction.
As in rural areas so in urban areas; households seek to mobilise resources and
opportunities and to combine these into a livelihood strategy which is a mix of
labour market involvement, savings, borrowing and investment, productive and
reproductive activities, income, labour and asset pooling and social networking.42
Both material and human resources are available. Access to them by household
members is influenced by their external availability and internal distribution, as
well as by the norms which govern their distribution, while their characteristics
and flows within the household and across its boundaries provide scope for and
constraints on strategies for their deployment.43
Households and individuals adjust this mix of resources according to their own
circumstances (age, life-cycle stage, educational level, tasks) and the changing
context in which they live (see Box 5). The poorest households are likely to aim
at survival while those who have been able to achieve a basic level of security may
be able to engage in more risky but also potentially more profitable economic
enterprises which, if successful, lead to income growth.

Diversification of household income sources has been noted in Mopti, a regional centre
in Mali. While under a fifth of urban workers derived income from more than one
activity, three fifths of households had more than one source of income. In two
thirds of the latter several members of the household worked, while in the remaining
third supplementary income was obtained from renting rooms, out-migration or help
from others. The poorest households were those with a single income source and a
dependency ratio of 5 : 1, or very large households. Economic deterioration has been
accompanied by increased female participation in wage earning, mostly in petty trade
and personal services, postponement of purchase of new clothes and house maintenance,
sales of assets, e.g. livestock, and borrowing, usually from acquaintances or traders.48

Box 5. Diversification of household income earning strategies.


Poverty Lines or Household Strategies? 415

Economic activities, then, form the basis of a household strategy, but to them
and overlapping with them can be added migration movements,45 maintenance
of ties with rural areas, urban food production, decisions about access to services
such as education and housing, and family and community social networks.4
Different members of the household may have a different role to play in each
of these and their influence over household decision making may vary from
household to household, over time and between activities.
Rural food production is an important element in the strategies of urban
households in many parts of Africa, although its availability depends on rights
to land and other support systems based on family relationships, as well as
migration histories (see Box 6). Urban agriculture is also significant where
households can obtain access to land around their houses or elsewhere in the
urban area for cultivation or raising livestock (Box 7). While rural agriculture
may yield a surplus for sale, urban agriculture is generally purely for subsistence.

In Kenya nearly 90% of industrial workers in 1984 had access to farmland, however,
small in area, and left their wives and families to live permanently in the rural areas.
Tostensen estimated that only 50% of the costs of household subsistence were met by
wages on average.48

Box 6. Rural food production in urban household strategies.

In Dakar in Senegal, all poor households are engaged in both urban and periurban
cultivation. Women grow vegetables in the urban area and rice on the urban fringe,
while men produce groundnuts for sale. Poor households with access to land prefer to
use it for subsistence and income-earning purposes, as the returns (in kind and cash)
from this activity exceed those potentially available from market selling, the most likely
alternative.49

Box 7. Urban food production and its role in household strategies.

The capabilities of household members are influenced by their access to


education and training, the ability of the household to live in a healthy
environment with good standards of environmental sanitation and the availability
of health care. Access to environmental and social services is important to the
current well-being of the household as well as the prospects of future households
formed by its youngest members (see Box 8 and Bealls paper on Pakistan in
this issue).
Beneria distinguishes between private and collective efforts to respond to
economic difficulties in Mexico .50 Social networks are important in peoples
lives and in their social identity, but they may also be important as support
systems. Extended family ties form one possible support system. In many African
countries, for example, relatives may provide accommodation and support for
migrants on their arrival in town, loans in times of difficulty; and gifts or
allowances to elderly relatives. However, gift networks and borrowing and
lending systems need not be confined to kin (Box 9). Collective efforts may also
take the form of co-operative forms of activity, which Daines and Seddon suggest
may strengthen households and particularly womens efforts beyond survival
towards improved welfare .51 Political awareness and the access to political
influence to which it may lead may be important at both the individual and
community levels and may lead to collective protest and political struggle.
416 Carole Rakodi

In Quito, Ecuador, 79% of the population had. access to water supply in 1979, but this
had fallen to 60% by 1988 and the supply, whether piped or supplied by tanker, was
often irregular. In Jakarta, while only about 12% of households have neither a piped
water connection nor access to a private well for at least some uses, in the poorest
wealth quintile, this percentage increases to 31%. Household refuse should, on payment
of a monthly fee, be collected by neighbourhood cleaning officers to a local collection
point. Although the Sanitation Department suggests a scale in which fees increase with
the wealth of the neighbourhood, in practice, there was little difference, with the poorest
quintile of households paying on average almost five times the lowest suggested charge
and the wealthiest quintile less than one third of the highest suggested charge. A similar
study in Accra showed that poor households get the least water, with the most effort,
at the highest price, and with the greatest risk of contamination. The proportion of
households using pit latrines, often shared with more than 10 other households, is
greatest in the lowest wealth quartile. The likelihood that food cooked at home or
purchased from vendors is contaminated by flies, etc is also, like other environmental
hazards, greatest for households in the lowest income quartile.52

Box 8. The significance of access to environmental services in urban poverty.

