Person:
Narayan, Deepa

Poverty and Inequality, Poverty Reduction & Economic Management, World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Inequality; Social, Political, and Economic Empowerment; Gender; Social Capital; Community-driven Development; Participatory Poverty Assessment; Moving Out of Poverty; Voices of the Poor; Bottom-up Program Development and Evaluation to Reduce Poverty; South Asia; Africa; East Asia

Departments

Poverty and Inequality, Poverty Reduction & Economic Management, World Bank

Last updated February 1, 2023

Biography

I lived in remote communities in Africa, East Asia and South Asia for 8 years where I assumed that poor people are resources not the problem. This people-first approach questioned underlying assumptions in theory and practice in program delivery from water supply to participation in markets. I used my Ph.D research training in cross-cultural psychology to challenge the basic assumptions of international development approaches. What is measured is seen. I focused on defining concepts, identifying and measuring dimensions and demonstrating how they make a difference in service delivery, sustainability and in reducing poverty and inequality. And communicating results in simple ways. I did this for people’s participation, community driven development, social capital, local democracy, local markets, empowerment and poverty, tracking implications of the local to national and global levels. My work the Voices of the Poor study involving 60,000 people in 60 countries and Moving Out of Poverty studies understanding mobility including in conflict affected countries. My current work includes inequality including gender, values and development.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 12

Local Institutions, Poverty, and Household Welfare in Bolivia

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-07) Grootaert, Christiaan ; Narayan, Deepa

The authors empirically estimate the impact of social capital on household welfare in Bolivia--where they found 67 different types of local associations. They focus on household memberships in local associations as being especially relevant to daily decisions that affect household welfare and consumption. On average, households belong to 1.4 groups and associations: 62 percent belong to agrarian syndicates, 16 percent to production groups, 13 percent to social service groups, and 10 percent to education and health groups. Smaller numbers belong to religious and government groups. Agrarian syndicates, created by government decree in 1952, are now viewed mainly as community-initiated institutions to manage conmunal resources. They have been registered as legal entities to work closely with municipalities to represent the interests and priorities of local people in municipal decisionmaking. The effects of social capital operate through (at least) three mechanisms: sharing of information among association members; the reduction of opportunistic behavior; and better collective decisionmaking. The effect of social capital on household welfare was found to be 2.5 times that of human capital. Increasing the average educational endowment of each adult in the household by one year (about a 2.5-percent increase) would increase per capita household spending 4.2 percent; a similar increase in the social capital endowment would increase spending 9 to 10.5 percent. They measured social capital along six dimensions: density of memberships, internal heterogeneity of associations (by gender, age, education, religion, etc.), meeting attendance, active participation in decisionmaking, payment of dues (in cash and in kind), and community orientation. The strongest effect came from number of memberships. Active membership in an agrarian syndicate is associated with an average 11.5 percent increase in household spending. Membership in another local association is associated with a 5.3-percent higher spending level. Empirical results partly confirm the hypothesis that social capital provides long-term benefits such as better access to credit and a higher level of trust in the community as a source of assistance in case of need.
Ending Poverty in South Asia : Ideas That Work

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007) Narayan, Deepa ; Glinskaya, Elena

The case studies in this book were developed as part of a year-long learning process initiated by the World Bank in 2003-4 to examine large scale poverty reduction programs in a wide range of developing countries around the world. This volume presents 12 of the case studies from South Asia. . The last two decades saw substantial change in the countries of South Asia. All countries of the subcontinent experienced more rapid growth than in the earlier decades and also saw a definite reduction in the incidence of poverty, resulting in the improvement of the lives of hundreds of millions of poor people. One common element was the adoption of broad based economic reforms involving rethinking of earlier approaches to development. The reforms in South Asia were notable in that they were homegrown, gradual, and accompanied by continual redesign and fine tuning. Individuals can make a difference in fighting poverty when ways are found to institutionalize creative ideas and apply them on a scale extending beyond pilot projects. This book recounts 12 such cases from a range of countries and sectors in the South Asia region, with a focus on how these programmes scaled up and on the potential for applying lessons in other settings. These case studies do not offer a blueprint or model for poverty reduction; there is no single model. Nor do they cover every issue that is important. But they suggest the range of ideas that can be successful and the underlying principles that cut across these diverse initiatives. All the programmes tap the imagination and ingenuity of the South Asian people- in government offices, in civil society organizations, in the private sector, and in the villages and urban neighborhoods. All seek to empower poor people to access the economic opportunities and basic services so necessary to human dignity. The lessons are complex, and applying them will undoubtedly require redesign and fine-tuning to fit the initiatives to the local context. What is important, however, is that the experience of the last two decades has shown that reforms and scaling-up innovations can work in South Asia-and if these examples can be strengthened and expanded in the coming decades, the dreams of a subcontinent free of poverty may be realized.
Measuring Empowerment : Cross Disciplinary Perspectives

