Poverty, Inequality and Social Protection

Living a life free of poverty is essential to human wellbeing. This entails having ample income to meet basic needs, access to opportunities to grow and thrive, and the ability to participate in society with dignity and respect. Social protection, or welfare, is a vital policy tool in reducing poverty, as noted in Sustainable Development Goal #1. Schemes such as child benefits, old age pensions, health insurance and economic inclusion interventions are key in alleviating poverty, offering a safety net, or supplying a springboard for positive change.

The Poverty, Inequality and Social Protection hub aims to enhance our understanding of the experiences, drivers and dynamics of poverty, and how social protection or welfare policies can meaningfully engage with these to reduce poverty in a dignified and empowering manner. Inclusion – through representation of marginalised groups and foregrounding of often unheard or overlooked voices – and bridging the ‘Global North – South’ divide are important elements of any work within the Poverty and Social Protection hub.

The Poverty, Inequality and Social Protection hub offers a space for research on:

How do we understand poverty, and how do those understandings differ and change across space, time and population?
What are the lived experiences of people in poverty and recipients of social protection and welfare?
What are the prevailing attitudes towards people in poverty and/ or in receipt of social protection and welfare, and how are they shaped?
What is the normative language around poverty, and to what extent does it play into deficit framings or negative stereotypes?
How sticky or transient is poverty? What about the vulnerabilities associated with chronic or shorter-term experiences of poverty?
What is the impact of interventions on recipients and the wider communities in which they are implemented? What drives those impacts, and how do they differ across individuals, families and communities?
What is the interplay of social protection and welfare policies with other sectoral policies such as education and health? How can they complement each other, or be integrated?

Projects

Addressing the Social Determinants of Malaria in Africa: a Ugandan Case Study
This project aims to produce research that will contribute to sustained decreases in malaria incidence amongst children and adults in African regions most impacted by the disease.

Examining the role of climate vulnerability in intergenerational poverty in Amazonia: building sustainable futures for Indigenous youth from the ground-up
This research aims to show how weather changes perpetuate Indigenous poverty in Amazonia and identify sustainable strategies to address rural intergenerational impoverishment.

Fonkoze graduation programme
The Fonkoze graduation programme research examines integrated anti-poverty interventions targeted at women in Haiti.

Overcoming colonial continuities in social protection
The Overcoming colonial continuities in social protection project will explore past and present colonial influences on social protection arrangements in Tanzania and Ivory Coast.

Understanding attitudes and countering stigma to tackle poverty and inequality
This research aims to understand lived experiences of poverty and social protection and the attitudes of service providers and the wider public towards social protection beneficiaries in Laguna, Philippines and Milton Keynes, England.

Learn more about CSGD projects here.