In the Alagados squatter settlement on the salt marshes of Salvador in Brazil in 1973,
support was sought from kin or patrons. A third of poor households had relationships
with patrons (political leaders or employers), which gave them access to bureaucratic
favours in return for political support, loans and preferential treatment at work in
return for labour and loyalty, and food, clothing, money and household goods in
return for domestic labour. Relations with kin involved reciprocal obligations, while
residents were also assisted by the religious groups to which they belonged.53

Box 9. The support function of social networks.

Membership of formal or informal social organisations may provide social and


material support. However, at all these levels, hardship and unequal distribution
of the burden of survival may lead to tensions as well as mutual support, within
households, between households, between kin and between communities, while
such mutual support is fragile where all are very poor, as described by Beall in
this issue.
The term household is itself problematic and needs more critical consideration
than it receives in some of the literature on rural poverty. A fairly standard
definition is normally adopted, namely a person or group of people who live
together in the same dwelling unit and contribute to and/or benefit from a joint
economy in either cash or domestic labour, i.e. a group of people who live and
eat together. Many urban families do indeed fit this model, comprising single
people or nuclear families, with or without additional permanently resident
relatives, and identification of the household head is relatively unproblematic.
However, households change over time, as they evolve through a normal life
cycle, as their members age and their status changes in culturally prescribed
way@ and as decisions are made about the movements of their members.
Members provide a household with material goods, personal capital (time and
skills), social capital (a network of social relations), social and citizenship rights
and cultural capital (information about goods and services and how to access
them).55 Household composition may, therefore, be a determinant of the choices
Poverty Lines or Household Strategies? 417

and strategies open to a household, but may also be an outcome of strategic


decisions.
Some analysts have taken issue with the term household strategy because
of its implication that households make decisions and that these decisions
are based on an explicit process of setting objectives and planning their
achievement. People, of course, make decisions, not the analytical construct
termed a household, while the term strategy should be used as shorthand for
a set of choices constrained to a greater or lesser extent by macro-economic
circumstances, social context, cultural and ideological expectations and access
to resources.56 While decisions about household matters may be made jointly
and on an equal basis by household members, as assumed by early versions of
the new neo-classical household economics, the distribution of power within the
household is usually more complex, with, for example, men having a greater
say than women and adults than children. A longitudinal view of households,
to incorporate life-cycle changes and the impact of external changes, may reveal
shifts in the bargaining power of different household members. Commonly,
womens contribution to sustaining poor households grows with deteriorating
economic circumstances. Entry into the labour force, into daily wage work,
outwork or self employment, arranging loans, foregoing personal expenditure
and leisure and fulfilling domestic tasks in a shorter time, is echoed in analyses
of many countriess7 (see Box 10 and Hollands paper on Jamaica). Although
hardship is not the only reason for women to seek employment, whether or
not they do so and what sort of work they seek
. . . are often highly contingent upon the types of household to which they
belong, especially with respect to the presence or absence of men in domestic
units and/or the degree of male control over wivesactivities.58
Chant finds in Latin America, and the same is likely to be true elsewhere, that
women are most likely to work in female-headed and extended households and
least likely to work in nuclear households.

In Mexico City there has been both increased female labour force participation, mostly
in the informal sector, and intensification of domestic work, including shopping for
cheaper food, more mending as clothes purchases are deferred and more cleaning as
dwellings become more crowded.60

Box 10. Womens roles in the survival of poor households.

