Why Do People Stay Poor?

Clare Balboni, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak and Anton Heil (March 2020) There are two views as to why people stay poor. The equal opportunity view emphasizes that differences in individual traits like talent or motivation make poor people choose low productivity jobs. The poverty traps view emphasizes that access to opportunities depends on … Continued

Graduation Pathways: Increasing Income and Resilience for the Extreme Poor

CGAP brief on the success of the Graduation approach in increasing incomes and resilience for people in extreme poverty. Given the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDG) global focus on eradicating extreme poverty by 2030, the graduation approach should form an integral component of national social protection and poverty reduction strategies, along with social transfers, guaranteed employment, social … Continued

Policy in Focus: Debating Graduation

The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth presents a multitude of articles all focused on various aspects of the Graduation approach and programming, including a piece written by BRAC’s own members of the Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative team entitled “What does the future hold for graduation?” International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) (November 2017)

Mainstreaming Graduation into Social Protection in Asia

People in ultra-poverty make up over half of the estimated 797 million people living in extreme poverty around the world (Reed et al. 2017, 4). This group tends to be food insecure, typically excluded from mainstream services and programs, including formal market systems and financial services, and in some contexts live in isolated and hard-to-reach … Continued

Policies and Practices to Enhance the Gender Transformative Potential of Multi-faceted Social Protection Programs

Anoushka Bhari and Sonia Laszlo, McGill University (2020) ABSTRACT This scoping paper documents current practices used by Graduation Program practitioners to produce meaningful and sustainable improvements in women’s wellbeing. To do so, it builds on the theory of change in Rao and Kelleher (2005) and adapted by Hillenbrand (2015) and identify practices that affect change … Continued

TED Talk | Audacious Project – 4 Ways to End Extreme Poverty

Approximately 700 million people worldwide currently live in extreme poverty, a state of severe financial and social vulnerability that robs many of hope and dignity. BRAC, the world’s largest NGO, began a sustainable, multifaceted intervention called the Graduation approach in 2002. Since then, it has helped over nine million people escape extreme poverty. Now, Shameran … Continued

Mainstreaming Graduation into Social Protection Floors – International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth

By Harshani Dharmadasa, Ian Orton and Lauren Whitehead With the recent adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), eradicating extreme poverty presents a major challenge for governments worldwide. Despite recent progress, 902 million people remain in extreme poverty. To attain the right to social protection for people living in extreme poverty and, simultaneously, … Continued