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18 Aug 08
Dripa BThe solutions to these 'poverty traps' include nets of social protection, particularly through cash transfers to households; public services for the hard to reach poor; anti-discrimination and gender empowerment measures; building individual and collective assets, and strategic urbanization and migration policies.
Perhaps the report's most interesting proposal is to expand welfare systems to guarantee the chronically poor a basic income, both as their right and as a way out of poverty. The experiences of Brazil, Chile, India and South Africa show that social transfers in cash or in kind reduce vulnerability, allow the poor to engage in more productive economic activities, and are generally judiciously spent.
According to the researchers, social protection is affordable and can be scaled up even in relatively poor countries, as Bangladesh and Uganda have shown.-
some governments that have effectively responded to poverty -- Ethiopia, Uganda and Vietnam -- are not wholly democratic
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some governments that have effectively responded to poverty -- Ethiopia, Uganda and Vietnam -- are not wholly democratic. Democracy alone does not guarantee pro-poor policies, says the report. Some 'elite projects' (a polite term for mildly authoritarian regimes) have forged a social compact between citizens and the state that placed chronic poverty seriously on the policy agenda. Policy-makers must get "thinking beyond the contemporary mantra of democracy, elections and decentralization".
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is sometimes "a tension at the international level between promoting poverty reduction ... and promoting competitive multi-party democracy."
"In many cases democracies produce governments which are very effective in reducing poverty -- witness recent experience in Brazil, for example," he added.
"There are less democratic regimes which have been and are very effective in reducing poverty, and the international community needs to recognise that part of this effectiveness may be due to the nature of the regime, where a strong connection between regime and citizens has been forged through a popular movement, which generates a 'social compact' between elite and the poor as part of a national development 'project'.
"China and Vietnam would also be examples, and there are others during the last 60 years. The implication for the international community would be to exercise caution in attaching political conditionalities to aid or other international negotiations. Of course this does not mean that in extreme cases (eg Zimbabwe) the international community should not take a strong political position." -
Of the 32 countries identified as chronically deprived, 22 are considered fragile states, racked by conflict, war and greedy elites. A fragile state is one that does not reduce risk to its citizens through providing law and order, services and infrastructure.
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In mineral-rich but 'poor-unfriendly' states, donors should support advocacy efforts to empower citizens and provide technical assistance for social protection, mainly on health and education, nudging such states to become institutions that interact meaningfully with poor people.
In resource-poor countries with 'poor-friendly' governments, donors should step up budget support, reduce aid volatility, and shoulder much of the cost of providing basic services and social protection.
This, until economic growth raises the revenue base. Eventually, functional states should set up effective systems of public finances. People who should pay taxes will do so, instead of evading them, and the poor will benefit.
Economic growth eases poverty, but a rising tide does not lift all boats, warns the report. Growth alone does not automatically benefit the chronically poor. Living in remote areas, suffering from food shortages and poor health, exploited in work, not fully participant in social and economic life, they are locked out of the national growth process.
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