Views and findings on whether or not this alters womens position in the
household vary. The entry of daughters into the labour force, for example, has
a different impact on household access to resources in Java, Indonesia, from
Malaysia, which is more patriarchal and where daughters have less autonomy
and control over their earnings. 59 Blumberg concludes, from reviews of empirical
studies, that a range of changes are associated with increased participation by
women in income generating activities, including the allocation of an increased
proportion of household resources to domestic expenditure, improved levels
of nutrition, the investment of a larger proportion of resources in exchange
and sharing networks, and a greater say by women in household decision
making, including their own fertility. 61 Beneria, on the other hand, found that
in Mexico City the crisis had not changed previous inequalities in income pooling
and intra-household distribution of resources .6* Relative bargaining power may
also vary from culture to culture, and these variations can alter the balance
between co-operation and conflict in household decision making, and influence
418 Carole Rakodi

the motives of household members, which range from selfish to altruistic. In


addition, households or nuclear families do not exist in isolation and the roles
and requirements of broader groups, especially the wider family, may influence
the options open to and decisions taken by households and their members.63
Key dimensions in understanding the strategies adopted by urban households
and the factors which enable some to flourish, others to cope and others to barely
survive thus include:
(a> the external economy of the household, its relations with wider economic,
political and social systems at community, city and national levels, and its
access to resources, including land and services;
04 the social relations of production and power within the household with
respect to the distribution of material resources among household members,
the gender division of labour within the household, the household as a
system of resource management and the intra-household distribution of
welfare outcomes,@ and
(4 changes over time attributable both to the life cycle, which may cause
changes in the way which the household is embedded into a wider set of
social relations, and to changes in the external context, which may propel
households to reorganise, thus changing intra-household social relations
and distribution of resources.65
The way in which households use resources and respond to either deteriorating
circumstances or opportunities to improve their well-being, can provide guide-
lines for appropriate policy interventions. Typically urban households seem to
have coped with the impact of recession and SA by diversifying three types of
strategies,66
Strategies to increase resources:
?? entering more household members into the workforce;
?? starting businesses, although there are clearly limits to the absorptive capacity
of the informal sector and not all wage workers have the skills and aptitude
necessary for self employment;
?? growing their own food;
?? increased scavenging or foraging (collection of wild foods);
?? renting out additional rooms.
Strategies to mitigate or limit a decline in consumvtion:
1

reducing or eliminating consumption items such as new clothes, meat or


luxury food and drink;
buying cheaper food and secondhand clothes;
withdrawing children from school;
postponing medical treatment;
not repairing or replacing household equipment;
postponing house repairs or improvements;
reduced social life, including visits to rural homes.
Strategies to change household composition:
?? postponing or stopping having children (for which there is some evidence from
Mexico) ;
?? increasing the household size, by retaining or incorporating relatives, especially
women and married children, to keep wage earners in the family and enable
older women to work;
?? migration, including international and return migration.
Some households can compensate for the lack of wage employment, low wages
or declining real wages by diversifying their household strategies. However, the
potential to diversify livelihoods strategies varies between households. Those
best placed include:
Poverty Lines or Household Strategies? 419

?? those with more than one adult;


?? those with an adult in wage employment, to generate initial working capital
for informal-sector production, trade or agriculture;
?? those with the necessary contacts to market informal-sector produce;
?? those with access to rural land, especially in Africa;
?? those with kin to call on, both for support in times of need and emergency and
because of the entitlements of obligation and responsibility included within
reciprocal kin relationships;
?? those who are house owners and can earn income from renting rooms;
?? those who have access to urban land for food production, either around their
houses or on undeveloped land within walking distance.
Households in poverty or more vulnerable to impoverishment include certain
categories of wage earners, for example, casual workers or domestic servants;
households with a single adult, especially if that adult is a woman with children
to support; elderly households without adequate pensions and dependent on
non-existent or irregular support from their children; households affected by
unemployment who do not have other sources of income to fall back on;
households without wider kin networks on which they can call; and households
without access to land for housing or agriculture. The use of extended family
networks, access to rural land, and the ability of women to contribute labour
to productive activity thus may help to mitigate the impoverishing effects of
national economic problems and policies, but it is questionable how long such
strategies can be effective. Indeed, such networks require resources to lubricate
and sustain them; however, at the moment a household most needs the network
it is least able to afford the cost of maintaining it. Widely acknowledged as
a cushion against economic hardship, analysts are warning against continued
reliance on the extended family, while access to rural land is not available to
increasing numbers of households, even in Africa.67 The failure of Jamaicas
longer experience of SA to provide employment opportunities which yield
adequate incomes bears out this reservation. Finally, there are limits on womens
time, their access to land, the demand for their labour, and the markets for the
goods and services they produce.

POLICIES AND PROGRAMMES

The implications of an improved understanding of both the extent and nature of


urban poverty and the dynamics of impoverishment/improved well-being are that
a number of policy approaches are needed and that provision must be made for
selection of the most appropriate to respond to needs and priorities articulated
by the poor themselves.

