Why Don’t ‘the Poor’ Make Common Cause The Importance of Subgroups

Why Don’t ‘the Poor’ Make Common Cause? The Importance of Subgroups Anirudh Krishna Associate Professor of Public Policy and Political Science Duke University Box 90245 Durham, NC 27708-0245 (919) 613-7337 (919) 681-8288 (fax) ak30@duke.edu Abstract Analyses that regard ‘the poor’ as a sociological category need to take account of recent studies quantifying the extent of flux within these ranks Frequent movements into and out of poverty regularly refresh the pool of the poor Large numbers of poor people were not born poor; they have descended into poverty, some quite recently Concurrently, many formerly poor people have escaped from poverty Distinct subgroups are defined by these divergent trajectories Members of different subgroups have diverse economic needs, political interests and mobilisation potential, making cohesive action as a political force unlikely (and certainly uncertain) among all of ‘the poor’ Policies to assist poor people will be more effective, and political analysis will yield more fruitful results, if instead of working with any generic category of ‘the poor’ heed is taken of subgroup-specific experiences and demands Introduction: Why Not a Party or a Politics of the Poor? Where the poor constitute a majority or near-majority of the population, why don’t they vote themselves to power in democracies? In countries such as Madagascar, Mozambique, Mali, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya and Bangladesh, where the poor constitute, respectively, 71 percent, 70 percent, 64 percent, 56 percent, 53 percent, 52 percent, and 50 percent of the population, why don’t parties of the poor emerge and take power democratically? Even in countries such as India, Philippines, and Ecuador, where the poor form a smaller but still sizeable part of the population – 29 percent, 37 percent and 35 percent, respectively – why are the politics of poverty not more emphatic, potent and visible?1 Lower political participation by poorer people can provide a possible explanation Likened by Marx to sacks of potatoes, the rural poor have not been considered particularly active politically (Bates, 1981) Empirical studies have repeatedly affirmed lower participation rates among the poor (for example, Verba, Nie and Kim, 1978; Rosenstone and Hansen, 1993; Jackman and Miller, 1995; and Lijphart, 1997) A ‘culture of poverty’ is claimed, reflecting apathy and submission among the poor (Lewis, 1963) Yet, these explanations are hardly sufficient to justify why large majorities of people, more than two-thirds of the population in some cases, are unwilling or unable to act collectively Participation rates may be lower among poorer people, but the sheer weight of numbers can handily compensate for this difference, reported to be no more than a few percentage points Recent evidence also shows that participation rates are not uniformly low among all of the poor In many cases poorer people participate as actively as others (Yadav, 1999; Bratton and Mattes, 2001; Mattes, et al., 2003; Krishna, 2006; Krishna, forthcoming), and some sections of the poor can actually have higherthan-average participation rates, as shown below In contexts where they are quite numerous – which includes vast swathes of South and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and segments of Central and South America, or nearly one-half of all countries in the world – the rural poor should present to political entrepreneurs a natural constituency for effective organisation As inequality is rising in many countries (Wade, 2004; World Bank, 2006), and as older forms of social organisation and their associated norms and customs are eroding (Griffin, 2000; UNDP, 2000), the organisational potential of the rural poor should be growing, rendering them more attractive as a constituency for political organisers Whether to restore a ‘subsistence ethic’ (Scott, 1976) or to obtain better deals from markets and state bureaucracies (Popkin, 1979), movements of the rural poor should therefore be on the rise So why are efforts to organise the poor so infrequent, scattered, and localized? Divisions among the poor on account of caste, ethnicity, and religion have been advanced as a possible explanation for lack of organisation (for example, by Burnell, 1995; Alesina, et al., 1999; Bates, 1999; Good, 1999; Keefer and Khemani, 2003; and Varshney, 2005), but while answering one question these explanations evade a more fundamental one: Why are caste or ethnicity so much more commonly the currency of political organisation – even where poverty is a more widely shared feature? Why political parties in developing countries more frequently exploit cleavages drawn along ascriptive lines and less often assemble broad-based coalitions of the poor? In this paper, I present an additional explanation, supplementing the ones provided earlier ‘The poor’ does not constitute a valid category for analysis or action: it is no more than an article of speech, I will contend Recent studies show that significant differences in identities and material interests exist across distinct subgroups of poor people There are those who have fallen into poverty recently, others who are on the verge of escaping from poverty, and still others who have remained persistently