Abstract

This collection offers a timely reassessment of viable ways of addressing poverty across the globe today. The profile of global poverty has changed dramatically over the past decade, and around three-quarters of the poor now live in middle income countries, making inequality a major issue. This requires us to fundamentally rethink anti-poverty strategies and policies, as many aspects of the established framework for poverty reduction are no longer effective. Featuring contributions from Latin America, Africa and Asia, this much-needed collection answers some of the key questions arising as development policy confronts the challenges of poverty and inequality on the global, national and local scale in both urban and rural contexts.

Providing poverty researchers and practitioners with valuable new tools to address new forms of poverty in the right way, Poverty and Inequality in Middle Income Countries shows how a radical switch from aid to redistribution-based social policies is needed to combat new forms of global poverty.

‘This timely and important collection of essays breaths fresh air into the debate about what it means to be poor in today's world, and what can be done to end poverty.’
Tony Addison, chief economist, United Nations University - World Institute for Development Economics Research

‘The excellent group of papers in this volume throw much needed light upon the politics of poverty reduction in middle-income countries. They deserve a wide readership.’
Armando Barrientos, University of Manchester

'A welcome addition to the literature on poverty. In focusing on domestic actors and politics, the essays in this volume help to shed light on the social drivers of poverty and available instruments for effective poverty reduction. A must read for scholars, activists, and policymakers interested in the problem of poverty and poverty reduction.'
Jimi Adesina, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development

‘This volume is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the causes of, and solutions to, poverty and inequality in the global South. Comparative and interdisciplinary in approach - it provides a comprehensive and critical analysis and is a timely addition to the literature on these issues.’
Rebecca Surender, University of Oxford

Einar Braathen is research professor in international studies at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR). A political scientist, he has specialized in governance and policy analysis in the global South, particularly the linkages between multilevel governance (central–local relations, municipality–community relations) and policy delivery (poverty reduction, service delivery, climate change adaptation). For the last ten years he has mainly worked on two BRICS countries, South Africa and Brazil. He co-edited and co-authored The Politics of Slums in the Global South (2016).

Julian May is director of the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security at the University of the Western Cape. Professor May works on poverty reduction, including land reform, social grants, information technology and urban agriculture in southern and East Africa. He formerly held the South African Research Chair in Applied Poverty Impact Assessment.

Marianne S. Ulriksen is senior research fellow at the Centre for Social Development in Africa (CSDA), University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Marianne’s research areas include comparative politics, the political economy of welfare policy development, social protection, social justice, poverty and inequality, mineral wealth and resource mobilization, and state–citizens relations. Her publications primarily focus on southern and eastern Africa, where she has lived and worked since 2000.

Gemma Wright is research director of the Southern African Social Policy Research Institute, and Southern African Social Policy Research Insights. She is professor extraordinarius at the University of South Africa and research associate at the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University. Her areas of interest include social security policy and the definition and measurement of poverty.