Financial Exclusion and the Poverty Trap

Financial Exclusion and the Poverty Trap PDF Author: Pamela Lenton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136626395
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This book addresses one of the main causes of poverty, financial exclusion – the inability to access finance from the high-street banks. People on low or irregular incomes typically have to resort to loan sharks, ‘doorstep lenders’ and other informal credit sources, a predicament which makes escape from the poverty trap doubly difficult. This book will be vital reading for those concerned with social policy, microfinance and anti-poverty policies in industrialised countries and around the world.

Financial Exclusion and the Poverty Trap

Financial Exclusion and the Poverty Trap PDF Author: Pamela Lenton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136626395
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book addresses one of the main causes of poverty, financial exclusion – the inability to access finance from the high-street banks. People on low or irregular incomes typically have to resort to loan sharks, ‘doorstep lenders’ and other informal credit sources, a predicament which makes escape from the poverty trap doubly difficult. This book will be vital reading for those concerned with social policy, microfinance and anti-poverty policies in industrialised countries and around the world.

Poverty Traps and Microfinance

Poverty Traps and Microfinance PDF Author: Roberto Moro Visconti
Publisher: Ibidem Press
ISBN: 9783838202525
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
Microfinance is a successful financial innovation to help the poor to sort out credit exclusion, which is one of the poverty traps that prevent billions of underserved, especially women, from escaping atavistic misery. Interconnected poverty traps range from misuse of natural resources (from blood diamonds to the oil curse) to conflict traps, demographic booming, being landlocked with bad neighbors or exposed to unfreedom. Other traps concern cultural backwardness, unsafe drinking and sanitation, food shortage up to starvation, illnesses or climatic shocks, causing mass migrations and unfair globalization. Microfinance, a grass-roots movement to provide credit to the neediest, can greatly help to dismantle at least some of these poverty traps, and thousands of mostly small institutions are competing in a market where demand from the poorest for financial services is potentially unlimited - while supply is not.While the success of microfinance, often ignited by foreign aid funding, has gone beyond any expectation, enormous problems are still on the ground. The road towards what is now considered microfinance's optimal goal - maximization of outreach to the poorest, combined with financial self-sustainability - is still full of obstacles. Prof. Moro Visconti's book, covering a vacuum in the existing literature, considers state-of-the-art microfinance within a broader framework of sustainable and long-term socio-economic development. With an innovative and reader friendly approach, Moro Visconti introduces the reader to the multidimensional causes of poverty and possible remedies. A cultural approach to the poverty traps, mixing its anthropological causes with possible bottom-up remedies, including microfinance, emerges as a stunning innovation. The book aims at a broad readership from practitioners to students and academics, as well as readers simply interested in solutions to the world-wide poverty problems.

Poverty Traps

Poverty Traps PDF Author: Samuel Bowles
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691170932
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Much popular belief--and public policy--rests on the idea that those born into poverty have it in their power to escape. But the persistence of poverty and ever-growing economic inequality around the world have led many economists to seriously question the model of individual economic self-determination when it comes to the poor. In Poverty Traps, Samuel Bowles, Steven Durlauf, Karla Hoff, and the book's other contributors argue that there are many conditions that may trap individuals, groups, and whole economies in intractable poverty. For the first time the editors have brought together the perspectives of economics, economic history, and sociology to assess what we know--and don't know--about such traps. Among the sources of the poverty of nations, the authors assign a primary role to social and political institutions, ranging from corruption to seemingly benign social customs such as kin systems. Many of the institutions that keep nations poor have deep roots in colonial history and persist long after their initial causes are gone. Neighborhood effects--influences such as networks, role models, and aspirations--can create hard-to-escape pockets of poverty even in rich countries. Similar individuals in dissimilar socioeconomic environments develop different preferences and beliefs that can transmit poverty or affluence from generation to generation. The book presents evidence of harmful neighborhood effects and discusses policies to overcome them, with attention to the uncertainty that exists in evaluating such policies.

The Economics of Poverty Traps

The Economics of Poverty Traps PDF Author: Christopher B. Barrett
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022657430X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
What circumstances or behaviors turn poverty into a cycle that perpetuates across generations? The answer to this question carries especially important implications for the design and evaluation of policies and projects intended to reduce poverty. Yet a major challenge analysts and policymakers face in understanding poverty traps is the sheer number of mechanisms—not just financial, but also environmental, physical, and psychological—that may contribute to the persistence of poverty all over the world. The research in this volume explores the hypothesis that poverty is self-reinforcing because the equilibrium behaviors of the poor perpetuate low standards of living. Contributions explore the dynamic, complex processes by which households accumulate assets and increase their productivity and earnings potential, as well as the conditions under which some individuals, groups, and economies struggle to escape poverty. Investigating the full range of phenomena that combine to generate poverty traps—gleaned from behavioral, health, and resource economics as well as the sociology, psychology, and environmental literatures—chapters in this volume also present new evidence that highlights both the insights and the limits of a poverty trap lens. The framework introduced in this volume provides a robust platform for studying well-being dynamics in developing economies.

