¹Anirudh Krishna teaches public policy and political science at Duke University. For the last five years he has been investigating household poverty dynamics in India, Kenya, Uganda, Peru, and rural North Carolina (www.pubpol.duke.edu/krishna). An article based on these investigations in Gujarat, India won the Dudley Seers Memorial Prize from the Journal of Development Studies. Before commencing his academic career in 1996, Krishna managed diverse poverty reduction initiatives for 14 years in India. His most recent book is Active Social Capital: Tracing the Roots of Development and Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2002)

Abstract

Poverty is dynamic in nature: even as some people move out of poverty, other people simultaneously fall into poverty. The poverty pool is being simultaneously both depleted and refilled. Anirudh Krishna argues that efforts for poverty reduction tend to focus exclusively on raising people out of poverty, and therefore will not be very successful unless poverty creation is also addressed. Ill health and high healthcare expenses are the principal reasons associated with falling into poverty; therefore, reducing poverty requires investing in better healthcare.