This document discusses research on rural poverty dynamics in Nepal. It aims to understand how poverty is reproduced and reduced in rural areas, and to what extent households have moved into or out of poverty. The research uses a "stages of progress" methodology involving interviews and surveys. It finds that factors leading households to escape poverty, like migration and farming, are different from factors causing descent into poverty, such as health costs, cultural expenses, and land loss. While non-farm work and migration have helped some rise out of poverty, the ultra-poor heavily rely on land-based livelihoods. Both individual conditions and structural factors around land access, social structures, and market integration influence poverty levels.

1. Beyond moving out: Rural poverty
dynamics in Nepal
Ramesh Sunam
04 November 2013

2. Research motivation
World Development Report 2008:
Agriculture for Development by World
Bank
“Livelihoods have become de-linked from farming; poverty
and inequality from land ownership; and poverty and
inequality from occupation and activity”
(Rigg 2006, p.198)

3. Repeasantisation or the death of peasantries?
The question of food security – a burning issue

4. Contextual motivation – why Nepal?
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Economic growth around 4%
Political upheavals
Still poverty reduction?
Poverty dynamics – social exclusion and
adverse incorporation
What contributed to poverty
reduction?

5. Falling
Moving out
Accounting for Simultaneity
Source: Krishna, A. (2010)

6. Research questions
How is poverty (re)produced and reduced in the rural Tarai of
Nepal?
• To what extent have rural households moved out and moved into
poverty?
• What factors rural people consider in explaining their mobility?
• How glocal processes influence diversification, marginalisation,
and commoditisation of land and labour, having profound
ramifications for poverty?

7. Methodology
 “Stages of progress” methodology – developed by Krishna (2010)
 Fieldwork– 50 interviews, 170 surveys
 Study site

8.  “Stages of progress” methodology – for poverty dynamics
Stages of progress
1 Food for the family
2 Some clothes for family while going to towns or
social functions
3 Sending children to school
4 Repairing the existing shelter (roof with iron
sheets)
5 Covering basic medical expenses
Poverty cut-off

9. Escaped poverty = Migration + Farming
Remained poor = Landless, Labourers

10. Proposition 1: Factors leading to poverty are quite different from that lifting
households out of poverty.
Reasons for escape
% of poverty
escaping HHs
Foreign labour migration
Own
60
22/42
farming/sharecropping
Small business
41
Government job
21
Private job including
25
labouring
“…consigns the rural poor to continuing penury” (Rigg 2006, p.
195).

11. Outmigration – labour migration
Source: ADS 2013

How about those who cannot migrate?

12. Falling into poverty
Reasons for descent
% of HHs falling into
poverty
Poor health and health
19
related expenses
Cultural costs
48
(marriage, dowry,
death rituals)
Land loss
62

13. Proposition 2: While non-farm economy including outmigration led to
upward mobility, the ultra-poor heavily rely on land-based livelihoods
 The landless
 Labouring – farm and off-farm
 Access to market
opportunities/private jobs –
unreachable

14. Proposition 3: While individual conditions have lifted people out of poverty but
structural factors (land, social structure; integration into local/global economy)
explain immiseration and intergenerational poverty
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The question of relational poverty
Social exclusion
Adverse incorporation
These all give importance to land reform –
access to land

15. Conclusion
 Understanding poverty from the lived experience of the poor
 Falling into poverty – little explored dimension but critical
“Lives and livelihoods in the Rural South are becoming increasingly
divorced from farming and, therefore, from the land”
(Rigg 2006, p.180)
“The state support…helped to lift the peasantry out of poverty and
consolidate its middle-income position”
(Walker 2012, p.36)
 Access to land - tenancy reforms – terms and conditions
 Informal economy – working conditions – wages

16. …turn their rural citizens from
landowners into landless
labourers?

17. THANK YOU