Poverty Traps

Poverty Traps PDF Author: Samuel Bowles
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400841291
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Much popular belief--and public policy--rests on the idea that those born into poverty have it in their power to escape. But the persistence of poverty and ever-growing economic inequality around the world have led many economists to seriously question the model of individual economic self-determination when it comes to the poor. In Poverty Traps, Samuel Bowles, Steven Durlauf, Karla Hoff, and the book's other contributors argue that there are many conditions that may trap individuals, groups, and whole economies in intractable poverty. For the first time the editors have brought together the perspectives of economics, economic history, and sociology to assess what we know--and don't know--about such traps. Among the sources of the poverty of nations, the authors assign a primary role to social and political institutions, ranging from corruption to seemingly benign social customs such as kin systems. Many of the institutions that keep nations poor have deep roots in colonial history and persist long after their initial causes are gone. Neighborhood effects--influences such as networks, role models, and aspirations--can create hard-to-escape pockets of poverty even in rich countries. Similar individuals in dissimilar socioeconomic environments develop different preferences and beliefs that can transmit poverty or affluence from generation to generation. The book presents evidence of harmful neighborhood effects and discusses policies to overcome them, with attention to the uncertainty that exists in evaluating such policies.

Inequality in Financial Inclusion and Income Inequality

Inequality in Financial Inclusion and Income Inequality PDF Author: Goksu Aslan
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1484328728
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Book Description
We investigate the link between gender inequality in financial inclusion and income inequality, with three contributions to the recent literature. First, using a micro-dataset covering 146,000 individuals in over 140 countries, we construct novel, synthetic indices of the intensity of financial inclusion at the individual and country level. Second, we derive the distribution of individual financial access “scores” across countries to document a “Kuznets”-curve in financial inclusion. Third, cross-country regressions confirm that our measure of inequality in financial access is significantly related to income inequality, above and beyond other factors previously highlighted in the literature.

The End of Poverty

The End of Poverty PDF Author: Jeffrey D. Sachs
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101643285
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
"Book and man are brilliant, passionate, optimistic and impatient . . . Outstanding." —The Economist The landmark exploration of economic prosperity and how the world can escape from extreme poverty for the world's poorest citizens, from one of the world's most renowned economists Hailed by Time as one of the world's hundred most influential people, Jeffrey D. Sachs is renowned for his work around the globe advising economies in crisis. Now a classic of its genre, The End of Poverty distills more than thirty years of experience to offer a uniquely informed vision of the steps that can transform impoverished countries into prosperous ones. Marrying vivid storytelling with rigorous analysis, Sachs lays out a clear conceptual map of the world economy. Explaining his own work in Bolivia, Russia, India, China, and Africa, he offers an integrated set of solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that challenge the world's poorest countries. Ten years after its initial publication, The End of Poverty remains an indispensible and influential work. In this 10th anniversary edition, Sachs presents an extensive new foreword assessing the progress of the past decade, the work that remains to be done, and how each of us can help. He also looks ahead across the next fifteen years to 2030, the United Nations' target date for ending extreme poverty, offering new insights and recommendations.

The Financial Diaries

The Financial Diaries PDF Author: Jonathan Morduch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691172986
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Drawing on the groundbreaking U.S. Financial Diaries project (http://www.usfinancialdiaries.org/), which follows the lives of 235 low- and middle-income families as they navigate through a year, the authors challenge popular assumptions about how Americans earn, spend, borrow, and save-- and they identify the true causes of distress and inequality for many working Americans.

From Poverty to Power

From Poverty to Power PDF Author: Duncan Green
Publisher: Oxfam
ISBN: 0855985933
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
Offers a look at the causes and effects of poverty and inequality, as well as the possible solutions. This title features research, human stories, statistics, and compelling arguments. It discusses about the world we live in and how we can make it a better place.

Financial Inclusion: What Have We Learned So Far? What Do We Have to Learn?

Financial Inclusion: What Have We Learned So Far? What Do We Have to Learn? PDF Author: Adolfo Barajas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781513553009
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 51

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Book Description
The past two decades have seen a rapid increase in interest in financial inclusion, both from policymakers and researchers. This paper surveys the main findings from the literature, documenting the trends over time and gaps that have arisen across regions, income levels, and gender, among others. It points out that structural, as well as policy-related, factors, such as encouraging banking competition or channeling government payments through bank accounts, play an important role, and describes the potential macro and microeconomic benefits that can be derived from greater financial inclusion. It argues that policy should aim to identify and reduce frictions holding back financial inclusion, rather than targeting specific levels of inclusion. Finally, it suggests areas for future research.