poor In Section 2, I present evidence from recent studies that quantify the extent of movements into and out of poverty Large numbers, and in many contexts, the majority, of those who are poor at the present time were not poor some years ago Conversely, large numbers of formerly poor people have escaped from poverty, and others, still poor but upwardly mobile, are making their ways out from this statistical pool Different reasons are associated, respectively, with escaping poverty and falling into poverty (Section 3) As a result, different needs are experienced and different demands are expressed by members of different subgroups Those who have recently fallen into poverty are most directly encumbered by one set of reasons, and they tend to demand related public policies Others, on the verge of escaping from poverty, are assisted by a different set of reasons They see a different set of needs and opportunities The persistently poor constitute yet another subgroup Neither recently fallen into poverty, nor experiencing any significant upward mobility, members of this subgroup face a different opportunity set; they tend to make a different set of demands upon the state Different experiences, different identities and different material interests tend to make collective action uncertain among all subgroups of the poor Evidence collected in 36 villages of Andhra Pradesh, India provides some initial support for this proposition, showing how members of different subgroups demand very different things from the state Coming together under a common umbrella of action is hardly automatic Looking within separate subgroups provides a better starting point for policy design, political analysis, and coalition building Some consequences of this categorical advance are examined in Sections and Not a Rising nor a Falling but a Rising-Falling Tide Analysts referring to the poor implicitly assume a stable and homogeneous category.2 However, ‘the poor’ is a very approximate and possibly a misleading category of analysis For a category to be robust and useful for analysis it must have sufficient discriminating power (Sartori, 1970: 1039) It must be stable, with clear boundaries, and have defining properties shared by all members (Collier and Mahon, 1993: 845) ‘The poor’ fulfills none of these conditions Considerable differences exist within the ranks of the poor, and considerable similarities are observed across the categorical dividing line ‘The poor’ is also an ephemeral category with highly porous boundaries Many who form part of the poor at a previous point in time are not included among them at a later time, and many others who were not poor at a previous time become part of the poor in the future Considering the poor as a fixed category is therefore like using a freeze-frame snapshot to depict a vast churning tide It captures the peaks and troughs of the moment but it is instantly reconfigured by movement The moving picture rather than a snapshot is both more truthful and more productive in terms of analysis, but it provides no support for any well-defined category of ‘the poor’ Table presents results from a geographically diverse selection of recent studies that examined poverty in dynamic context These studies consider different sample sizes, ranging from a small group of 347 households in a few communities of Egypt to over 6,000 households in one part of India (respectively, Haddad and Ahmed, 2003; and Krishna, 2004) Statistically representative samples for entire countries are included (Deininger and Okidi, 2003; Bhide and Mehta, 2004), alongside studies of particular regions or groups of communities (Sen, 2003; Krishna, et al., 2004) Different periods of time are considered, ranging from a short span of three years to long periods of 25 years Commonly, however, all studies illustrate the extent to which there is flux within the ranks of the poor Considering the magnitude of these movements both into and out of poverty has the effect of substantially changing our imagery of the poor Table about here The first row of Table shows that over the 13-year period, 1987-2000, 26 percent of a panel of 379 Bangladeshi households considered by Sen (2003) escaped from poverty (Column 5) Simultaneously, however, another 18 percent of households fell into poverty (Column 6) Movements out of and into poverty were both large Fifty seven percent of all households were poor at the start of this 13-year period (Column 7), and 49 percent were poor at the end of this period (Column 8) However, not all those who were poor at the beginning of this period were also poor at the end In fact, 46 percent of those who were poor at the beginning were not poor by the end of this period (Column 9) Conversely, 37 percent of those who were poor at the end had not been poor at the beginning of this period (Column 10) Because movements out of poverty were large (26 percent) and movements into poverty were also large (18 percent), the composition of ‘the poor’ changed considerably These results are hardly confined to Bangladesh All studies in the sample reported in Table present a similar account of flux among the poor Other studies not reported here also bear out a similar conclusion.3 New poverty is being created even as some old poverty is destroyed Large numbers of people are entering poverty even as