The provision of safety nets


There is a need for floors (safety nets) to be provided under the most vulnerable,
including both the transiently and permanently poor. The GAPVU programme
in Mozambique reported on by Schubert (this issue) is an example of such an
approach. Many of these programmes attempt to compensate for the effects of
abolition of price control and subsidies of food prices by food stamps or coupons,
supplementary feeding programmes or more specific targeting of food subsidies.
A World Bank review of their effectiveness in Jamaica, Mexico, Honduras,
Colombia, Madagascar and Venezuela concluded that, with adequate targeting,
such programmes can provide effective temporary relief to vulnerable groups,
especially pregnant and lactating women, children and the destitute elderly, but
420 Carole Rakodi

noted that achieving accurate targeting is often very difficult. Delivery, especially
co-ordination of food assistance with related services and avoiding corruption in
the allocation of benefits, may also be problematic, and can often be improved
by involving members of the community. However, such programmes are rarely
sufficient to compensate for the decline in real incomes which has been suffered
by the poor or to reach the whole needy population.68 Severance payments and
labour-intensive public works programmes, for example in Ghana and Bolivia,
were also evaluated. It was concluded that, again with accurate targeting, these
may provide temporary relief, but that they are ineffective as a means of
enhancing employment and income-generating potential in the longer term.
In addition, not all those made redundant may qualify for severance payments;
retraining schemes are often limited in size and do not impart skills which
give access to income earning opportunities; and labour intensive public works
programmes, although they may provide short-term income to the poor, often
exclude women and rarely impart much in the way of skills training.

Opportunities to increase assets


Opportunities are necessary for households (especially their disadvantaged
members, including women) to increase their assets, including, for example,
owner-occupied housing for the generation of rental income, land for cultivation,
or equipment for SSEs.

Enablement to take advantage of opportunities


Provisions which enable households to improve their capacity to take advantage
of opportunities are needed, including training in skills suitable for SSEs, for
both men and women, and access to credit for house construction or business
development. A recent evaluation of Indias long experience with beneficiary-
oriented programmes to deliver basic health, nutrition, education, shelter and
services concludes that the top-down approach adopted results in the success of
the programmes being judged in terms of expenditure rather than the number
of poor people reached and the impact upon them. Poor targeting results in the
exclusion of the poorest, while sectoral responsibility results in administrative
fragmentation and lack of co-ordination. While NGOs may be more successful
delivery agencies at the community level, they have difficulties scaling up their
operations.69
Opinions about the value of programmes to aid small-scale enterprises with
loans for fixed and working capital and other assistance vary. Some analyses
consider that SSEs are constrained by lack of access to capital, unreliable
sources of raw materials and supplies and restricted or inadequate market niches
and conclude that appropriately designed programmes of credit and technical
assistance can be replicable, cost effective and can achieve high loan repayment
rates.70 Credit may not, however, be the main problem faced by SSEs, and
others conclude that many programmes have been unsuccessful.71 Instead of
the integrated packages of subsidised credit and training which characterised
much of the lending in the 1970s and 1980s Rhyne and Otero suggest that such
programmes should be based on
. . . a market perspective that knows the preferences of the client group and
designs products to meet them; a recognition that savings can be as important
as credit, for microenterprises, for financial institutions and for the economy;
and insistence that financially viable institutions provide financial services.
(p. 1561)2
Poverty Lines or Household Strategies? 421

Some of the most successful programmes of skills training, technical advice,


marketing assistance and credit provision are those organised by grassroots
associations of poor self employed women workers, for example, the Self
Employed Womens Association of Ahmedabad, the Anna Puma Mahila Mandal
in Bombay and the Working Womens Fund in Madras.73 Such organ&&ions
can act as intermediaries between banks (sometimes operating subsidised
government credit programmes) and groups of small-scale entrepreneurs, especially
women. Because banks have difficulties in establishing relationships with poor
borrowers, intermediary organisations can achieve greater disbursement and
higher repayment rates, but are still at the mercy of bank policies and staff.
Special (e.g. womens) banks can solve the latter problem, but tend to have
limited finance and scope and are dependent on outside assistance.74

Provision of basic utilitiesand services


Provision of basic utilities and services continues to be vital, in recognition of their
importance in countering deprivation, both directly, in terms of environmental
improvements and job creation, and indirectly, as improved health increases
productivity in terms of work and learning. The paper on India in this issue attempts
to consider both the literature and the policy approaches based on employment
creation and environmental improvement in tackling urban poverty.75

