PAPER REVIEW:

EXPLORING POVERTY DYNAMICS FROM LIFE

HISTORY INTERVIEWS IN BANGLADESH
AUTHORS:
TONY ADDISON, DAVID HULME & RAVI KANBUR
DS 510: Poverty- Concepts, Strategies and Programming

Submitted to Submitted by

Dr. Mohammad Abu Eusuf Mostarin Shamanta

Roll No: 15
Professor
Section: A
Department of Development Studies
MDS 16
Department of Development Studies

University of Dhaka
21 September 2019

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 Exploring Poverty Dynamics from Life History Interviews in Bangladesh
Author: Tony Addison, David Hulme & Ravi Kanbur

In this research, Peter Davis attempts to discover and analyse poverty dynamics using a life history
method. This approach portrays poverty dynamics against time as it uncovers several phenomena
which tend to remain concealed from traditional quantitative methods like variable-based or case-
based research: multiple causation, ‘last-straw’ threshold effects, outcomes of sequential events,
complex interactions to name a few. To negate the biases of case-based research, life history
approach requires a larger set of cases which enables the possibility of finding out the patterns of
crisis, coping and opportunity that emerges. Peter analysed the findings from a study in Kushtia
district in Bangladesh and categorized the data in eight main life-trajectory patterns with suitable
poverty dynamics illustration for each of the patterns.
In the data collection phase, the author interviewed randomly selected 20 people from each of the
three towns and six villages in Kushtia district in western Bangladesh during 1999-2001. For each
interviewed person, a profile was constructed with info on various socio-cultural, economic,
financial and personal aspects of the concerned. These factors include information about the
person’s family members, skills and education, religion, economic resources, coercive power,
prestige, networks and relationships.
For visualization of the life history of the respondent, significant events in the history of
Bangladesh was mapped out on a chart. The vertical axis indicating the respondent’s wellbeing
against time on the horizontal axis. Life trajectory patterns were based on the notion of a person’s
overall condition as it changed over time. A chronological framework of major life events was
first established to help erect a skeleton of the timespan, which was later filled in with details that
was delivered in the main part of the interview. On the context of rural Bangladesh, this framework
was helpful because the tendency of not remembering dates is higher among the people. The ages,
dates of marriage, birth dates were roughly estimated using reference to significant social or
national occurrences. The interviews were approximately 2 to 4 hours long, sometimes on separate
days depending on the respondents’ availability and this provided the volunteers a reasonable
amount of time to break out of the initial doubt and wariness against the author. This allowed the
interviewer to garner more personal details like the dowry in marriages, family loans and
mortgages, the power resources in each family, significant sickness of family members,
relationship and property division among siblings, kinships etc.
The author builds on Lawson et al’s 2000 groupings and the approach set out by Hulme and
Shepherd, 2003. But instead of limiting the perspective in instantenous declining, level, or
improving trajectories, the author here takes into account a longer period of time defining as life
trajectory. This longer period helps to garnish more interesting and complex relationships among
patterns of crisis and social policy and provide better pieces of solution for decreasing the
mismatch. There are eight different types of recurring fuzzy sets in the life trajectories in the

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observed data. By direction, the trajectories can be level, improving or declining. As per the
pattern, trajectories can be smooth, saw-smooth, saw-tooth or single-step.
Aside from the categorization, the study of overall life trajectories also provide some important
observations. It draws a clear distinction between improvement and decline; the first one tend to
change the life condition gradually, with slow upward trend, while the latter can often follow
abrupt drop. Also, it can be observed that crises strike the trajectory abruptly when the crisis either
directly affects a person’s (or kin’s) health, or when the person lacks enough buffer resources to
mitigate the blow, which translated the crisis into a sudden decline in the plot.
Improving trajectories has only two sub-categories over the data: smooth and saw-tooth. The most
common trajectory was the “improving saw-tooth” pattern, which implies slow improvements
interspersed with sudden small declines which are not too powerful to destroy the upward trend in
the long term. In contrast, Declining trajectories have three sub-categories over the observed cases:
declining saw-tooth, smooth single-step decline, smooth multi-step decline. In the single-step
decline, the reason for decline is often a disease or death to a family member or close relative, a
court case, or a family breakdown (abandonment, divorce or widowhood), or even a collection of
several of the reasons mentioned. In the multiple-step decline, small number of serious crises with
little improvement or recovery in between. The level trajectories can be classified in ‘level saw-
tooth’ and ‘level smooth’. The former is visible in relatively low class of people who are barely
surviving with occasional crises, while the latter is more frequent in relatively wealthier class who
are maintaining a somewhat consistent condition. In the author’s study, there was very few
presences of smooth improvement and smooth decline.
The methodology used in this research is considerably more effective than the traditional poverty
analysis methods as this allows the respondent to participate more actively in the study, providing
intricate details which often tends to disappear in structured interviews. Instead of providing a
situational perspective, life history interviews allow to receive the eagle-view of the poverty
dynamics. This fills in the gap of information in the existing suite of approaches working as a
complementary approach. A better understanding of the causes and consequences of various
categories of crisis can be improved with these multi-dimensional perspective of life’s course.

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