Tuesday, April 7, 2015

edX Entrance Survey/What is a Poverty Trap?



Why did you decide to register for this course?

I registered because I have been very interested in learning about global poverty and food insecurity. I have learned about poverty and food insecurity in one specific country (Burma) and now I would like to be able to learn about the issues on a global scope. 

What is a poverty trap?

This was the first question addressed in the video lectures. Poverty trap is a spiraling mechanism which forces people to remain poor. It is so binding in itself that it doesn't allow the poor people to escape it. Although I have heard about something very similar to this concept, I was not aware of how impactful it is on a community. For the rest of the lecture we looked at reasons for which create a conditions that cause these poverty traps to emerge. Some reasons that were brought up were increasing food prices, unpredictable economic activities, and changes in wage. The main point of this lecture was to try to better understand poverty traps and possibly help identity other causes by the end of the course. 

3 comments:

  1. Can you relate the poverty trap information back to what you learned about Burma?

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  2. Poverty trap is also closely related to Burma because many of the families working on the government farms are in a generational poverty trap as well as facing hunger. They are unable to obtain other forms of work and wage increases are very hard to find.

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  3. Good relationship back to your research!

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