General policy
A general policy framework, as well as legal and physical context which is
favourable to the activities that enable poor residents to cope is needed, including
the revision of unrealistic standards and elimination of discrimination against
informal economic activities.
Of crucial significance is access to wage employment in the formal sector
and therefore the economic policy context. Wages paid in this sector generate
demand not just for its own products, but also for informal-sector goods and
services. In the NICs increased formal-sector activity is creating large numbers
of waged, if poorly paid and insecure jobs. The case of Jamaica shows, however,
that such an outcome may be insufficient to improve welfare. In addition, it
seems likely in many countries that formal-sector employment will not start to
increase again after the losses which typically accompany the first few years of
adjustment, especially if government support is not forthcoming. In Zimbabwe,
for example, Stoneman argues convincingly that rapid formal-sector job creation
is unlikely to occur in a future open economy without government intervention.76
In Kampala, Bigsten and Kayizzi-Mugerwa consider that . . . the residue
sector has become a source of livelihood and public sector employment a
means to a successful business rather than a significant source of income for
many households. However, they view a slimmed down but relatively well paid
formal sector as a crucial economic aim, as does Chilowa in Malawi.77 Rodgers
agrees that the design of macro-economic policy has an immediate effect on
poverty, in particular through increased open unemployment and real wage
decreases. The implications of this include the need for direct promotion of
employment through public works and other means. He recognises the limits
to the ability of the informal sector to absorb increasing numbers and argues
the need for policy to widen access to activities of greater potential, although
he recognises the difficulty of doing so when such access is often controlled by
larger scale producers, or particular ethnic or family groups.78
Although laws which entitle residents to services and other rights are often
not enforced, because they threaten vested interests, they can have a role in
safeguarding entitlements to safe workplaces and living environments, social

WJ 1eH-c
422 Carole Rakodi

security, legal representation and property. 79 Linked to this, because of the


influence of planning, development and building control laws and regulations
on the built environment, is the physical context for the activities of low
income residents. This should enable them to live in appropriate housing (for
example, by allowing incremental construction and improvement), gain access
to residential areas (by appropriate standards for roads and paths and public
transport provision), enjoy environmental services (by adopting basic standards
and appropriate pricing policies for water supply, energy supply, drainage and
sanitation, and waste management), and allow the use of residential and other
areas and houses for all except the most obnoxious small businesses, The
approach should aim at achieving basic health and safety and should avoid
harassment in the name of the physical appearance of the environment.

CONCLUSION

It is important to monitor the proportion of households in poverty, the intensity


of poverty, its symptoms, and the characteristics of poor households, both to
assess the impact of macro-economic policies and development strategies on
urban populations and to evaluate the impact of poverty reduction policies.
Methodological improvements are possible, such as allowing for household size
and composition (by using, for example, per capita adult equivalent income),
using appropriate deflators, revising poverty line baskets of food and other
items to reflect changing consumption patterns and regional differences, and
ensuring, as far as possible, that all sources of household income are included.
Limitations of PL analysis typically include its tendency to treat the household
as an unproblematic unitary entity; its common neglect of the factors which
influence the changing fortunes of urban residents as they achieve greater
well-being, cope with poverty or become more impoverished; its inability to
cope with deprivation as a set of relationships and processes rather than a state;
and its adoption of outsiders definitions of what it means to be poor.
Poverty cannot be equated with low wages: household size, dependency ratios
and access to other income earning and subsistence activities are all relevant.
Nor is it a static condition: while some households are permanently poor, others
become impoverished, as a result of general life-cycle changes, specific events
such as the illness of a main income earner, or a deterioration in external
economic conditions. Households with the most resilient strategies do not rely
solely on wage incomes, but diversify their activities to generate additional
income and other produce. The ability to diversify household activities depends
on a range of factors, including intra-household resources and relationships,
rights to property and environmental resources in both urban and rural areas,
and the policy context. The resources and property rights available to men and
women differ, giving or constraining access to alternative activities. The most
vulnerable households are those which can neither rely on wage income nor
diversify their livelihood strategies. Policies should aim at supporting them at
individual, household and community levels.

