Institute of Development Studies
Annual Report 2011
Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction
Over the last year our research has made a considerable contribution to global thinking about the future of vulnerability and poverty policy and practice. Members of the Team have been involved in a number of influential reports including the World Development Report 2011 Overcoming Conflict and Fragility and the Second European Development Report Social Protection for Inclusive Development, as well as contributing research papers to the UN MDG Summit in New York and engaging with UK parliamentarians through the Institute’s Dangerous Ideas in Development seminar series.
We have also continued our engagement with groups outside the development industry and will be taking this work forward by mapping all of the organisations we engage with in order to help us broaden our research partnerships beyond their current reach.
Research Centres
- MICROCON
(A Micro-level Analysis of Violent Conflict) - Centre for Social Protection
Highlight
Being present where it counts:
The Centre for Social Protection provides an important new platform for making SP policies more effective
The Centre for Social Protection (CSP) has provided a platform from which to build more sustainable anti-poverty programmes and an international network for thinking about how to make social protection policies and programmes more effective. Over the last year members of the CSP have played a leading role in a series of influential papers and activities – the Social Protection in Africa: Where Next? communiqué, the Second European Development Report on Social Protection for Inclusive Development, and as advisors to and evaluators of major programmes in Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda. The influence of IDS thinking on social protection is clearly evident in the new World Bank ten-year strategy for social protection, in recent UNICEF regional strategy papers, and in multilateral and bilateral aid agency positions.
Viewpoint
Haris Gazdar:
Senior Researcher at the Collective for Social Science Research (CSSR), Karachi, Pakistan
We responded to a call for proposals from the Social Protection in Asia (SPA) programme at IDS because we felt that their groundbreaking approach offered us the opportunity of doing innovative research in an area where we had abiding interest. This expectation was more than fulfilled and our close and frequent interactions with IDS Fellows and other SPA partners proved to be a tremendous source of learning and insight. Our research confirmed the close linkage between housing and social marginalisation, and hence the centrality of residential security to a transformative social protection agenda.
Highlight
Being present where it counts:
IDS captures the development sector’s attention with the New Bottom Billion
In the autumn of 2010 VPR Research Fellow Andy Sumner caused a major stir across academia, amongst policymakers and in the international media with new research on where poor people live. In a series of working papers, policy briefings, blogs and media
interviews he provoked an important debate on the changing nature of poverty. Two decades ago, 93 per cent of the world’s poor lived in countries officially classified as low-income (LICs). But the New Bottom Billion revealed that now, 72 per cent of the world’s
poor live in middle-income countries (MICs). This research has successfully set a new agenda within policy spheres and the media around a debate on this ‘new geography of global poverty’. It raises important questions for the current model of development assistance, where national per capita income has increasingly been seen as a key determinant of the volume and composition of aid flows.
Highlight
Linking Different Perspectives:
An IDS-coordinated network pioneers a new approach to understanding violence within communities
Researchers in MICROCON, an international research programme and network coordinated by staff in the VPR Team, have created a generic conflict identification module to be used in World Bank living standards surveys carried out in conflict-affected countries. The use of this module will provide data that contextualises violence within communities, while providing micro-level data that is comparable across countries. This marks an important step forward in the analysis of violent conflict and its aftermath.
Download the Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction section of our Annual Report.