Transient poverty

Transitory poor. Members of this group earn sufficient income in good years but fall into poverty, at least temporarily, as a result of idiosyncratic or covariate shocks ranging from an illness in the household or the loss of a job to drought or macroeconomic crisis. Transient poverty is apparently very substantial. Baulch and Hoddinott (2000) review a number of studies that show that, in a typical year, anything up to half of the US 1 per day poor may be transient poor. 

Estimation of chronic and transient poverty requires panel data measuring the welfare of a representative sample of households over several periods. 

Transient poverty. Poverty among households that are poor in some years but not all. They may be poor in some years due to idiosyncratic or covariate temporary shocks rang-... 

Safety nets are never the whole or suffioient answerto poverty reduction or risk management. They must operate within the existing policy context and be balanced with existing or planned safety nets, sooial insurance, and other social or poverty alleviation policies. No single presoription fits all oircumstances. The mix of support to the chronic poor, the transient poor, and vulnerable groups will be complex, and, until the safety net is adequate for all, the subject of difficult and controversial triage decisions. 

Does the program mix provide an adequate balance of efforts to assist the chronically poor, transient poor, and special groups that may need aid even if overall poverty is low ... 

The concept of poverty has been expanding over the last few years to include dynamic considerations that take into account the realization that over time poor households are not the same (Baulch and Hoddinott 2000). Poverty can thus be classified as chronic or transient, depending on the duration of poverty periods over time. The transient poor are households that are not poor in good years but occasionally experience poverty. Chroni-... 

Figure A. 1 illustrates the consumption levels relative to the poverty line of two households, A and B, over a period of eight years. Based on the transitions into and out of poverty, household A is classified as transient poor.

The relationship between poverty and vulnerability to poverty in a dynamic environment with many risks can be conceptualized using a public health analogy— specifically, to consider poverty as a disease, as illustrated in figure A.2. Most diseases have a stochastic component it is always somewhat uncertain who will fall ill and when. At any point in time, some individuals are ill, and others are not. Among the sick, some are likely to recover (transient sick) others... 

These categories have a direct correspondence with the different groups who are poor or vulnerable to poverty. Those poor at a given moment can be divided into chronic (stuck in poverty) or transient (temporarily poor). The chronically poor are not only stuck in poverty they are likely to transmit this poverty... 

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