large numbers escape from poverty Take, for example, the study by Krishna et al (2004) of households residing in 20 Western Kenyan villages Eighteen percent of these households escaped from poverty in the 25-year period examined by this study At the same time, another 19 percent of households fell into poverty A total of 55 percent of the poor at the beginning of this study period were not poor any longer by the end of this period (Column 9) Conversely, 56 percent – the majority – of those who were poor at the end were not part of ‘the poor’ at the beginning of this period (Column 10) Studies that consider a shorter time horizon also have similar results to show A study of 1,171 households in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, shows that over a five-year period, 1993-1998, 10 percent of households moved upward out of poverty (Carter and May, 2001) During the same time period, however, another 25 percent of households fell into poverty The ranks of the poor were considerably refreshed: 60 percent of all the poor at the end of this five-year period consisted of the newly impoverished Results from a nationally representative sample of 1,300 Ugandan households similarly show that of all households who were poor in the starting year (1992), 54 percent – the majority – were no longer in poverty by the ending year, 2000 (Deininger and Okidi, 2003) In Asia, Africa and Latin America, everywhere household and individual poverty has been examined over time, similar results have emerged: Movement reconstitutes the profile of people in poverty No matter how long or short is the time period studied – or what measure or threshold of poverty is employed4 – the results are the same: Escapes from poverty occur concurrently with descents into poverty A sluggish pace of net poverty reduction does not occur because there is no movement out of poverty It is a resultant of two large and frequently offsetting trends 10 Johnson, C A (1982) MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press) Keefer, P and Khemani, S (2003) Democracy, Public Expenditures, and the Poor World Bank Policy Research Paper 3164, World Bank, Washington, DC Kohli, A (2004) State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery (Princeton: Princeton University Press) Krishna, A (2004) Escaping Poverty and Becoming Poor: Who Gains, Who Loses, and Why? 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Working Paper, Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles Available at http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/ross/IsDemGood.pdf Rueda, D (2005) Insider-Outside Politics in Industrialized Democracies: The Challenge to Social Democratic Parties American Political Science Review, 99 (1), pp 61-74 Sandbrook, R., Edelman, M., Heller, P and Teichman, J (2007) Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Sartori, G (1970) Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics American Political Science Review, 64 (4), pp 1033-1053 37 Schattschneider, E.E (1960) The Semisovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston) Scott, J C (1976) The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press) Sen, A (1999) Democracy as Freedom (New York: Random House) Sen, B (2003) Drivers of Escape and Descent: Changing Household Fortunes in Rural Bangladesh World Development 31 (3), pp 513-534 Sherraden, M (2001) Assets and the Poor: Implications for Individual Accounts and Social Security Invited Testimony to the President’s Commission on Social Security, Washington DC, October 18 Available at http://www.csss.gov/meetings/Sherraden_Testimony.pdf Siegle, J., Weinstein, M and Halperin, M (2004) “Why Democracies Excel.” Foreign Affairs, 83 (5), pp 57-71 Sinha, A (2005) Divided Leviathan: The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) Srinivasan, T.N (2004) The Unsatisfactory State of Global Poverty Estimation Available at http://www.undppovertycentre.org/newsletters/infocus4sep04eng.pdf Strauss, J and Thomas, D (1998) Health, Nutrition and Economic Development Journal of Economic Literature, 36, pp (766-817) 38 Timmer, P C (1997) How Well the Poor Connect to the Growth Process? CAER Discussion Paper No 178, Harvard Institute for International Development Cambridge, MA UNDP (2000) Overcoming Human Poverty (New York: United Nations Development Programme) Van Schendel, W (1981) Peasant Mobility: The Odds of Life in Rural Bangladesh (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum) Varshney, A (2000) Why Have Poor Democracies not Eliminated Poverty? Asian Survey, 40, pp 718-736 Varshney, A (2005) Democracy and Poverty, in: Deepa Narayan (ed) Measuring Empowerment: Cross-Country Perspectives (Washington, DC: World Bank), pp 383-402 Verba, S., Nie, N and Kim, J (1978) Participation and Political Equality: A Seven-Nation Comparison (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press) Wade, R H (2004) Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality? World Development, 32 (4), pp 567-589 Whitehead, M., Dahlgren, G and Evans, T (2001) Equity and Health Sector Reforms: Can Low-Income Countries Escape the Medical Poverty Trap? The Lancet, September, pp 833-836 World Bank (2006) World Development Report, 2006: Equity and Development (Washington, DC: World Bank) 39 Xu, K., Evans, D.B., Kawabata, K., Zeramdini, R., Klavus, J