Risk and Vulnerability Mailing List Archive

["John Farrington" <<address removed>>]

John Farrington's messages earlier today ask how approaches like the
World Bank's Social Risk Management Framework can be implemented.

Maybe a prior question is to ask how the benefits of growth are
transmitted to poor people in the first place, what our assumptions
are regarding these transmission mechanisms, and how valid these
assumptions are. 

A set of powerpoint slides accessible at 
http://dfid-agriculture-consultation.nri.org/theme3/keypapers.htm 
sets out the argument that transmission is via either markets or transfer 
payments. Markets for products can  reduce poverty if, for instance, 
productivity improvements allow price reductions to consumers at the same 
time as allowing farmers to maintain a decent living standard. Markets for 
finance can have a crucial bearing on what the poor can or cannot undertake 
in the productive sphere. Most of the poor rely to some degree on selling 
their labour, so that an increase in the demand for labour which is reflected 
in 
the availability of more work-days, and/or higher wages, can generate 
benefits for them.  

Key questions are:

1. How far are conventional assumptions regarding the performance of
markets in transmitting the benefits of growth correct? 

2. What types of market failure are common? Can these be addressed
through a neoliberal "regulating and facilitating" agenda, or are they
more structurally entrenched, such as market segmentation and
interlocking tend to be, and so do they require more specific measures
- if so, of what kind?

3. Can more be achieved through more poverty-sensitive growth
processes, so that less dependence on transfers is necessary?

Questions of this kind overlap to some extent with debates over
pro-poor growth - but it is essential to probe their risk and
vulnerabilty dimensions if positive poverty impacts are to be
identified, and negative ones avoided.

John Farrington

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