NOTES
1. I. Seralgeldin, Poverty, Adjustment and Growth in Africa (World Bank, Washington, DC, 1989);
H. Ribe, S. Carvalho, R. Liebenthal, P. Nicholas and E. Zuckerman, How Adjusrmenr Programmes
can Help rhe Poor: the World Banks Experience, DP 71 (World Bank, Waihington, Dtf, 1990);
E. Jesperson, External Shocks, Adiustment Policies and Economic and Social Performance. in
G.A. -&rnia, R. van der Hoeven -and T. Mkandawire (eds), Africas Recovery in rhe 19&s:
from Stagnation and Adjusrmenr to Human Development (St. Martins Press, New York, NY,
1992), pp. P-90; World Bank, Urban Policy and Economic Development: an Agenda for rhe 1990s
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1992); C.O.N. Moser, A.J. Herbert and R.E. Makonnen, Urban
Poverty Lines or Household Strategies? 423

Poverty in the Context of Structural Adjustment: Recent Evidence and Policy Responses, TWU DP 4,
(World Bank, Urban Development Division, Washington, DC, 1993); A. Gilbert, Third World
Cities: Poverty, Employment, Gender Roles and the Environment during a time of Restructuring,
Urban Studies 31, 415 (1994) pp. 605-633.
2. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Seminar on Gender, Urbanisation
and Environment, organised-by Research Committee 43 on Housing and the Built Environment of
the International Sociological Association in Nairobi, 13-16 June 1994, in conjunction with Mazingira
Institute and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements. I am grateful for Philip Amis
comments and help in abbreviating the original for publication.
3. See Moser et al. (1993), note 1, pp. 9-11 for a review of other ways of measuring urban poverty. A
PL can be supplemented by an estimate of the value of possessions grouped into perhaps six classes
and even combined into a composite index with income group, as has been done, for example, for
Mopti in Mali, see E.J.A. Harts-Broekhuis and A.A. de Jong, Subsistence and Survival in the Sahel
(Universiteit Utrecht, Faculteit Ruimtelijke Wetenschappen, Utrecht).
4. S. Guhan and B. Harriss, Introduction, in B. Harriss, S. Guhan and R.H. Cassen (eds), Poverty
in India: Research and Policy (Oxford University Press, Bombay, 1992) pp. l-24.
5. International Labour Office, Rural Poverty: Trends and Explanations, in Poverty and Landlessness
in Asia (ILO, Geneva, 1977), pp. 7-37.
6. A. Sen, Levels of Poverty: Policy and Change, WP 401, (World Bank, Washington, DC, 1980); see
also P. Cutler, The Measurement of Poverty: a Review of Attempts to Quantify the Poor, with
Special Reference to India, World Development 12, 11112pp. 1119-1130, and J. Ko, Studying Urban
Poverty in Sarawak: some Methodological Issues and Problems, in M.Y.Hj. Johari (ed.), Urban
Poverty in Malaysia (Institute for Development Studies (Sabah), Kota Kinabalu, 1991), pp. 59-93
on urban poverty in Sarawak.
7. SD. Tendulkar, Economic Growth and Poverty, in Harriss et al. (eds), (1992), see note 4,
pp. 27-57 (p. 32).
8. R. Mohan and P. Thottan, The Regional Spread of Urbanization, Industrialization and Urban
Poverty, in Harriss et al. (eds), (1992) see note 4, pp. 76-141.
9. B.S. Minhas, S.M. Kansal and L.R. Jain, The Incidence of Urban Poverty in States (1970-l to
1983), in Harriss et al. (eds), (1992), see note 4, pp. 142-170.