and Murray, C.J.L (2003) Household Catastrophic Health Expenditure: A Multicountry Analysis The Lancet, 12 July, pp 111-117 Yadav, Y (1999) Electoral Politics in the Time of Change: India’s Third Electoral System, 1989-99 Economic and Political Weekly, 21 August, pp 2391-2399 40 Table 1: Poverty: A Rising-Falling Tide (1) Country/ Region (2) Study (3) Period Sen (2003) 1987Bangladesh 2000 Kenya Krishna et 1978(Western) al (2004) 2003 South Africa Uganda Carter and May (2001) Deininger and Okidi (2003) India Bhide and (Rural) Mehta (2004) Egypt Haddad and Ahmed (2003) India Krishna (Rajasthan) (2004) (4) Sample (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) Percent Percent Total Total Share of Share of “the age age Fell percenta percent “the poor” poor” (end of Escaped Into ge poor age (start of period) who Poverty Poverty at the poor at period) who were not start of the end were not poor at the the of the poor at the start period period end 26% 18% 57% 49% 46% 37% 18% 19% 33% 34% 55% 56% 19931998 19922000 379 rural households 1,706 households in 20 villages 1,171 households 1,300 households 10% 25% 27% 42% 37% 60% 29% 12% 54% 36% 54% 33% 19701982 3,139 households 23% 13% 48% 38% 48% 34% 19971999 347 households 6% 14% 25% 33% 24% 42% 19762001 6,374 households in 11% 8% 29% 26% 38% 31% 41 35 villages Peru Krishna et al (2006b) 19942004 3,817 households in 40 communities 19% 42 8% 38% 27% 50% 30% Table 2: Percentage who ranked a particular demand within their top three priorities vis-à-vis the state Subgrou p Former Poor Newly Poor Persistent Poor n= Percent of respondents in subgroup Housin Health g High Wage Service Suppor Schoo Irrigatio Labou s t l n Jobs r 184 25 28 22 159 34 24 669 9 46 Note 1: A chi-square test shows that the three subgroups are clearly independent in terms of these results Note 2: “Housing support” relates to programmatic support provided by the government in the form of a subsidy for constructing a new house or expanding/improving an existing shelter “Wage labour” and “Jobs” are different because while the former is provided to casual, unskilled, day labourers, the latter relates to permanent (or at least more assured) positions 43 Table 3: Political Participation Scores by Subgroups Political Participation Scores Category Former Poor n= Mean Standar Upper Lower Range d Quartil Quartil Deviatio e (Q3) e (Q1) n 184 26 27 33 0-100 Newly Poor Persistent Poor 159 35 28 44 0-100 669 22 23 29 0-100 Not Poor 290 34 30 47 0-100 44 Notes 45 These figures are obtained from the World Bank’s World Development Report, 2005, and are based on national poverty lines, which are more realistic than dollar-per-day comparisons (Wade, 2004) While not always exemplars of democracy in practice, all of these countries also have POLITY scores of or higher, indicating high general openness of political institutions (www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/polity/index.htm) For example, scholars have examined whether democracy improves the material well-being of ‘the poor’, if democracy empowers the poor; whether the poor participate less than others in politics; if economic growth is good for the poor; whether the poor have shorter time horizons; if the poor are less capable of organizing collectively; and so on See, as illustrations, Ross (2005); Siegle et al (2004); Diamond (2005); Rosenstone and Hansen (1993); Dollar and Kraay (2000); Varshney (2000); and Thorp, Stewart and Heyer (2005) See, for example, the collection of studies included within Baulch and Hoddinott (2000); and results from different regions reported in CPRC (2004) Different studies, including those reported in Table 1, adopt different definitions and utilise different measures of poverty While most studies use a consumption or income cutoff (such as dollar-a-day or some amount of income sufficient to provide basic food consumption, commonly calculated at the rate of 2,400 food calories a day), other studies (including the ones by Krishna) work with an asset-based understanding of poverty, employing a more fluid, contextually-relevant measure The relative merits of these different approaches have been discussed elsewhere (see, for example, Sherraden, 2001; and Carter and Barrett, 2006) In general, there is no single best approach: ‘Finding a poverty line that is representative and comparable across countries and regions is an impossible task’ (Srinivasan, 2004: 4) Different measures and definitions are variously useful for different purposes Nor is it not only because of crisis situations, such as financial meltdowns or earthquakes, floods and famines, that people get driven into poverty Although crises can have lasting effects, adding large numbers to the pool in poverty (Ravallion and Lokshin, 2005), descents into poverty are as often occasioned by more everyday events, as I will discuss in the next section A study in 40 communities of Peru showed that more than half of those who fell into poverty in a previous period remained poor ten years later (Krishna, et al., 2006b) In Rajasthan, India, land records were tracked back over 25 years for a group of 50 households that fell into poverty during this period Two-thirds of these households have lost more than 50 percent of the land that they previously owned, and the remaining one-third have lost their entire