science

Moving Out of Poverty

Moving Out of Poverty is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Moving Out of Poverty rather than just read about it. In short: Moving Out of Poverty is a project sponsored by the World Bank, as well as a series of four books describing the results of the project, that aim to understand how people rise up the ladder from poverty to prosperity, and how they may fall back into poverty. comparative research across more than 500 communities in 15 countries on how and why poor people move out of poverty. The series was launched in 2007 under the…

Key takeaways

Moving Out of Poverty belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Moving Out of Poverty to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Moving Out of Poverty from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Moving Out of Poverty is a project sponsored by the World Bank, as well as a series of four books describing the results of the project, that aim to understand how people rise up the ladder from poverty to prosperity, and how they may fall back into poverty. comparative research across more than 500 communities in 15 countries on how and why poor people move out of poverty. The series was launched in 2007 under the editorial direction of Deepa Narayan. Other authors of books in the series include Patti Petesch, Lant Pritchett, and Soumya Kapoor. All the books are freely available online as PDFs in the Open Knowledge Repository.

Publications

Books The four books in the series are:

Volume 1. Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Mobility by Deepa Narayan and Patti Petesch, 2007. Volume 2. Success from the Bottom Up by Deepa Narayan, Lant Pritchett, and Soumya Kapoor, 2009. This was the most important book of the series. Volume 3. The Promise of Empowerment and Democracy in India by Deepa Narayan, 2009. Volume 4. Rising from the Ashes of Conflict by Deepa Narayan and Patti Petesch, 2010.

Technical notes The World Bank has published detailed technical notes for the project to supplement the qualitative descriptions found in the books.

Overviews The World Bank has published a brief overview.

Key findings According to reviewer Duncan Green, the following were the main findings of the study:

Poor people put the poverty line at a level closer to the $2/day threshold for income at purchasing power parity than to the $1/day threshold used in most academic analyses of extreme poverty. The Oscar Lewis view of a culture of poverty is falsified by the study, which shows poor people working hard, optimistic, eager for a better future, and aware of the dangers of bad habits such as drinking and drugs. Poverty is a condition/experience, not a permanent characteristic. Inner strength and confidence that one can move out of poverty is often a first step to a successful transition out of poverty. Poor people face much fewer economic choices than rich people, and this is a major barrier to their getting out of poverty. Microcredit alone does not help most people move out of poverty. However, it can help when combined with good local infrastructure. More responsive local governments lead to better local health and sanitation. Collective action can help poor people cope but does not get them out of poverty because, even pooled together, they do not have much wealth.

Reception Deepa Narayan wrote an op-ed in The New York Times building on the findings in the study reported in the books. Duncan Green reviewed the book series on his blog for Oxfam, calling it an outstanding mega-study. Former United States President Bill Clinton called the series “an important resource for everyone who’s working to alleviate poverty.”

See also Voices of the Poor, a 1990s study by the World Bank about the statics of poverty. Moving Out of Poverty distinguished itself from Voices of the Poor in that it focused on the dynamics of moving out of (and falling back into) poverty, and it was a longitudinal study rather than a snapshot in time. Disease Control Priorities Project Deepa Narayan, Editor, Moving Out of Poverty

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Moving Out of Poverty

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Moving Out of Poverty claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Moving Out of Poverty before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Moving Out of Poverty ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Moving Out of Poverty

In research: Moving Out of Poverty appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Moving Out of Poverty in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Moving Out of Poverty is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Books about poverty, Works about the World Bank, World Bank, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Moving Out of Poverty outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Moving Out of Poverty in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Moving Out of Poverty means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Moving Out of Poverty out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Moving Out of Poverty in simple terms?

Why does Moving Out of Poverty matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Moving Out of Poverty?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Moving Out of Poverty.