Vulnerability and poverty: An assets, resources and capabilities impact study of low-income groups in Bogota

Lampis, Andrea (2009) Vulnerability and poverty: An assets, resources and capabilities impact study of low-income groups in Bogota. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This research analyzes the dynamics of vulnerability in Bogota through a study conducted on a 900 households sample during 1997 and 1998. It builds on Moser's key findings and her Assets Vulnerability Framework, concentrating on causal relations between critical life events faced by households, the causes that directly determine them, the consequences or short-term impacts these events implied and, finally, the strategies they adopted in order to face, cope with, as well as react to them. The main added value of the research can be found on the methodological ground. That is, in a further operationalisation of vulnerability analysis as a tool for poverty studies and micro-level livelihoods-centered social policy. The insights provided to answer the main question concerning the research question about the possibility to operationalise vulnerability analysis beyond Moser's Assets Vulnerability Framework show that this is possible on the basis of life events-related vulnerability patterns employment, which have in income-generation, health, violence and the inner dynamic of the household are the interlocking epicenters of a crisis that involves simultaneously a number of dimensions in the lives of low-income groups in Bogota, well beyond the lack of income. Confirming Moser, Pryer, Rakodi and Chambers' findings the research illustrates that different vulnerability patterns reflect different degrees of resilience in the face of the crisis. Since nowadays the debate on vulnerability is not anymore restricted to the respective merits of a static versus a dynamic understanding of poverty, but it is embedded into a wider social protection debate. Therefore, the thesis opens a dialogue not only with a technical but also a social policy dimension of the debate concerning the level of operative decisions about people's livelihoods, choices, well-being and freedoms and it is on this ground that the thesis finds also a conceptual relevance.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Sociology, Public and Social Welfare, Sociology, Social Structure and Development, Latin American Studies
Sets:	Collections > ProQuest Etheses Departments > Social Policy
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/2743

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