Persistent Poverty and
Upward Mobility
Institute for the Social Sciences
Theme Project Capstone Lecture
Chris Barrett
April 6, 2011
The empirical conundrum
Persistent poverty over the past generation:
• no fall in poverty rates in OECD countries
• number of poor in World/ Latin America/ Africa has grown
• Increasing belief and evidence that there exist “poverty traps”
The empirical conundrum
But also unprecedented upward mobility:
• 750 mn fewer East Asians live on <$1/day
• sharp fall in poverty rate in South Asia
• half the world has become “middle class”, with all regions’
populations in the $2-13/day range growing
• Non-money metric indicators (life expectancy, infant
mortality, literacy, etc.) nearly universally better
… Globalization and “great escape” from mass poverty
How to reconcile these seemingly divergent facts?
Core research questions
What explains the divergent experiences of different
sub-populations – differentiated by education, family
status, geography, health, sociopolitical institutions,
etc. – and the co-existence of chronic poverty and
prosperity?
Why do some people remain poor for long periods of
time? And what enables others to escape poverty?
What mechanisms drive some people into persistent
poverty and how do others avoid it?
Core research questions
What linkages exist across spatial and temporal
scales that reinforce persistent poverty?
Why different patterns for different indicators of
well-being? What does this imply for policy?
What interventions intended to promote upward
mobility and the escape from persistent poverty
prove effective, for whom, and why (or why not)?
Which seemingly-effective interventions are
politically, culturally and economically feasible,
where and why?
Methodological challenges
These questions pose deep methodological
challenges that often preoccupied our team:
1) Human agency – by the poor, policymakers, project
implementers, etc. – complicates causal inference using
observational data.
2) There are strong theoretical reasons to anticipate
essential heterogeneity among distinct subpopulations,
limiting the value of experimental studies.
3) Strong desire to establish generalizable results raises
questions about the external validity of findings: is
“radical skepticism” a viable approach if the purpose of
our research is to inform action to reduce poverty?
Methodological challenges
Methodological challenges (continued):
4) Interest in intertemporal, population-level phenomena
limits usefulness of short duration studies from nonrepresentative samples.
5) High quality longitudinal data to study poverty dynamics
are scarce and necessarily represent different
populations over time.
6) Concepts and measurement of poverty and mobility are
contested; reconciling these can be difficult at best.
Theme project team
The 2008-11 Theme Project Team
Theme project team
Chris Anderson, Government: Examining political
causes and consequence of income redistribution, as well
as the connection between political institutions and
public policies and people’s employment choices, both in
OECD countries.
Susan Christopherson, City and Regional
Planning: Studying intra-regional labor market
inequality and regional resilience in urban industrial
areas of the eastern US.
Nic van de Walle, Government: Exploring the
relationship between political clientelism and democracy
in Africa and beyond, emphasizing the impact of
democratization on service provision and on
redistributive clientelism.
Theme project team
Matt Freedman, Labor Economics: Investigating
the role of spatial mismatch and job accessibility in
driving local labor market dynamics and contributing to
poverty concentration and persistence in the US.
Jordan Matsudaira, Policy Analysis and Mgmt:
Studying the impact of redistributive government interventions on employers and employees, as well as why,
despite steeply increasing returns to education in recent
decades, high school graduation rates have stagnated in US.
David Sahn, Nutritional Sciences/Economics:
Estimating dynamic models of human capital formation to
better understand how to enhance health and cognitive
abilities during the life course and across generations,
especially among the ex ante poor in Africa.
Theme project team
Christine Olson, Nutritional Sciences: Exploring the
relationship between being born into a low income household and body weight in adolescence and the dynamics of
food insecurity and hunger in the US.
Dan Lichter, Policy Analysis & Mgmt/Sociology:
Investigating how unstable family patterns reflect and
reinforce persistent poverty and economic inequality, and
limit upward social mobility, as well as reproduce across
generations.
Steve Morgan, Sociology: Exploring the effects of
various financial aid policies on college entry in the US
and the determinants of low educational attainment in
sub-Saharan Africa.
What did we do?
Helped establish an intellectual community
Huge interest: 204 total affiliates, far more than any other
ISS theme project (2nd has 140). More in every category of
member (undergrad, grad students, alumni, community, staff,
post-docs) except faculty.
Stimulate cross-campus, cross-disciplinary dialogues
and collaborations around the research questions –
empirical, methodological and theoretical – that motivated this
theme project.
Unprecedented bridging of the domestic and international
poverty research communities on campus.
What did we do?
Hosted a wide range of exciting events
(plus several co-sponsored events)
Extremely popular weekly seminar series
30 presentations over the course of 2009-10. Emphasized
presentations by team members and by younger rising stars
such as: Anna Aizer (Brown), Chris Blattman (Yale), Seema
Jayachandran (Stanford), Karen Jusko (Stanford), David
McKenzie (World Bank), Pat Sharkey (NYU), etc.
What did we do?
2 University Lectures
Sep. 17, 2009: Elinor Ostrom (Indiana)
"Collective Action and the Commons:
What Have We Learned? "
1
Mar. 17, 2010: William Julius Wilson
(Harvard)
"More Than Just Race: Being Black
and Poor in the Inner City"
What did we do?
