Today is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Yesterday was World Food Day (yes, another day) and my colleague Elisabetta Aurino highlighted the ways in which food insecurity is often presented in the media in very stark terms; too many people, too little food. But she went on to point out that per capita the global food supply has actually increased. The issue is rather more complex than some choose to acknowledge. Simple may be helpful, but simplistic isn't.
In that spirit, here are three reflections of a rather different kind from recently published Young Lives analysis. Different for what they say about the complexity of poverty and what can be done to eradicate it.
Investing throughout childhood.
Nutrition is a fundamental building block for children's development. Malnutrition has long-term impacts, including on children's physical development and learning. It is both a consequence of poverty and a determinant of later disadvantage. Within an increasing policy focus on malnutrition, there is a considerable, vital, interest in prevention through early investments in children's nutritional status. But as well as showing the long-term impacts of malnutrition, cohort data such as Young Lives can show a second story which is promising for policy. The early years are critical, but even after that point, there can be changes in children's relative height children who are stunted early in life do not necessarily remain so. (And conversely some children become stunted.) So prevention by early intervention is essential, but later investments have an importance beyond ensuring survival and indeed have the potential can pay off for children both in terms of relative height gain and other learning indicators.
Policy can work.
Taking a medium-term view of development, one really interesting point is just that the scale of policy intervention in children's lives (such as education and social protection) is simply greater in low- and middle-income countries now than ever before. That isn't a surprise both because of the external drivers (the MDGs) and also greater resources and internal pressures to strengthen national social contracts. Policy can make a serious, important difference for children. Evidence from Andhra Pradesh highlights the impact of social protection in empowering women, with positive consequences for both women and their daughters. Evidence from Vietnam highlights that some schools make much more of a value added difference to pupils than others, and more of a difference to disadvantaged children. A key challenge for policy aimed at poverty reduction is learning from what works best in each context, and then finding effective ways of spreading it.
Making change happen.
"Theories of change" are all the rage but are actually quite helpful way to think about what the objective of any piece of work is, and then to work back to define exactly what is required to achieve change. In the policy arena, one area of serious concern in many countries are so-called harmful traditional practices recognising the negative impact certain practices can have on heevidence from Ethiopia shows that legal approaches can be counter-productive with the result that practices are driven underground. If the aim is to reduce the incidence of such practices, more important is likely to be investing in education, training and work opportunities for adolescent girls.
The UN theme chosen for today is Working together towards a world without discrimination: Building on the experience and knowledge of people in extreme poverty.
I rather like the idea that far from the job of development being to educate people out of backward ideas or practices, it ought to be to find ways of empowering people and that, in doing so, many benefits flow. A practical example of this is parental investments in education in India. Time and again evidence is presented of girls being disadvantaged or discriminated against compared with boys. A simplistic reading of that is that parents simply value daughters less. But the underlying reasons aren't simply prejudice; it's more likely that parents are making choices for their children based on how those choices are expected to pay off. If parents don't expect education to pay off for their daughters (because men generally earn more than women), it's not surprising they don't invest in their daughters' education.
To individualise any problem doesn't usually provide a very effective solution, you need to engage with the context and work at reducing wider constraints. It would be better to engage with the constraint, and indeed to trust people rather more to do what they know from their own experience will work for themselves and their children.
Today is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Yesterday was World Food Day (yes, another day) and my colleague Elisabetta Aurino highlighted the ways in which food insecurity is often presented in the media in very stark terms; too many people, too little food. But she went on to point out that per capita the global food supply has actually increased. The issue is rather more complex than some choose to acknowledge. Simple may be helpful, but simplistic isn't.
In that spirit, here are three reflections of a rather different kind from recently published Young Lives analysis. Different for what they say about the complexity of poverty and what can be done to eradicate it.
Investing throughout childhood.
Nutrition is a fundamental building block for children's development. Malnutrition has long-term impacts, including on children's physical development and learning. It is both a consequence of poverty and a determinant of later disadvantage. Within an increasing policy focus on malnutrition, there is a considerable, vital, interest in prevention through early investments in children's nutritional status. But as well as showing the long-term impacts of malnutrition, cohort data such as Young Lives can show a second story which is promising for policy. The early years are critical, but even after that point, there can be changes in children's relative height children who are stunted early in life do not necessarily remain so. (And conversely some children become stunted.) So prevention by early intervention is essential, but later investments have an importance beyond ensuring survival and indeed have the potential can pay off for children both in terms of relative height gain and other learning indicators.
Policy can work.
Taking a medium-term view of development, one really interesting point is just that the scale of policy intervention in children's lives (such as education and social protection) is simply greater in low- and middle-income countries now than ever before. That isn't a surprise both because of the external drivers (the MDGs) and also greater resources and internal pressures to strengthen national social contracts. Policy can make a serious, important difference for children. Evidence from Andhra Pradesh highlights the impact of social protection in empowering women, with positive consequences for both women and their daughters. Evidence from Vietnam highlights that some schools make much more of a value added difference to pupils than others, and more of a difference to disadvantaged children. A key challenge for policy aimed at poverty reduction is learning from what works best in each context, and then finding effective ways of spreading it.
Making change happen.
"Theories of change" are all the rage but are actually quite helpful way to think about what the objective of any piece of work is, and then to work back to define exactly what is required to achieve change. In the policy arena, one area of serious concern in many countries are so-called harmful traditional practices recognising the negative impact certain practices can have on heevidence from Ethiopia shows that legal approaches can be counter-productive with the result that practices are driven underground. If the aim is to reduce the incidence of such practices, more important is likely to be investing in education, training and work opportunities for adolescent girls.
The UN theme chosen for today is Working together towards a world without discrimination: Building on the experience and knowledge of people in extreme poverty.
I rather like the idea that far from the job of development being to educate people out of backward ideas or practices, it ought to be to find ways of empowering people and that, in doing so, many benefits flow. A practical example of this is parental investments in education in India. Time and again evidence is presented of girls being disadvantaged or discriminated against compared with boys. A simplistic reading of that is that parents simply value daughters less. But the underlying reasons aren't simply prejudice; it's more likely that parents are making choices for their children based on how those choices are expected to pay off. If parents don't expect education to pay off for their daughters (because men generally earn more than women), it's not surprising they don't invest in their daughters' education.
To individualise any problem doesn't usually provide a very effective solution, you need to engage with the context and work at reducing wider constraints. It would be better to engage with the constraint, and indeed to trust people rather more to do what they know from their own experience will work for themselves and their children.