One Illness Away Why People Become Poor and How They Escape Poverty

by Krishna, Anirudh

• ISBN13: 9780199693191
• ISBN10: 0199693196
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-08-11
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Why does poverty persist? A critical, but so far ignored, part of the answer lies in the fact that poverty is regularly created. Large numbers of people are escaping poverty, but large numbers are concurrently falling into chronic poverty. This book presents the first large-scale examination of the reasons why people fall into poverty and how they escape it in diverse contexts. Drawing upon personal interviews with 35,000 households in different parts of India, Kenya, Uganda, Peru, and the United States, it takes you on an illustrative journey, filled with facts, analyses, and the life stories of people who fell into abject poverty and others who managed to escape their seemingly predetermined fates. Letting a farmhand's son or daughter remain a farmhand, even though she or he is potentially the next Einstein, is a tragedy that poor people witness time after time. Remedying this situation is crucial for making poverty history. This book addresses how equal opportunity can be promoted and how slum-born millionaires can arise in reality. Speaking to Barack Obama's message for more effective health care,OneIllness Awayfeeds directly into current public debates. Learning from thousands of individual experiences, this book presents a clear agenda for action and provides more effective ways of keeping people out of micro poverty traps.

Author Biography

Anirudh Krishna is Professor of public Policy and Political Science at Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. viii
List of Tables	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Refilling the Pool of Poverty	p. 1
Poverty Flows	p. 26
The Rising-Falling Tide	p. 48
Reasons for Descent: The Health Poverty Trap	p. 69
Reasons for Escape: Diversification and Agriculture	p. 96
Connecting Capability with Opportunity: Investing in Information	p. 122
A Two-pronged Strategy: Protection and Opportunity	p. 144
Appendix: Measuring Poverty: Testing Stages-of-Progress	p. 164
Notes	p. 178
References	p. 195
Index	p. 221
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