10. D. Mehta, Community-based Programme of Urban Poverty Alleviation in India, Paper to the
Regional Workshop on Community-based Programmes for Urban Poverty Alleviation, Kuala Lumpur,
1994.
11. Johari (ed.), (1991), see note 6. It is, however, interesting that in a survey of Malay Reserve Areas
in Kuala Lumpur, respondents average estimate of what the minimum household income should
be to live above subsistence was close to the updated official poverty line, allowing for the higher
urban cost of living, 0. Rani and A.M. Salleh, Malays in the Reserve Areas of Kuala Lumpur:
How Poor are They?, in Johari (ed.), (1991) see note 6, pp. 111-150.
12. Per Capita GNP x 0.35 x 1.25 x average household size; East Africa Projects Department, Water
Supply and Development Division, World Bank, Zimbabwe Urban Sector Review (World Bank,
Nairobi, 1985).
13. R. Mohan, M.V. Wagner and J. Garcia, Measuring Urban Malnutrition and Poverty, WP 447,
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1981); J.R. Follain and E. Jimenez, World Bank Water Supply and
Urban Development Department The Demand for Housing Characteristics in Developing Countries
DP WUDD 43, (World Bank, Washington, DC, 1983).
14. E.J.A. Harts-Broekhuis and A.A. de Jong, W. Chilowa, Food Insecurity and Coping Strategies
Among the Low Income Urban Households in Malawi, R1991:4, (Chr Michelsen Institute, Bergen,
1991).
15. R.P. Alonzo, Trends in Poverty and Labour Market Outcomes in the Metro Manila Area, in
G. Rodgers (ed.), Urban Poverty and the Labour Market: Access to Jobs and Incomes in Asian and
Latin American Cities (International Labour Office, Geneva, 1989), pp. 173-200.
16. M. Lipton, Labor and Poverty, WP 616 (World Bank, Washington, DC, 1983).
17. M. Pollack, Poverty and the Labour Market in Costa Rica, in Rodgers (ed.), (1989), see note 15,
pp. 65-80 (p. 70).
18. S.L. Barraclough, An End to Hunger: the Social Origins of Food Strategies (ZedAJNRISD, London,
1991).
19. B.I. Logan, Overpopulation and Poverty in Africa: Rethinking the Traditional Relationship, TESG
82, 1 (1991) pp. 40-57.
20. Barraclough (1991), see note 18; A. Duncan and J. Howell, Assessing the Impact of Structural
Adjustment, in A. Duncan and J. Howell (eds) Structural Adjustment and the African Farmer (James
CurreylOverseas Development Institute, London, 1992) pp. 1-13.
21. Harts-Broekhuis (1993) see note 3; see also V. Jamal and J. Weeks, Africa Misunderstood or
Whatever Happened to the Rural-Urban Gap? (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1993). Thirty per cent of
urban wage earners in Kenya had incomes below the food poverty line in 1990 and half below the
full PL, compared to 7% below the food PL in 1973.
22. L. Beneria, The Mexican Debt Crisis: Restructuring the Economy and the Household, in L. Beneria
and S. Feldman (eds), Unequal Burden: Economic Crises, Persistent Poverty and Womens Work
(Westview, Boulder, CO, 1992) pp. 83-104; Guhan and Harriss (1992), see note 4; see also
B. Agarwal, Rural Women, Poverty and Natural Resources: Sustenance, Sustainability and Struggle
for Change, in Harriss et al. (eds), (1992), see note 4, pp. 390-432.
23. P. Musgrove, Determinants of Urban Household Consumption in Latin America: a Summary of
Evidence from the ECIEL Surveys, Economic Development and Cultural Change 26, 2 (1978)
424 Carole Rakodi

