• Defining poverty

Defining poverty

This paper argues that a person’s family background is likely to have crucial impacts on his or her later-life socio-economic achievement, regardless of the level of development of the country within which they live. However, the authors are cautious of drawing more specific conclusions since the degree of intergenerational persistence appears to vary depending on the definition of the outcome variable, and different estimation methods provide a range of estimates. Also, since most research on intergenerational links uses US data, it might not be appropriate to transfer those conclusions to another country with different levels of economic development, institutions and social norms.

The authors conclude that the analytical framework used to analyse intergenerational transmission of poverty in low-income countries can to a large extent be employed to developing countries, although some organising perspectives may need to be modified. The authors argue that the role of families in the intergenerational process is likely to be greater in developing countries than in industrialised countries, because markets and institutionalised social protection may be less extensive in the former relative to the latter. The crucial cross-national difference is therefore not so much to do with the formulation of hypotheses of a general nature, but in the details of their application.

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