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005) Narayan, Deepa ; Narayan, Deepa

Poverty reduction on a large scale depends on empowering those who are most motivated to move out of poverty-poor people themselves. But if empowerment cannot be measured, it will not be taken seriously in development policy making and programming. Building on the "Empowerment and Poverty Reduction Sourcebook," this volume outlines a conceptual framework that can be used to monitor and evaluate programs centered on empowerment approaches. It presents the perspectives of 27 distinguished researchers and practitioners in economics, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and demography, all of whom are grappling in different ways with the challenge of measuring empowerment. The authors draw from their research and experiences at different levels, from households to communities to nations, in various regions of the world. Measuring Empowerment is a resource for all who are interested in approaches to poverty reduction that address issues of inequitable power relations.
Moving Out of Poverty : Volume 1. Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Mobility

(Washington, DC: World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) Narayan, Deepa ; Petesch, Patti

This volume brings together multidisciplinary perspectives on poor people's mobility, a dynamic approach that hopefully will add to the reader's understanding of how and why people move into and out of poverty. The chapters draw on the latest longitudinal micro data to present a moving picture of poverty that is rather different from what one can see in single snapshots, the staple of traditional poverty analysis. The book is also important because the contributors' distinct disciplinary perspectives demonstrate clearly why it is critical to draw on diverse information to improve the reader's understanding about how to reduce poverty. The economic findings reinforce what has been known for some time: fast economic growth underpins poverty reduction, but the speed of declines in poverty is greatly affected by social and political factors. The economic panels also show that the people mired in chronic poverty around the world are actually fewer in number than the people moving in and out of poverty. Static studies do not capture this dynamic quality of poverty and vulnerability. Of particular interest are the chapters clarifying interactions between the local social, political, and economic factors that underlie persistent poverty, vulnerability, and inequality. They point to the need to draw from different disciplines as we turn to the task of reaching the bottom poor trapped in poverty and those churning in and out of poverty.
Moving Out of Poverty : Volume 3. The Promise of Empowerment and Democracy in India

(Washington, DC: World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Narayan, Deepa

This study focuses on people who moved out of poverty during the decade from 1995 to 2005 in rural areas of four Indian states: Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. It also considers people who have fallen into poverty, those who have remained poor, and some who have never been poor but who live alongside poor people in the same communities. The author started by setting aside official and expert opinions, ideologies of the right and left, and, to the extent possible, the beliefs and assumptions of the rich and the middle class, including the own preconceived notions. The study is unique in four ways. First, it examines changes in poverty status of the same households over time. Most poverty studies are snapshots of the poor taken at a particular point in time, with extrapolations made by comparing them with the rich at that same point in time. In the study, the author focus on understanding the dynamics of change by asking individuals to recall their life stories, particularly what happened to them over the past decade? Second, most poverty studies are conducted at the national, state, or district level. The author focuses on local communities, mainly villages, as the unit within which individuals and households are embedded. There is much variation between villages, even within a district, and our sampling strategy enables us to examine these community-level differences. Third, the author relies primarily on nonstandardized data collection methods, including life stories and discussion groups. The author complement these with data the author gather using household and community-level questionnaires. Finally, since the author deliberately adopted an open-ended approach, the author uses inductive methods to systematically aggregate data from life stories and individual discussions over 50,000 pages of notes. The author started with broad questions rather than a particular conceptual framework, but the author did impose a framework after six months of inductive data analyses, before starting the quantitative data analyses.
Moving Out of Poverty : Volume 2. Success from the Bottom Up

(Washington, DC: World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Narayan, Deepa ; Pritchett, Lant ; Kapoor, Soumya

