Translating Growth Into Poverty Reduction

Edited by Flora Kessy, Oswald Mashindano, Andrew Shepherd, and Lucy Scott. Tanzania is a politically stable, much-aided country that has consistently grown economically during the first decade of the millennium while also improving its human development indicators. However, poverty has remained persistent, particularly within rural areas. This collaborative work delves into why this is so and what can be done to improve the record. Based on largely qualitative research undertaken in Tanzania by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, the authors highlight macro- and micro-level causes of the persistence of poverty. The micro-level focus centres on a negative dynamic in which widespread failure to provide household food security undermines gender relationships and reduces the possibility of saving and asset accumulation, resulting in very low upward mobility. Vulnerability is widespread and resilience against shocks minimal. The book provides alternative conclusions to those often repeated in the poverty discourse, with the specific aim of informing political and policy debates within Tanzania.