pp. 441-t65; P. Musgrove, Household Size and Composition, Employment and Poverty in Urban
Latin America, Economic Development and Cultural Change 28,2 (1980), pp. 249-260.
24. See also G. Rodgers, Introduction: Trends in Urban Poverty and Labour Market Access, in
Rodgers (ed.), (1989) see note 17, pp. l-34; P. Bardhan, Poverty and Employment Characteristics
of Urban Households in West Bengal, India: An Analysis of the Results of the National Sample
Survey, 1977-78, in Rodgers (ed.), (1989), see note 17, pp. 201-216; J. Harriss, Urban Poverty
and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Cities 6, 3 (1989), pp. 186-194; N. Yahaya, A Profile of the
Urban Poor in Malaysia, Journal of Contemporary Asia 21, 2 (1991), pp. 212-221; H-D. Evers,
Urban Poverty and Labour Supply Strategies in Jakarta, in Rodgers (ed.), (1989) see note 17,
pp. 145-172; J. Jatoba Urban Poverty, Labour Markets and Regional Differentiation in Brazil, in
Rodgers (ed.), (1989), see note 17, pp. 35-64.
25. A. Bigsten and S. Kayizzi-Mugerwa, Adaption and Distress in the Urban Economy: a Study of
Kampala Households, World Development 20, 10 (1992) pp. 1423-1441; see also A.M. Tripp, The
Impact of Crisis and Economic Reform on Women in Urban Tanzania, in Beneria and Feldman
(eds), (1992) see note 22, pp. 159-180.
26. Bigsten and Jay&i-Mugerwa (1992) see note 25, appear to have no reservations about their data on
earnings from self employment, although Chilowa (1991), see note 14, recognises the difficulties.
27. Harriss (1989) see note 24. A study in Java in 1979 asked respondent households to define minimum
basic needs, which were then costed and adjusted for household size and structure, see Evers (1989)
see note 24.
28. R. Chambers, Poverty in India: Concepts, Research and Reality, in Harriss et al. (eds), (1992)
see note 4, pp. 301-332.
29. R. Chambers, Rural Appraisal: Rapid, Relaxed and Participatory, DP 311 (Institute of Development
Studies, Brighton, 1992).
30. J. Iliffe, The African Poor: a History (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987).
31. D. Woodward, Debt, Adjustment and Poverty in Developing Countries, Vol. I: National and
International Dimensions of Debt and Adjustment in Developing Countries (Pinter, London, 1992).
32. Gilbert, (1994) see note 1, p. 607; see also Jamal and Weeks (1993) note 21.
33. Moser et al. (1993), see note 1.
34. R. Chambers, Vulnerability, Coping and Policy, IDS Bulletin 20, 2 (1989) pp. l-7.
35. R. Chambers (1989), see note 34; R. Chambers, Rural Development: Putting the Last First (Longman,
Harlow , 1983).
36. R.P. Alonzo, Trends in Poverty and Labour Market Outcomes in the Metro-Manila Area, in
G. Rodgers (ed.), (1989) see note 17, pp. 173-200.
37. J. Pryer, When Breadwinners Fall III: Preliminary Findings from a Case Study in Bangladesh, IDS
Bulletin 29, 2 (1989) pp. 49-57; B. Harriss, Rural Poverty in India - microlevel evidence, in
Harriss et al. (eds), (1992), see note 4, pp. 333-389.
38. Chambers (1992) see note 40; see also A. Duncan and J. Howell, Assessing the Impact of Structural
Adjustment, in Duncan and Howell (eds.), (1992), see note 20, pp. 1-13. Evers (1989), see note 24,
argues that insecurity of access to income and resources is as crucial a defining characteristic of urban
poverty as low incomes.
39. C.O.N. Moser, Urban Social Policy and Poverty Reduction, TWURD WP 10, (World Bank,
Washington, DC, 1993); Moser et al. (1993) see note 1.
40. Chambers, (1992), see note 29. Surprisingly, although space use and seasonal diagramming are
mentioned by Chambers, time-use data is not; see L.S. Grossman, Collecting Time-use Data in
Third World Rural Communities, Professional Geographer 34, 4 (1984) pp. 444-454.
41. Chambers (1989) see note 34; R. Chambers and G. Conway, Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical
Concepts for the 2Ist Century, DP 296 (Institute for Development Studies, Brighton, 1992).
42. C.A. Grown and J. Sebstad, Introduction: Toward a Wider Perspective on Womens Employment,
World Development 17, 7 (1989), pp. 937-952.
43. J. Brannen and G. Wilson, Introduction, in J. Brannen and G. Wilson (eds), Give and Take in
Families: Studies in Resource Distribution (Allen and Unwin, London, 1987) pp. 1-17; K. Young,
Household Resource Management, in L. Ostergaard (ed.), Gender and Development: a Practical
Guide (Belhaven, London, 1992) pp. 135-164; see also R.R. Wilk, Decision Making and Resource
Flows Within the Household: Beyond the Black Box, in R.R. Wilk (ed.), The Household Economy:
Reconsidering the Domestic Mode of Production (Westview, Boulder, CO, 1989), pp. 23-52.
44. C. Rakodi, Womens Work or Household Strategies?, Environment and Urbanisation 3, 2 (1991)
pp. 39-45.
45. 0. Stark, The Migration of Labour (Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, 1991); S. Feldman, Crises,
Poverty and Gender Inequality: Current Themes and Issues, in Beneria and Feldman (eds), (1992),
see note 22, pp. l-25; B. Holcomb and T.Y. Rothenberg, Womens Work and the Urban Household
Economy in Developing Countries, in M. Turshen and B. Holcomb (eds), Womens Lives and Public
Policy: the International Experience (Greenwood, Westport, CT, 1993), pp. 51-68. In Costa Rica,
for example, seasonal male out-migration from towns occurs because of the lack of emolovment
opportunities, see S. Chant, Women and Poverty in Urban Latin America: Mexican and -Costa
Rican Exneriences. in F. Meer (ed.). Urban Povertv in the 1990s: the Resnonses of Urban
Women (UNESCO and International Social Science Council, Paris, 1994) pp. 87-i15 and S. Chant,
Gender, Migration and Urban Development in Costa Rica: the Case of Guanacaste, Geoforum
22, 3, pp. 237-253.
46. C. Rakodi, Household Strategies and the Urban Poor: Coping with Structural Adjustment in Gweru,
Zimbabwe Papers in Planning Research 149, (University of Wales, Department of City and Regional
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426 Carole Rakodi

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