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In Bangladesh, 50 million people live in poverty and around 28 million live in extreme poverty. To date, development agencies have focussed almost exclusively on the needs of the poor and ignored those of the extreme poor. Building on years of poverty research in Bangladesh, researchers at the University of Bath have played a key role designing and then developing a £65 million programme, which is the country's first national scale initiative focusing exclusively on extreme poverty. Impacts from the programme include improving the livelihoods of one million extreme poor people; helping NGOs design innovative programmes for the extreme poor; and embedding the discourse around extreme poverty in the polity.
Research undertaken at the University of Manchester (UoM) confronts deficits in social policy in sub-Saharan Africa, emphasising the promotion of state capacities for the delivery of social welfare, The research has engaged with users (2003-present), and has contributed to demonstrable policy shifts towards strengthening social welfare systems. As a result, UNICEF, alongside donors such as USAID/ PEPFAR, are now placing an increased emphasis upon the importance of strengthening state social welfare systems, with less emphasis the on role of NGOs. The research also contributed to a renewed prioritisation on developing capacity for the implementation of social policy within the African Union Social Policy Framework (2008).
Essex research, conducted between 1994 and 2010, has provided a new way for the UK Government to measure income poverty, leading to a measure of persistent poverty being included in the Child Poverty Act 2010. The research has enriched policymakers' understanding of changes in inequality and provided a framework for the analysis of poverty dynamics. It has also changed the way in which the Joseph Rowntree Foundation approaches its research and policy work on poverty. A sub-strand of work, on how incomes change after couples separate, has informed policy development work by the charity Gingerbread.
Poor people define poverty to include a simultaneous lack of education, health, housing, mployment and income, among other factors. Recognising this, Sabina Alkire and James Foster developed an axiomatic methodology of measurement that incorporates multiple dimensions of poverty — the Alkire Foster method (AF). The AF method provides a robust, `open-source' measurement tool for policy-making. One key impact is an AF index covering 100+ countries, published annually in the UNDP's Human Development Reports. Another is national adoption by three governments and a multidimensional poverty peer network of 22 governments and agencies. The AF method is also incorporated into other internationally recognised well-being measures such as USAID's 19-country Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index, and Bhutan's Gross National Happiness index.
GCU research into media coverage and public perceptions of poverty, and measures to tackle poverty has had an impact on policy making, policy content and the public discourse of poverty. Deprived communities have been the primary beneficiaries of this impact, e.g. GCU research helped secure pledges from all the main Scottish political parties to avoid stigmatising and socially divisive language in discussing poverty. Secondary beneficiaries have been campaigning organisations whose media engagement strategies have improved. Finally, GCU poverty research has informed the Scottish Government's Child Poverty Strategy and the child poverty measures of Community Planning Partnerships.
The Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme (RHVP) sought to achieve research-based change in policy approaches to food insecurity and famine in southern Africa by investigating a range of policy options and generating debate. The programme's success can be identified in evidence of use, as provided by a post-programme independent evaluation of RHVP; policy response, as observed in social protection policy changes in Malawi, Lesotho, Botswana and Mozambique; and policy outcomes, measured by the impact on beneficiaries of social transfer schemes put in place or expanded in scope due to RHVP influence on social protection policy thinking in southern Africa.
Funded by JRF and ESRC, a long-term series of qualitative studies with residents of very deprived neighbourhoods in Teesside has reached important conclusions about the realities of worklessness and poverty. Many of these run counter to prevailing thinking amongst politicians, policy makers and practitioners. Thus, the research has been used to influence the thinking and the practices of organisations (nationally and regionally) that seek to tackle problems of poverty and worklessness. The research has informed political debate in the UK and EU and has been used nationally and regionally to improve the way that problems of worklessness, poverty and `the low-pay cycle' are understood and responded to. Impact has come about as a consequence of the academic profile and reputation of the underpinning research and a subsequent planned and concerted set of dissemination, public engagement and knowledge exchange activities.
The primary beneficiaries of Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) research into media representations of poverty are people experiencing poverty themselves. Mediating beneficiaries are editors and journalists; television drama producers; politicians and political parties and third-sector organisations. The research has:
Jonathan Bradshaw and colleagues at York influenced UK and international measures of child poverty, child deprivation and child well-being. The multi-dimensional well-being measures have been adopted by UNICEF and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The Office for National statistics (ONS) is now developing measures of child happiness based on our work.
Our research highlighted how badly children in Britain were doing. Informed by this evidence, a Government strategy was developed after 1999 and investment in children improved at least until 2010. As a result, child poverty and well-being improved in the UK. Our work contributed to moving the national and international discourse beyond a focus on income poverty.
Research conducted by the Centre for the Study of Poverty and Social Justice (CSPSJ) led to a new way of assessing child poverty in developing countries. This novel method (termed the Bristol Approach) resulted in the United Nations General Assembly's adoption, for the first time, of an international definition of child poverty (2006). It also underpinned UNICEFs Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities (2008-10), which was run in over 50 countries. In the last ten years, the CSPSJ's work has put child poverty at the centre of international social and public policy debates. Its researchers have advised governments and international agencies on devising anti-poverty strategies and programmes that specifically meet the needs of children, and have significantly influenced the way child poverty is studied around the world. The Centre has developed academic and professional training courses for organisations like UNICEF on the issues of children's rights and child-poverty. Our work has also spurred NGOs such as Save the Children to develop their own child-development indices, and so has had a direct and profound impact on the lives of poor children around the planet.