Conferences/workshops
Sep. 9: The Future of US Poverty Policy and Research
Featured presentations by Ron Haskins
(Brookings),Tim Smeeding (Wisconsin)
and Rich Burkhauser (Cornell)
Oct. 13: Current Frontiers in the Study of Economic
Mobility in Developing Countries
Featuring presentations by Michael Carter
(UC-Davis), Jean-Yves Duclos (Laval),
Paul Glewwe (Minnesota) and
Martin Ravallion (World Bank)
What did we do?
Conferences/workshops (continued)
Nov. 16-17: Institutions, Behavior and the Escape from
Persistent Poverty
15 selected papers from a range of disciplines, countries,
institutions, using a range of data and methods.
Plus keynote talks by Phil Keefer (World Bank), Anirudh Krishna
(Duke) and Ruth Meinzen-Dick (IFPRI)
What did we do?
Conferences/workshops
Feb 11: Moving Out of Poverty: The Economic and
Environmental Impacts of Programs Aimed at
Mitigating Spatial Mismatch
Featuring presentations by Evelyn Blumenberg (UCLA), Harry
Holzer (Georgetown), Julia Lane (NSF), Steven Raphael (UCBerkeley), Brian Taylor (UCLA)
What did we do?
Conferences/workshops
May 12-13, 2010: Human Capital Interventions:
Targeting Poor Children Early in Life
Featuring presentations by Zulfiqar Bhutta (Aga Khan Univ.),
Maureen Black (Maryland), John Eckenrode (Cornell),
Rey Martorell (Emory), David Sahn (Cornell), Gretel Pelto and
Jean-Pierre Habicht (Cornell) and Jim Riccio (MDRC)
What did we do?
Teaching
Most popular ISS theme project to date as reflected in
student affiliates of the project
Introduced a very popular, well-reviewed team-taught
course, cross-listed among AEM, CRP and Sociology:
Comparative Perspectives in Poverty Reduction Policy
18 different courses taught 25 times by team members.
Made 10 student research grants (1 undergrad, 9 grad) –
Anthropology, Applied Econ & Mgmt, Dev’t Sociology,
Economics, Government, Sociology – and held a student
research poster symposium April 27, 2010.
What did we do?
Outreach
At least 13 different public outreach presentations to
non-academic audiences, locally (e.g., Catholic Charities of
Tompkins and Tioga) and nationally (e.g., Congress).
Most popular ISS theme project to date in engaging
affiliates outside of Cornell: community organizations locally,
nationally and internationally. (Indeed, had to create a new
Alumni & Retirees category for affiliates for our project!)
What did we do?
Research productivity
The ten core team members have been exceptionally
productive. Over ~ 2.5 years, these 10 scholars have:
Attracted more than $5.7 million in external grants in at
least 21 different awards, from Heinz Foundation, Hewlett
Foundation, NSF, Park Foundation, USAID, USDA, etc.
At least 92 different articles, books or book chapters
published, appearing in a wide range of leading journals and
publishers.
Laid the groundwork for major future collaborative grant
proposals and research projects.
Team accomplishments
The core purposes and accomplishments of the theme
project revolve around:
Enhancing Cornell’s Visibility
- expose leading lights (both established and rising
stars) to Cornell and Cornell to leading lights
- help define and project a Cornell brand of deeply
empirical, methodologically heterodox poverty
and inequality research, building on longstanding
excellence and emergent lines of inquiry.
- Cornell’s niche: bridging theory and application.
Team accomplishments
Learning
- a cohort of students exposed to a broad group of
scholars from Cornell and elsewhere.
- extraordinary opportunity for faculty learning,
especially across audiences and literatures:
- domestic-international
- disciplines
- spatial scales of analysis
- help project Cornell findings to broader audiences
Lessons Learned
So what are the big lessons learned from this project?
Huge student, staff and faculty interest
- Poverty and inequality studies deeply popular today.
- Deeply embedded in Cornell’s history, dating to 1865 original
aim to facilitate the transformation of a fundamentally agrarian
society emerging from sociopolitical upheaval and grappling
with rapid technological, institutional and economic change.
- Cornell has extraordinary depth, breadth and potential in this
area of scholarship, instruction and outreach.
- Abundance of riches within disciplines, but limited capacity
for students to bridge them.
Lessons Learned
Sustaining interdisciplinary work is tough
- Structural incentives of Departments, Schools and Colleges
are largely centrifugal, especially given relatively small size of
Cornell social sciences.
- Limited coordination mechanisms across units. ISS plays a
valuable role, but necessarily of short duration for thematic
efforts such as this one.
- Difficult to get faculty out of routines in order to devote
substantial time to new collaborations in a single residence
year. Reflects both inertia effects and the independent nature
of much contemporary social science research.
Lessons Learned
Hard to bridge the high-low income country divide
- Language and thematic foci differ (e.g., educational
issues, food security issues)
- Amount, type and quality of data varies enormously
- Limited transferability of specific policy knowledge.
Perspectives and perhaps models may be portable, but it
takes real work. Few intellectual arbitrage opportunities.
- Context matters enormously, so generalizations are
difficult but essential (Opportunity NYC – Oportunidades).
Lessons Learned
Outreach and teaching are essential
- Reducing persistent poverty and enhancing upward
mobility ultimately turn on political and institutional
constraints – at local, national and global levels – to
addressing these challenges.
- Narrowly-focused academic policy research is an
input, but must ultimately help inform more broadbased action that depends heavily on research
informing instruction on campus and off.
For more info
Thank you –especially to Ken, Anneliese and Judi –
for your interest and support these past three years!
For more information visit the project web site:
http://www.socialsciences.cornell.edu/0811/