The global moving out of poverty study is unique in several respects. It is one of the few large-scale comparative research efforts to focus on mobility out of poverty rather than on poverty alone. The study draws together the experiences of poor women and men who have managed to move out of poverty over time and the processes and local institutions that have helped or hindered their efforts. It is also the first time that a World Bank report draws on people's own understanding of freedom, democracy, equality, empowerment, and aspirations-and how these affect poor people in different growth, social, and political contexts. By giving primacy to people's own experiences and how they define poverty, the study provides several new insights to develop more effective strategies to reduce poverty. The study finds that poor people take lots of initiative, in many cases even more than those who are better off. There are millions and millions of tiny poor entrepreneurs. The investment climate of these tiny entrepreneurs has not been a centerpiece of poverty strategies. Too often, poor people do not face a level playing field. Despite the micro credit revolution, poor people remain outside of most financial services; and large lenders remain reluctant to lend to micro enterprises and micro entrepreneurs. New institutional models and financial instruments are needed to serve poor people's financial needs and give them the capital they need to expand their businesses and connect to markets.
Moving Out of Poverty : Volume 4. Rising from the Ashes of Conflict

(Washington, DC: World Bank and Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) Narayan, Deepa ; Petesch, Patti

Lifting people out of poverty is one of the great challenges facing the international community today. It has become still more daunting in the context of the global financial crisis, which has severe implications for the poorest people in the world. Almost 1.4 billion people in developing countries live in poverty, according to recent estimates by the World Bank, and a significant part of this population lives in chronic poverty. This is the fourth in a series of volumes emerging from the global moving out of poverty study, which explores mobility from the perspectives of poor people who have moved out of poverty in more than 500 communities across 15 countries. The research on conflict-affected countries was managed by the global development network in partnership with the World Bank. This volume examines the social, political, and economic institutions facing poor people in post-conflict environments, where lives have been turned upside down by violence and instability. Based on original evidence from over a hundred communities in seven countries, the study documents the strategies that poor people use to cope with and move out of poverty, and it concludes with important policy recommendations.
Designing Community Based Development

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1995-06) Narayan, Deepa

When properly designed, community based programs can be highly effective in managing natural resources, providing basic infrastructure or ensuring primary social services. Participation in community based development (CBD) depends on reversing control and accountability from central authorities to community organizations. Successful design requires tapping into local needs, understanding and building on the strengths of existing institutions, and defining the changes needed in intermediary implementing agencies to support community action.
Voices of the Poor : Crying Out for Change

(New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 2000) Narayan, Deepa ; Chambers, Robert ; Shah, Meera K. ; Petesch, Patti

As the second book in a three-part series entitled Voices of the Poor, "Crying out for Change" accounts for the voices from comparative fieldwork among twenty three countries. Through participatory, and qualitative research methods, the book presents very directly, poor people's own voices, and the realities of their lives. It outlines the multidimensional aspects of well-being, and how poor people see it, highlighting that in material terms, "enough" is not a lot for a good life, and, analyzes social well-being, security, and freedom of choice and action, in contrast to the "ill-being" aspects of material absence, reflecting on the experiences of humiliation, shame, anguish. and grief. The struggle for livelihoods is described through the scarcity of rural production, the diversified cities' bondage, and, the limited opportunities of life, and individual breakthroughs challenging their livelihoods. Further analysis reflect on the inadequacy, isolation, and lack of access to infrastructure; on the health aspects of mind and body; on gender relations in troubled subjugation; on social exclusion; and, on the uncertainties for survival. It finally challenges the meaning of development, and of power, calling for change, from material poverty to adequate assets and livelihoods, from exclusion to inclusion, organization, and empowerment.
Voices of the Poor : From Many Lands

(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2002-01) Narayan, Deepa ; Petesch, Patti ; Narayan, Deepa ; Petesch, Patti

This is the final book in a three-part series entitled, "Voices of the Poor." The series is based on an unprecedented effort to gather the views, experiences, and aspirations of more than 60,000 poor men and women from sixty countries. The work was undertaken for the "World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty." This publication is organized as follows: Each country chapter opens up with a brief life story. These life stories were chosen because they highlight concerns raised not only by poor women and men living in that particular community, but because the same concerns were echoed in other parts of the country. The chapters then unfold around particular sets of issues that emerged repeatedly in group discussions and individual interviews. While the findings reported in the chapters cannot be generalized to represent poverty conditions for an entire nation, the chapters bring to life what it means to be poor in various communities, in fourteen countries, from the perspective of poor people. In the final chapter, four major patterns emerge: Poor people need a diverse set of assets and capabilities if they are to survive and overcome poverty. Economy-wide policies and shocks deplete poor people's assets and increase their insecurity. The culture of mediating institutions often negatively distorts the impact of well-intended policies and excludes the poor from gains. Gender inequity within households is persistent and children are acutely vulnerable.