May 2011

Escaping Poverty

Patterns and Causes of Poverty Exits in Rural Bangladesh

This paper uses findings from 293 life-history interviews, conducted by the author and a small team of researchers in rural Bangladesh in 2007, to examine what can be learned about patterns of exit from poverty. The author argues that narrative-based studies of how individuals move out of, or into poverty can complement variable-based analyses of aggregate poverty trends. The analysis of poverty exits in this paper shows that individuals on trajectories of long-term improvement in wellbeing tend to more effectively exploit a limited set of work-oriented or asset-related opportunity types, and many of these can be identified from life-history interviews.

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