Translating Growth into Poverty Reduction: Beyond the Numbers

Foreword

Foreword Tanzania is a much aided country which has been politically stable through several rounds of multi-party elections, has consistently grown economically during the first decade of the millennium, and has improved on its human development indicators, but has failed to make a significant dent in its extreme poverty, when all the signs suggested it should have been. This book is an attempt to delve into the reasons, and what can be done to improve the record. It is based on some largely qualitative research which was undertaken in 2009 and 2010 by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC). While no doubt not this book is not the final word on this important topic, there are some significantly different conclusions to what is often repeated in the discourse on poverty in Tanzania, and internationally. It is hoped that these will inform the political and policy debates in Tanzania. But it is also hoped that Tanzania can stand as one example of a stable country which has grown but failed to really address its poverty problem. There are others, and this book may stimulate similar lines of enquiry in other countries. Tanzanian poverty is widespread throughout the country, with extreme poverty concentrated in rural areas. A big policy and public debate was stimulated by the finding of the 2007 Household Budget Survey that the incidence of rural poverty had not reduced much over the 2001 figure, despite a good record on growth during those years, political stability and some progress on human development. A national panel survey is being undertaken over three years from 2008/9 to try and elucidate the reasons, and analysis of that data is still awaited. In the meantime, the CPRC identified Tanzania as a country which had a good recent national living standards survey, which could be used as the basis for qualitative data collection and analysis to investigate the same issue, and gain a better understanding of poverty dynamics in the country. This was achieved, although less use has been made of the quantitative data than was originally hoped. It was also hoped that a strong link could be forged between this work and that of the national panel survey, and attempts were made to provide results from the largely qualitative work to the National Bureau of Statistics so that it could be used in designing the annual panel surveys. In research terms this work of gaining an understanding of why growth has reduced rural poverty so little is very much work in progress, and awaits analysis of the panel data once it has emerged, as well as joining that up with this and further qualitative analysis in a genuine ‘q-squared’ approach. VIII TRANSLATING GROWTH INTO POVERTY REDUCTION Nevertheless, while the research reported here is not complete, it is substantial , and there are some unexpected findings. The emphasis on propertystripping and property-grabbing, alcoholism, old age, divorce, serial polygamy and selling labour on credit as major sources of vulnerability capable of keeping people poor as well as impoverishing them further is not something analyses of poverty typically draw out. Other impoverishing factors were more expected: bad weather and disease; casual wages failing to keep up with price inflation; and the negative effects of policies. Witchcraft was also reported as a source of vulnerability, and this is something which has not yet had a policy response . While poverty tends to be seen as attaching to smallholder agriculture, the research found that wage labourers were particularly vulnerable and food insecure. This, and the fact that many poor households in rural Tanzania now depend primarily on wage labour has been confirmed by other recent research in northwest Tanzania. Again, there has not yet been a policy response to the changing nature of poverty. The indepth findings on changing gender relationships are also challenging for policy makers. Women have clear responsibility for maintaining their children, and often other family members, but are increasingly facing difficulties fulfilling these responsibilities, in particular when they lose access to assets including land. The laws have been rewritten to safeguard their position, but remain unimplemented in many cases; and the traditional male supports are no longer seen to be as dependable as they were. This is the crisis facing not only the quarter of households which are women headed, but also others; and the dynamic development of savings and other groups is only partial compensation. These are some of the explanations for chronic poverty and deprivation, often inter-generational. The other side...