Overview: poverty dynamics and persistence in Asia and Africa

A decade ago, around the time the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) was conceived, I co- edited a special issue of the Journal of Development Studies with John Hoddinott entitled `Poverty dynamics and economic mobility in developing countries (Baulch and Hoddinott, 2000). This issue, which subsequently became a book, contained a collection of six studies on poverty dynamics drawn from the (then) very limited pool of household (longitudinal) panels in developing countries. Since then, the number of panels available in developing and transition economies has expanded considerably.1 However, most of these panels still span relatively short periods of time, have just two rounds, and pay limited attention to the issues of tracking, attrition and measurement error (Dercon and Shapiro, 2007). This book, which is based primarily on the work commissioned by the CPRC's poverty dynamics and economic mobility theme, brings together six more panel studies from Asia and Africa. The distinguishing feature of these studies is that they are longer term and/or have more waves than most panel studies and pay careful attention to tracking, attrition and measurement error