landholding They have remained persistently in poverty Respectively, Asfaw and von Braun (2004); Barrett, et al (2001); Deolalikar (2002); Fabricant, et al (1999); Farmer (1999); Krishna (2004); Krishna, et al (2005, 2006a, 2006b); and Strauss and Thomas (1998) For example, social and customary expenses – on marriages and death feasts – are associated with large numbers of descents, as seen in different studies undertaken in India, Kenya, Peru and Uganda Elabourate death feasts, involving the slaughter of many heads of cattle, are practiced in Kenya and Madagascar, while expensive wedding ceremonies are widespread, even among poorer folk, in India, Uganda and parts of Peru Crop disease and land exhaustion were found important in Uganda, more particularly, the Western Region, but not so much in its Central Region or in neighboring parts of Kenya In addition to actually experiencing mobility, even expectations or ‘prospects’ of mobility can significantly shape people’s interests vis-à-vis politics (Benabou and Ok, 2001) 10 See, for example, Ravallion and Datt (1996); Timmer (1997); Barrett, et al (2001); Aliber (2003); Sen (2003); and Krishna, et al (2004, 2005, 2006a) 11 I thank Aditi Krishna for suggesting this literary reference 12 For more details on the Stages of Progress methodology see www.pubpol.duke/krishna 13 Households’ poverty status corresponded closely with asset ownership and type of housing Some people, less than percent in all, had moved in and out of poverty more than once during this period However, the vast majority of movements were in only one direction, up or down 14 Individuals to interview were selected through random sampling on the most recently compiled voters list in each village Regular revisions and frequent competitive elections have helped make these lists complete in their coverage, and I did not meet any adult villager whose name is not on the voters list Very few selected villagers, 15 in all, refused to be interviewed 15 Between 50 and 52 percent of respondents are male in each of these subgroups, average age varies between 40 and 43 years, and between 88 and 92 percent of respondents are Hindu by religion Average years of school education vary from 1.64 (Persistent Poor) to 2.24 (Former Poor) Scheduled Castes (former untouchables) and Scheduled Tribes (indigenous people) form a somewhat higher proportion of the Persistent Poor subgroup (49 percent) compared to the Former Poor (45 percent) and Newly Poor subgroups (43 percent) A Chi-square test revealed that the three subgroups are not significantly distinguishable on account of any of these factors 16 The other five demands, not shown in Table 2, are drinking water, road, electricity, crèches and telephone service Numerically, many fewer villagers of any subgroup ranked any of these demands among their top three priorities 17 Strictly speaking, the Former Poor not form part of the poor at the current time, although they did in the past They are examined here as a surrogate for the subgroup that is on the cusp of escaping from poverty 18 It bears noting, however, that the nature of demands did not differ significantly when respondents were categorized in terms of caste or religious groupings instead of the subgroups considered in Table 19 Participation scores were measured considering individuals’ responses to seven separate survey questions related to campaigning, canvassing, contacting and protesting Individuals’ responses to these seven separate questions were closely correlated with one another, and factor analysis showed that responses to all seven questions loaded highly on a single common factor Because they all point commonly in the same direction, these responses were combined to constitute a 100-point Index of Political Participation 20 Results from these studies have become available only within the past five to eight years, thus this body of knowledge is comparatively (but not entirely) new Some earlier studies that looked at poverty in dynamic context include Attwood (1979); Van Schendel (1981); and Jodha (1988) An early statement that these movements might have important implications for politics and policy was made by Nelson (1979: 398): ‘The boundaries between poor and not so poor…are blurred; many individuals and households move back and forth across these boundaries’ 21 Rueda (2005) provides a similarly disaggregated analysis of labour in OECD countries, which underscores the political differences that exist between different subgroups of labour Disaggregating rather than lumping together these different subgroups of labour is similarly more productive for political analysis 22 I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this important research need ... Apart from the fourth subgroup, Not Poor, members of the other three subgroups could be included – at one time or another – within an omnibus category of ? ?the poor’ However, squashing these subgroups. .. among their top three demands from the state The subgroup of Persistent Poor has one set of demands from the state The subgroup of Newly Poor has another and different sets of demands Members of the. .. in the past, and these are the key demands at the present time of others escaping from poverty In contrast, less than 10 percent of either the Persistent Poor or the Newly Poor ranked any of these