POVCON

Poverty in the Face of Conflict

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Violent conflict has been identified as one of the most important constraints to poverty reduction and the promotion of economic development and democracy worldwide, especially in areas characterized by persistent violence and fragile institutions. The main objective of this project is to ascertain how the presence of armed conflict affects the capacity of households to cope with income shocks and uncertainty. It will investigate the relationship between vulnerability to poverty, violent conflict and household welfare in the context of the Maoist insurrection in India. The project will use data from the Young Lives project in Andhra Pradesh, the National Sample Survey, and new event data on the Maoist conflict. It first examines which types of idiosyncratic and covariate shocks affect household welfare, and how households respond to these. It will then explicitly incorporate Maoist violence in the analysis, and studies the impact of the movement on households’ ability to insure against and cope with adverse shocks identified in the first step. Finally, the distributive effect of the Maoist movement in Andhra Pradesh will be studied. This will yield important information about the dynamics of the conflict. The project represents one of the first micro-empirical attempts to link two important strands in recent development economics research: research on the relationship between economic shocks and household welfare, and research on the welfare consequences of conflict and violence. This knowledge is crucial for the design and implementation of safety nets and insurance schemes, as well as leading to important lessons on how to deal with conflict impacts at the household level. It will contribute to the state of the art of modern development economics by investigating the impact of persistent, low-level conflict. It will also advance substantially our knowledge of the mechanisms of insurgencies founded on ideological aims.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Groundbreaking research has linked the relationship between the simultaneous occurrence of poverty, violent conflict and natural disaster, and the effect it has on household well-being.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

People in developing countries often face a multitude of uncertainties such as climatic shock and violent conflict, which can happen simultaneously. Being economically vulnerable while also politically insecure and facing natural disasters can devastate people's overall livelihood. Just how communities and households cope under such circumstances has not been fully examined.

In light of this, the EU-funded 'Poverty in the face of conflict' (POVCON) project delved into how armed conflict can impact ways in which people cope with levels of uncertainty. More specifically, it looked at the effect that political violence and drought have on child nutrition. Andhra Pradesh, a state in southern India, was used as a context for the analysis.

Two important results were found. One is that drought has negative effects on child nutrition, but only in communities affected by violence. The other is that political violence has major negative effects on child nutrition due to reducing the ability to cope with drought conditions.

An interesting finding was that during a ceasefire period the effects of drought had been reversed. Furthermore, the isolation that households face due to conflict has consequences on how well they can cope since access to public goods and services is restricted.

Another aspect the project examined is how economic expectation is impacted. First, individuals in conflict areas perceive bad outcomes to be much more likely than individuals in low or no conflict areas. Second, even after 40 years of violent conflict people are still sensitive to changes in the configuration of conflict patterns. This suggests that short-term recovery could be possible and negative effects on outlooks on life and hopelessness are (at least partially) reversible.

Important lessons can be learned from the findings in terms of how to cope with the impact of conflicts and uncertainties at the household level.