Spatial Disadvantages or Spatial Poverty Traps: Household Evidence from Rural Kenya

The goals of this study are: 1) to determine the relative importance of spatial factors in explaining household wealth; 2) to identify the spatial characteristics of the chronically poorest, the consistently well off, and households escaping from poverty as well as descending into poverty; 3) to determine effects of compound disadvantages on the likelihood of chronic poverty; and 4) to assess the evidence of spatial poverty traps (SPTs). Quantitative analysis is conducted using panel data collected from 1275 households, each surveyed four times with a structured questionnaire over an 11 year period from 1997 to 2007. We identified four distinct groups. The chronically poor are defined as households remaining consistently in the bottom third (tercile) of households ranked by wealth in each of the four survey years. Roughly 12.9% of the nationwide sample was found to be chronically poor. The consistently non-poor are defined as households consistently in the upper tercile of households ranked by wealth, and this group formed 16.2% of the total sample. The third and fourth groups were those households found to have risen from poverty (starting in the bottom tercile and ending in the top tercile, the ascending) and those who were in the top asset tercile in 1997 and fell to the bottom tercile by 2007 (the declining). Relatively few households in the sample were in either the upwardly mobile category (3.8%) or the downwardly mobile category (3.6%).