Six Key Understandings about the Poor

Six taken-for-granted and sometimes unnoticed aspects of poverty must be appreciated if we are to do a better job of empowering the poor and helping them succeed.

1. The Poor Are a Heterogeneous Group
In any poverty stricken country, the poor are the plurality and often the majority population. But not every one of them is poor in the same way. Some are extremely and chronically poor. Others are a bit above the extreme poor who are known as moderate poor. And still others are borderline poor while another segment is only relatively poor in relation to peer groups.

This means that if we are to effectively help the poor, we need to start by recognizing differences between each group and within each group. The poor are made up of several differentially responsive segments. This means that we need to identify the major poverty segments and apply the appropriate procedures to help the poor in each segment escape from and stay out of poverty.

2. Different Poverty Segments Require Different Poverty-Alleviating Assistance
A quick but valid and cost-effective means of finding out what different poverty segments require for poverty alleviating assistance is market research. Poverty market research at the local level, both qualitative and quantitative, is critical to gaining insight into the right poverty-alleviating assistance to each segment.

3. The Poor Need the Help of All Institutions
Helping the poor escape from poverty is not solely a government responsibility. Effective and sustained poverty alleviation depends on action by a three-way partnership between government, civil organizations, and businesses.

Synergy comes when the three work well together. In any sector or segment, there is also synergy of results when the strength of one compensates for the weakness of the other or the two others.

Business, perhaps reluctant to invest in income poor markets, has begun to see the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Corporations have usually made philanthropic contributions but are now seeing the value of untapped and new markets. A single cell phone in a Sub-Saharan region can create a business opportunity for a small reseller of calls by the minute. In several African countries cell phone sales are growing 150% a year, far in excess of saturated Western markets. Governments are eliminating import tariffs and local micro-lenders are financing them through nonprofit agencies.

4. The Poor Differ in their Perceptions of the Costs of Changing their Behavior
In attempting to assist the poor in leaving their poverty status, it is necessary to gain insight into how the poor perceive the costs of changing their behavior and situation. For different poverty segments, there are differing costs for the poor in adopting poverty escaping and staying out of poverty behaviors. The needed insight is in understanding what for the poor in different segments can tip the balance in favor of poverty-escaping behavior.

5. The Poor Get In and Out and Back In Again into Poverty
The poverty situation of the poor is not static but dynamic. By the right combination of outside help and personal effort, a poor person in the extreme poverty segment may successfully migrate into the less extreme condition of the overall poor segment. But after some months or a year or two and because of circumstances, the poverty escapee falls back in the originating extreme poor segment. Something similar recurs in many of the other poverty segments. To offer the right bundle of solutions, poverty-escaping programs must understand the uncontrollable and controllable forces that cause people to transition back into poverty.

6. The True Face of Poverty Is a Localized Face
The poor are found at the local level. Engaging them can only happen where they are in the locality where they live and work. It follows that the development and implementation of poverty solutions matters most at the local level. At the local level, we meet the poor face to face. Anti-poverty workers can live with the poor, listen to their stories (both sad ones and happy), eat with them and make friends with them. This is an important step in poverty alleviation. Because the aid worker is providing an intangible service it is essential that there be mutual understanding and trust. In regions with high rates of illiteracy the stories are often the only research methodology that works. Once this happens and gets repeated, making poverty history looks like a doable task.

At the national and macro level, the poor is a mass. There are just too many of them and the problem looks immense. At the local level, the poor even if they are many, are still countable. Poverty mapping has located them and counted them, and now, is monitoring them as they move in and out of poverty. It is at the local level that ending poverty becomes a real possibility.